Some of Heliodorus’s friends quickly begged Onias to call upon the Most High to grant life to one who was lying quite at his last breath.

While the high priest was making the atonement, the same young men appeared again to Heliodorus dressed in the same clothing, and they stood and said, “Be very grateful to the high priest Onias, since for his sake the Lord has granted you your life.

The Conversion of Heliodorus

Then Heliodorus offered sacrifice to the Lord and made very great vows to the Savior of his life, and having bidden Onias farewell, he marched off with his forces to the king.

When the king assented and Jason came to office, he at once shifted his compatriots over to the Greek way of life.

But he, welcoming death with honor rather than life with pollution, went up to the rack of his own accord,

spitting it out as all ought to go who have the courage to refuse things that it is not right to taste, even for the natural love of life.

But making a high resolve, worthy of his years and the dignity of his old age and the gray hairs that he had reached with distinction and his excellent life even from childhood, and moreover according to the holy God-given law, he declared himself quickly, telling them to send him to Hades.

“Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life,” he said, “for many of the young might suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year had gone over to a foreign way of life,

Therefore, by bravely giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age

And when he was at his last breath, he said, “You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to a renewal of everlasting life, because we have died for his laws.”

When he was near death, he said, “One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!”

“I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath nor I who set in order the elements within each of you.

Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, in his mercy gives life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.”

But, leaning close to him, she spoke in their native language as follows, deriding the cruel tyrant: “My son, have pity on me. I carried you nine months in my womb and nursed you for three years and have reared you and brought you up to this point in your life and have taken care of you.

For our brothers, after enduring a brief suffering for everlasting life, have fallen under God’s covenant, but you, by the judgment of God, will receive just punishment for your arrogance.

I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our ancestors, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by trials and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God,

keeping before their eyes the lawless outrage that the nations had committed against the holy place and the torture of the derided city, as well as the overthrow of their ancestral way of life.

So the murderer and blasphemer, having endured the more intense suffering such as he had inflicted on others, came to the end of his life by a most pitiable fate, among the mountains in a strange land.

As a result he was accused before Eupator by the king’s Friends. He heard himself called a traitor at every turn because he had abandoned Cyprus, which Philometor had entrusted to him, and had gone over to Antiochus Epiphanes. Unable to command the respect due his office, he took poison and ended his life.

So, committing the decision to the Creator of the world and exhorting his troops to fight bravely to the death for the laws, temple, city, country, and way of life, he pitched his camp near Modein.

He urged him to marry and have children, so Judas married, settled down, and shared the common life.

For before the days of separation, he had been accused of Judaism, and he had most zealously risked body and life for Judaism.

with his blood now completely drained from him, he tore out his entrails, took them in both hands, and hurled them at the crowd, calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again. This was the manner of his death.