3 Maccabees 4:16-18

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

¹⁶ The king was greatly and continually filled with joy, organizing feasts in honour of all his idols, with a mind alienated from truth and with a profane mouth, praising speechless things that are not able even to communicate or to come to one’s help, and uttering improper words against the supreme God.^{[a] 17} But after the previously mentioned interval of time the scribes declared to the king that they were no longer able to take the census of the Jews because of their immense number, ¹⁸ though most of them were still in the country, some still residing in their homes, and some at the place;^[b] the task was impossible for all the generals in Egypt.