On their return they sang hymns and praises to Heaven—“For he is good, for his mercy endures forever.”

Strike them down with the sword of those who love you, and let all who know your name praise you with hymns.”

People gathered to them and praised them.

So Simon reached an agreement with them and stopped fighting against them. But he expelled them from the city and cleansed the houses in which the idols were located, and then entered it with hymns and praise.

On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred seventy-first year, the Jews entered it with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel.