Font Size
1 Maccabees 13:42-44
New Catholic Bible
1 Maccabees 13:42-44
New Catholic Bible
42 and the people began to write in their documents and contracts: “In the first year of Simon, the great high priest, commander and leader of the Jews.”[a]
43 Simon Captures Gazara. About that time, Simon besieged Gazara[b] and surrounded it with troops. He constructed a siege-machine, and after he had brought it up to the town, he opened a breach in one of the towers and captured it. 44 The men leapt from the siege-machine into the city, and a great tumult arose there.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 1 Maccabees 13:42 The title of king is avoided, since it was regarded as reserved to the Davidic descendancy; only forty years later, however, the title will be assumed (Alexander Jannaeus, 103–76 B.C.).
- 1 Maccabees 13:43 Gazara: a key position in the Shephelah, fortified by Bacchides in 160 B.C.; see 1 Mac 9:52; a Greek inscription hostile to Simon has been found there. Siege-machine: a tower on wheels housing men with catapults and battering rams that could breach fortified walls.