2 Maccabees 5:17-19

Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition

¹⁷ Thus Antiochus going astray in mind, did not consider that God was angry for a while, because of the sins of the inhabitants of the city: and therefore this contempt had happened to the place:

¹⁸ Otherwise had they not been involved in many sins, as Heliodorus, who was sent by king Seleucus to rob the treasury, so this man also, as soon as he had come, had been forthwith scourged, and put back from his presumption.

¹⁹ But God did not choose the people for the place's sake, but the place for the people's sake.