When Mattathias had thus discoursed to his sons and had prayed to God to be their assistant and to recover to the people their former constitution.
Continuing Maccabaeus Liberates Judea,
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Previously in Maccabaeus Liberates Judea.
Time: 165-141 BC
[Mattathias continued speaking to his sons.]
Your bodies are mortal and subject to fate; but they receive a sort of immortality by the remembrance of what actions they have done; and I would have you so in love with this immortality that you may pursue after glory, and that when you have undergone the greatest difficulties you may not scruple for such things to lose your lives. I exhort you especially to agree one with another, and in what excellency any one of you exceeds another, to yield to him so far, and by that means to reap the advantage of everyone’s own virtues. Do you then esteem Simon as your father because he is a man of extraordinary prudence, and be governed by him in what counsels he gives you. Take Maccabaeus for the general of your army, because of his courage and strength, for he will avenge your nation and will bring vengeance on your enemies. Admit among you the righteous and religious and augment their power.”
When Mattathias had thus discoursed to his sons and had prayed to God to be their assistant and to recover to the people their former constitution, he died a little afterward, and was buried at Modin, all the people making great lamentation for him. Whereupon his son Judas took upon him the administration of public affairs, in the hundred and forty-sixth year; and thus, by the ready assistance of his brethren and of others, Judas cast their enemies out of the country and put those of their own country to death who had transgressed its laws, and purified the land of all the pollutions that were in it.
When Apollonius, the general of the Samaritan forces, heard this he took his army and made haste to go against Judas, who met him and joined battle with him, and beat him and slew many of his men, and among them Apollonius himself, their general, whose sword, being that which he happened then to wear, he seized upon and kept for himself; but he wounded more than he slew, and took a great deal of prey from the enemy’s camp, and went his way; but when Seron, who was general of the army of Celesyria, heard that many had joined themselves to Judas, and that he had about him an army sufficient for fighting and for making war, he determined to make an expedition against him, as thinking it became him to endeavor to punish those that transgressed the King’s injunctions. He then got together an army as large as he was able, and joined to it the renegade and wicked Jews, and came against Judas.
He then came as far as Bethoron, a village of Judea, and there pitched his camp; upon which Judas met him, and when he intended to give him battle he saw that his soldiers were backward to fight because their number was small and because they wanted food, for they were fasting. He encouraged them and said to them that victory and conquest of enemies are not derived from the multitude in armies, but in the exercise of piety toward God; and that they had the plainest instances in their forefathers, who, by their righteousness and exerting themselves on behalf of their own laws and their own children, had frequently conquered many ten thousands, for innocence is the strongest army. By this speech he induced his men to condemn the multitude of the enemy, and to fall upon Seron; and upon joining battle with him he beat the Syrians; and when their general fell among the rest they all ran away with speed, as thinking that to be their best way of escaping. So he pursued them unto the plain and slew about eight hundred of the enemy, but the rest escaped to the region which lay near to the sea.
When king Antiochus heard of these things he was very angry at what had happened; so he got together all his own army, with many mercenaries whom he had hired from the islands, and took them with him, and prepared to break into Judea about the beginning of the spring; but when, upon his mustering his soldiers, he perceived that his treasures were deficient, and there was a want of money in them, for all the taxes were not paid, by reason of the seditions there had been among the nations, he having been so magnanimous and so liberal that what he had was not sufficient for him, he therefore resolved first to go into Persia and collect the taxes of that country. Hereupon he left one whose name was Lysias, who was in great repute with him, governor of the kingdom, as far as the bounds of Egypt and of the Lower Asia and reaching from the river Euphrates, and committed to him a certain part of his forces and of his elephants and charged him to bring up his son Antiochus with all possible care until he came back; and that he should conquer Judea and take its inhabitants for slaves and utterly destroy Jerusalem, and abolish the whole nation; and when king Antiochus had given these things in charge to Lysias, he went into Persia, and in the hundred and forty-seventh year he passed over Euphrates and went to the superior provinces.
Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and Gorgias, very potent men among the King’s friends, and delivered to them forty thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them against Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp in the plain country.
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