3 Maccabees 6:30-32

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

The Jews Celebrate Their Deliverance

³⁰ Then the king, when he had returned to the city, summoned the official in charge of the revenues and ordered him to provide to the Jews both wines and everything else needed for a festival of seven days, deciding that they should celebrate a festival of deliverance with all joyfulness in that same place in which they had expected to meet their destruction.^{(A) 31} Accordingly, those disgracefully treated and near to Hades, or rather, who stood at its gates, arranged for a banquet of deliverance instead of a bitter and lamentable death, and full of joy they apportioned to groups of revelers the place that had been prepared for their destruction and burial. ³² They stopped their chanting of dirges and took up the song of their ancestors, praising God, their Savior and worker of wonders.^[a] Putting an end to all mourning and wailing, they formed choruses^[b] as a sign of peaceful joy.