2 Maccabees 5:11-21

New American Bible (Revised Edition)

Revenge by Antiochus. ^11 (A)When these happenings were reported to the king, he thought that Judea was in revolt. Raging like a wild animal, he set out from Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm. ¹² He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. ¹³ There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of young women and infants. ¹⁴ In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery.

¹⁵ Not satisfied with this, the king dared to enter the holiest temple in the world; Menelaus, that traitor both to the laws and to his country, served as guide. ¹⁶ He laid his impure hands on the sacred vessels and swept up with profane hands the votive offerings made by other kings for the advancement, the glory, and the honor of the place. ¹⁷ Antiochus became puffed up in spirit, not realizing that it was because of the sins of the city’s inhabitants that the Sovereign Lord was angry for a little while: hence the disregard of the place.^{(B) 18} If they had not become entangled in so many sins, this man, like that Heliodorus sent by King Seleucus to inspect the treasury, would have been flogged and turned back from his presumptuous act as soon as he approached. ¹⁹ The Lord, however, had not chosen the nation for the sake of the place, but the place for the sake of the nation. ²⁰ Therefore, the place itself, having shared in the nation’s misfortunes, afterward participated in their good fortune; and what the Almighty had forsaken in wrath was restored in all its glory, once the great Sovereign Lord became reconciled.

^21 (C)Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the temple and hurried back to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance that he could make the land navigable and the sea passable on foot, so carried away was he with pride.