When he was about to die under the blows, he groaned aloud and said: “It is clear to the Lord in his holy knowledge that, though I might have been saved from death, I am enduring terrible sufferings in my body under this beating, but in my soul I am glad to suffer these things because I fear him.”

As a result, the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man’s spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing.

After him they brought forward the sixth. And when he was about to die, he said, “Do not deceive yourself in vain. For we are suffering these things on our own account because of our sins against our own God.

For we are suffering because of our own sins.

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.

But when his sufferings did not in any way abate, for the judgment of God had justly come upon him, he gave up all hope for himself and wrote to the Jews the following letter, in the form of a supplication. This was its content:

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.