2 Maccabees 5:11-20

New Catholic Bible

¹¹ Antiochus IV Epiphanes Ravages the Temple.^[a] When news of what had happened reached the king, he came to the conclusion that Judea was in revolt. He therefore set out from Egypt, raging like a wild beast, and took the city by storm. ¹² He then ordered his soldiers to cut down mercilessly everyone they met and to slay those who fled to their houses. ¹³ There was the massacre of young and old, the extermination of women and children, and the slaughter of young girls and infants. ¹⁴ In the course of three days there were eighty thousand victims—forty thousand killed in hand-to-hand fighting and another forty sold into slavery.

¹⁵ Not content with this, the king had the audacity to enter the holiest temple in the entire world, with Menelaus, who had become a traitor to the laws and to his country, serving as his guide. ¹⁶ The king laid his unclean hands on the sacred vessels, and with his profane hands he gathered up the votive offerings that other kings had made to enhance the glory and the honor of the holy place. ¹⁷ With an inflated opinion of himself, Antiochus failed to realize that the Lord had been angered for a time because of the sins committed by the inhabitants of the city, and that it was for this reason that he was disregarding the holy place. ¹⁸ If it had not been the case that they were involved in many sinful acts, Antiochus would have been flogged and checked in his presumptuous act as soon as he approached, just as had been the case with Heliodorus, whom King Seleucus had sent to inspect the treasury.

¹⁹ However, the Lord had not chosen the people for the sake of the holy place, but the holy place for the sake of the people.^{[b] 20} Therefore, the holy place itself, having shared in the misfortunes that afflicted the people, afterward shared in their good fortune, and what had been abandoned by the Almighty in his anger was restored again in all its glory once the great Sovereign became reconciled.