2 Maccabees 8

New Catholic Bible

Liberation of the Holy City and the Temple

Chapter 8

Judas Maccabeus Conducts Guerrilla Warfare. ¹ Meanwhile, Judas, who was also called Maccabeus, secretly entered the villages with his companions and enlisted in their ranks their kindred as well as others who had remained faithful to Judaism.^[a] Having assembled a force of about six thousand, ² they implored the Lord to look with favor on his people who were being oppressed on all sides; to have pity on the temple that was being profaned by godless people; ³ to have mercy on the city that was being destroyed and about to be leveled to the ground; to hearken to the blood that cried out to him; ⁴ to remember the lawless slaughter of innocent children and the blasphemous deeds perpetrated against his name; and to manifest his hatred of evil.

⁵ As soon as Maccabeus had organized his army, the Gentiles found that they were unable to withstand him, for the wrath of the Lord had turned to compassion. ⁶ Attacking towns and villages without warning, he would set them on fire. He captured strategic positions and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, ⁷ usually preferring the night as being especially advantageous for such attacks. His reputation for valor spread far and wide.

First Victory over Nicanor.^{[b] 8} When Philip^[c] noted that Judas was making steady progress little by little and that his successful excursions were becoming ever more frequent, he wrote to Ptolemy, the governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, asking for his help in defending the royal interests. ⁹ Ptolemy immediately appointed Nicanor, the son of Patroclus, one of the king’s Chief Friends, and dispatched him in command of at least twenty thousand troops from various nations to exterminate the entire Jewish race. As his associate he appointed Gorgias, a general of considerable military experience in the skills of war. ¹⁰ Nicanor’s intention was to raise the two thousand talents of tribute owed by the king to the Romans^[d] by selling into slavery the Jews who were taken prisoner. ¹¹ Therefore, he immediately notified the coastal cities that he was prepared to sell them Jewish slaves at the rate of ninety slaves for a talent. However, he did not reckon with the judgment from the Almighty that was about to overtake him.

¹² When Judas learned of Nicanor’s advance and informed his men about the approach of the enemy’s army, ¹³ those who were cowardly or without faith in the justice of God deserted and got away. ¹⁴ But the others sold all of their remaining possessions while at the same time beseeching the Lord for the deliverance of those who had been put up for sale by the godless Nicanor even before he had so much as encountered them— ¹⁵ and to do so, if not for their own sake, then at least out of consideration for the covenants made with their ancestors and because they themselves bore his sacred and majestic name.^[e]

¹⁶ Maccabeus assembled his forces, who numbered about six thousand, and exhorted them not to succumb to panic when confronted by the enemy, nor to fear the vast horde of Gentiles who were advancing to attack them unjustly, but to fight bravely, ¹⁷ keeping ever before their eyes the outrages unlawfully perpetrated by the Gentiles against the holy place and the cruel indignities inflicted on the city as well as the subversion of their ancestral way of life. ¹⁸ “They may place their trust in their weapons and their acts of daring,” he said, “but we trust in almighty God who is able with a mere nod to strike down both those who are marching against us and, if necessary, the entire world.”

¹⁹ He then proceeded to remind them of the occasions when divine interventions had aided their ancestors—how, in the time of Sennacherib, one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the enemy forces had perished, ²⁰ and about the occasion of the battle in Babylon^[f] with the Galatians when the Jewish forces numbered no more than eight thousand, aided by four thousand Macedonians, and how, when the Macedonians were hard pressed, those eight thousand, with the help received from Heaven, had destroyed one hundred and twenty thousand of the enemy and gathered a great amount of booty. ²¹ With words such as these he roused their courage and made them ready to die for their laws and their country.

Then Judas divided his army into four sections, ²² placing his brothers, Simon, Joseph,^[g] and Jonathan, in command of one division each and assigning them fifteen hundred men apiece. ²³ Next, he appointed Eleazar^[h] to read aloud from the holy book, and he gave them the rallying cry, “The help of God.” Then, taking command of the first division, he joined battle with Nicanor.

²⁴ With the Almighty as their ally, they slaughtered more than nine thousand of the enemy, wounded and disabled the greater part of Nicanor’s army, and put all of them to flight. ²⁵ They also appropriated the money of those who had come to purchase them as slaves. After pursuing the enemy for a considerable time, ²⁶ they were obliged to return because of the lateness of the hour. Since it was the day before the Sabbath, they could not continue their pursuit. ^27 [i]After collecting the arms of the enemy and stripping them of their spoils, they observed the Sabbath, offering fervent praise and thanksgiving to the Lord who had preserved them to witness on that day this manifestation of his compassion. ²⁸ When the Sabbath was over, they distributed some of the spoils to the victims of the persecution and to the widows and orphans. The rest they divided among themselves and their children. ²⁹ After this had been done, they joined in common supplication, beseeching the merciful Lord to be fully reconciled with his servants.

³⁰ Defeat of Timothy and Bacchides.^[j] They also engaged in battle with the forces of Timothy and Bacchides, killing more than twenty thousand of them and gaining possession of some very high strongholds. They divided the immense amount of plunder, giving half to the persecuted orphans and widows and the aged, and keeping the remaining half for themselves. ³¹ They carefully collected the weapons of the enemy and stored them in strategic locations; the rest of the spoils they carried to Jerusalem. ³² They put to death the commander of Timothy’s forces, a most wicked man who had inflicted great suffering on the Jews. ³³ During the victory celebrations in their ancestral city, they burned those who had set fire to the sacred gates, including Callisthenes, who had taken refuge in a tiny house. Thus he received due recompense for his sacrilegious deeds.

³⁴ Flight and Testimony of Nicanor.^[k] The accursed Nicanor, who villainously had brought along a thousand merchants to buy the Jewish captives, ³⁵ having been humbled with the help of the Lord by those whom he regarded as worthless, threw off his magnificent garments and fled across the country, unaccompanied, like a runaway slave, until he reached Antioch. His major accomplishment had been to oversee the destruction of his own army. ³⁶ Thus the man who had undertaken to secure tribute for the Romans by taking as prisoners the people of Jerusalem now bore witness that the Jews had a champion and that they were therefore invulnerable because they followed the laws set down by him.