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1 Maccabees 2:37-39
New Catholic Bible
1 Maccabees 2:37-39
New Catholic Bible
37 They only said, “Let us all die in a state of innocence. Heaven and earth are our witnesses that you are massacring us without the slightest justification.” 38 Therefore, the enemy attacked on the Sabbath and massacred them along with their wives, their children, and their livestock—one thousand persons in all.
39 Mattathias Organizes the Resistance.[a] When Mattathias and his friends were informed of this, they grieved deeply for them.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 1 Maccabees 2:39 Mattathias is joined by the Hasideans, the “pious,” a group of fervent Jews who would give rise to the Pharisees (and probably the Essenes). At first they had resisted passively (1 Mac 1:62f; 2:37), but now they turned to active resistance. They would later oppose the Maccabean movement as too political.
