1 Maccabees 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Demetrius son of Seleucus leaves Rome, takes a city on the sea coast, and reigns there; his soldiers seize Antiochus and Lysias and kill them, and he takes the throne. Alcimus and other men of Israel accuse Judas to the king, and the king sends Bacchides with Alcimus, who swears peace to the Assideans and then kills sixty of them in one day. The king next sends Nicanor, whose attempt to seize Judas fails; Nicanor threatens to burn the temple, and on the thirteenth of Adar his army is beaten at Adasa and he is killed, and the day is ordained as a yearly celebration. The chapter ends with the land of Judah at rest for a little while.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • In the hundred and fifty-first year, Demetrius the son of Seleucus departed from Rome.
   • Demetrius came up with a few men to a city on the sea coast.
   • Demetrius reigned there.
2. 7:2
   • Demetrius entered the palace of his ancestors.
   • At that time his forces had seized Antiochus and Lysias.
   • The forces intended to bring Antiochus and Lysias to Demetrius.
3. 7:3
   • Demetrius learned of the matter.
   • Demetrius said, Do not let me see their faces.
4. 7:4
   • The forces killed Antiochus and Lysias.
   • Demetrius sat on the throne of his kingdom.
5. 7:5
   • All the lawless and ungodly men of Israel came to Demetrius.
   • Alcimus was their leader.
   • Alcimus desired to be high priest.
6. 7:6
   • They accused the people to the king.
   • They said Judas and his brothers had destroyed all the king's friends.
   • They said Judas and his brothers had driven them out of their own land.
7. 7:7
   • They told the king to send a man whom he trusted.
   • They told the king to let that man go and see all the destruction Judas had done to them and to the king's country.
   • They asked that Judas and all who helped him be punished.
8. 7:8
   • The king chose Bacchides.
   • Bacchides was one of the king's friends.
   • Bacchides ruled in the region beyond the river.
   • Bacchides was a great man in the kingdom.
   • Bacchides was faithful to the king.
9. 7:9
   • The king sent Bacchides.
   • The king sent Alcimus the ungodly with him.
   • The king confirmed the priesthood to Alcimus.
   • The king commanded him to take vengeance on the children of Israel.
10. 7:10
    • They set out and came with a great army into the land of Judea.
    • He sent messengers to Judas and his brothers with peaceable words.
    • The peaceable words were sent deceitfully.
11. 7:11
    • Judas and his brothers gave no heed to their words.
    • They saw that the messengers' side had come with a great army.
12. 7:12
    • A company of scribes assembled to Alcimus and Bacchides.
    • The scribes came to seek just terms.
13. 7:13
    • The Assideans were the first among the children of Israel to seek peace from them.
14. 7:14
    • The Assideans said a priest of the seed of Aaron had come with the army.
    • The Assideans said he would do them no wrong.
15. 7:15
    • He spoke peaceable words to them.
    • He swore to them.
    • He said, We will not seek to harm you or your friends.
16. 7:16
    • They trusted him.
    • He seized sixty men of them.
    • He killed them in one day.
    • This was according to the words that were written.
17. 7:17
    • The flesh of your saints was cast out.
    • Their blood was shed around Jerusalem.
    • There was no one to bury them.
18. 7:18
    • The fear and dread of them fell upon all the people.
    • The people said there was neither truth nor justice in them.
    • The people said they had broken the covenant and the oath they had sworn.
19. 7:19
    • Bacchides departed from Jerusalem.
    • Bacchides encamped at Bezeth.
    • Bacchides sent and seized many of the men who had deserted to him.
    • Bacchides also seized some of the people.
    • Bacchides killed them.
    • Bacchides cast them into the great pit.
20. 7:20
    • Bacchides committed the country to Alcimus.
    • Bacchides left a force with Alcimus to help him.
    • Bacchides went away to the king.
21. 7:21
    • Alcimus contended for the high priesthood.
22. 7:22
    • All those who troubled their people gathered to Alcimus.
    • They gained control of the land of Judah.
    • They did great harm in Israel.
23. 7:23
    • Judas saw all the evil that Alcimus and those with him had done among the children of Israel.
    • That evil exceeded what the Gentiles had done.
24. 7:24
    • Judas went out into all the borders of Judea and round about.
    • Judas took vengeance on the men who had deserted from him.
    • They were prevented from going out into the country.
25. 7:25
    • Alcimus saw that Judas and those with him had grown strong.
    • Alcimus knew he was not able to withstand them.
    • Alcimus returned to the king.
    • Alcimus brought evil accusations against them.
26. 7:26
    • The king sent Nicanor.
    • Nicanor was one of the king's honorable princes.
    • Nicanor hated Israel and was their enemy.
    • The king commanded Nicanor to destroy the people.
27. 7:27
    • Nicanor came to Jerusalem with a great force.
    • Nicanor sent to Judas and his brothers deceitfully with peaceable words.
28. 7:28
    • Nicanor said, Let there be no battle between me and you.
    • Nicanor said he would come with a few men.
    • Nicanor said he came so that he might see their faces in peace.
29. 7:29
    • Nicanor came to Judas.
    • They saluted one another peaceably.
    • The enemies were prepared to seize Judas by violence.
30. 7:30
    • The matter became known to Judas.
    • Judas learned that Nicanor had come to him with deceit.
    • Judas was greatly afraid of him.
    • Judas would not see his face again.
31. 7:31
    • Nicanor knew that his plan was discovered.
    • Nicanor went out to meet Judas in battle beside Capharsalama.
32. 7:32
    • About five thousand men of Nicanor's side fell.
    • The rest fled into the city of David.
33. 7:33
    • After these things Nicanor went up to mount Zion.
    • Some of the priests came out of the sanctuary.
    • Some of the elders of the people came out with them.
    • They came to salute him peaceably.
    • They came to show him the burnt offering being offered for the king.
34. 7:34
    • Nicanor mocked them.
    • Nicanor laughed at them.
    • Nicanor defiled them.
    • Nicanor spoke arrogantly.
35. 7:35
    • Nicanor swore in wrath.
    • Nicanor said that unless Judas and his army were delivered into his hands now, then if he returned safely he would burn this house.
    • Nicanor went out in a great rage.
36. 7:36
    • The priests entered in.
    • The priests stood before the altar and the temple.
    • The priests wept.
    • The priests spoke.
37. 7:37
    • The priests addressed the Lord.
    • The priests said God chose this house to be called by his name.
    • The priests said God chose it to be a house of prayer and petition for his people.
38. 7:38
    • The priests asked God to take vengeance on this man and his army.
    • The priests asked that they fall by the sword.
    • The priests asked God to remember their blasphemies.
    • The priests asked that they not be allowed to continue.
39. 7:39
    • Nicanor went out from Jerusalem.
    • They encamped at Bethhoron.
    • An army out of Syria met him there.
40. 7:40
    • Judas encamped at Adasa with three thousand men.
    • Judas prayed and spoke.
41. 7:41
    • Judas said that when those sent from the king of the Assyrians blasphemed, God's angel went out.
    • Judas said the angel struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand of them.
42. 7:42
    • Judas asked God to crush this army before them that day.
    • Judas asked that the rest might know that he had spoken blasphemously against God's sanctuary.
    • Judas asked God to judge him according to his wickedness.
43. 7:43
    • The armies joined battle on the thirteenth day of the month Adar.
    • Nicanor's army was crushed.
    • Nicanor himself fell first in the battle.
44. 7:44
    • Nicanor's army saw that Nicanor had fallen.
    • They threw away their weapons.
    • They fled.
45. 7:45
    • They pursued them a day's journey from Adasa until they came to Gazera.
    • They sounded an alarm after them with signal trumpets.
46. 7:46
    • Men came out of all the surrounding towns of Judea.
    • They closed in on them from the flanks.
    • The fleeing men turned back upon their pursuers.
    • They all fell by the sword.
    • Not one of them was left.
47. 7:47
    • They took the spoils and the plunder.
    • They cut off Nicanor's head.
    • They cut off Nicanor's right hand, which he had stretched out arrogantly.
    • They brought them away.
    • They hung them up toward Jerusalem.
48. 7:48
    • The people rejoiced greatly.
    • They kept that day as a day of great gladness.
49. 7:49
    • They ordained to keep this day yearly.
    • The day is the thirteenth of Adar.
50. 7:50
    • The land of Judah had rest for a few days.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

The date is counted in the Seleucid era, which began in 312 BC, so the hundred and fifty-first year is 161 BC. Demetrius had been sent to Rome years earlier as a hostage, a guarantee of his family's good behavior toward Rome, and he escaped without the Senate's permission. The coastal city is usually identified as Tripolis in Phoenicia.

7:2

Antiochus here is the boy king Antiochus V, and Lysias was the general who governed in his name. Demetrius was the older and senior claimant to the Seleucid throne, so the two were rivals he could not leave alive. "The palace of his ancestors" is the royal residence at Antioch, the Seleucid capital.

7:5

The high priest presided over the temple in Jerusalem and, under foreign rule, was also the chief civil authority over the Jewish people, which is why the office was worth seeking from a king. "Lawless and ungodly men of Israel" is the writer's label for the party of Jews who favored Greek customs and Seleucid rule; the book is written from the opposing side.

7:6

Judas is Judas Maccabeus. He led the Jews who fought the Greek kings' armies.

7:8

"Friend of the king" is not a description of affection but a formal rank at the Seleucid court, a graded title that marked a man as a senior royal official. "Beyond the flood" in the King James means beyond the river, that is, the vast province west of the Euphrates, seen from the perspective of the Persian and Seleucid capitals farther east.

7:10

Judea was the land around Jerusalem, where the Jewish people lived.

7:12

Scribes were the professional experts in the written law of Moses, men trained to copy, read and interpret it. They come as a delegation because a legal ruling about the priesthood was exactly their field.

7:13

The Assideans, or Hasideans, were a body of Jews known for strict observance of the law. They had fought alongside Judas, and their willingness to settle here marks a split in the revolt: their goal was religious freedom, which a lawful high priest seemed to offer, rather than political independence.

7:14

Priests had to be descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses; that descent, not royal appointment, was what made a priest legitimate in Jewish eyes. Alcimus had it, which is why the Assideans judged him safe.

7:15

To swear meant to make a very serious promise, with God listening. Breaking it was a terrible thing to do.

7:16

"According to the words which he wrote" points forward to the quotation in the next verse, which is taken from Psalm 79, verses 2 and 3. The writer means that the killing fulfilled what the psalmist had written, not that Alcimus wrote anything.

7:17

A quotation from Psalm 79. Leaving the dead unburied was among the worst things that could be done to them; burial was an obligation owed even to enemies.

7:18

Dread is a heavy, scared feeling that will not go away.

7:19

Bezeth was a place near Jerusalem that can no longer be identified with certainty. "The men that had forsaken him" is ambiguous in the Greek and may mean deserters from Judas who had joined Bacchides and were now suspected, or men who had gone over to Bacchides and then left him.

7:21

The high priesthood had become an office granted and revoked by the Seleucid king, and rival claimants competed for it. Alcimus held it by royal grant but not by the consent of the people or of the family that had held it for generations.

7:23

"The heathen" translates a Greek word meaning the nations, that is, all non-Jewish peoples. The charge is that Jews of Alcimus's party had done worse to their own people than foreign armies had.

7:24

"Coasts" in the King James means borders or territory generally, with no reference to the sea. Judea has almost no coastline.

7:26

Nicanor was a Seleucid officer who had already fought against Judas earlier in the revolt. "Princes" here means high officials of the court, not sons of the king.

7:32

The King James "five thousand" follows a variant reading; most Greek manuscripts have five hundred, which better fits a skirmish. The city of David means the citadel in Jerusalem, a fortress held by a Seleucid garrison, so Nicanor's men fled to their own stronghold inside the city.

7:33

Mount Sion, or Zion, is the temple hill in Jerusalem. A burnt offering was an animal burned whole on the altar; one offered on behalf of the foreign ruler was a recognized sign of loyalty, so the priests are showing Nicanor evidence that the temple was not a center of rebellion against him.

7:35

"This house" means the temple. An oath sworn in these terms called down consequences on the swearer if he failed to keep it, which is why the threat was taken with such seriousness in the verses that follow.

7:36

The altar was the stone table where gifts to God were burned. The temple was the special house where people came to worship God.

7:37

"To carry your name" means everyone knew this house belonged to God.

7:38

"Blasphemies" here means insulting speech aimed at God and at his temple, the words Nicanor had just spoken. In the ancient sense the word covers abuse and contempt, not only the narrow modern sense of profanity.

7:39

Bethhoron was a pair of villages guarding a steep pass on the main road from the coastal plain up into the Judean hills, a route armies had fought over for centuries.

7:41

The reference is to the army of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, destroyed outside Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah, as told in 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37. "Fourscore" is eighty, so the number is a hundred and eighty-five thousand. Some Greek manuscripts read only "the king" without naming the Assyrians.

7:43

Adar is the last month of the Jewish year, falling in late winter, roughly February to March.

7:45

Gazera is Gezer, a fortified town about twenty miles northwest of Jerusalem, at the edge of the hill country. The trumpets were signal instruments used to coordinate troops and to raise the countryside, not a celebration.

7:47

"Spoils" are what is stripped from the dead and "prey" is captured property generally. Displaying a defeated commander's head and hand was standard practice for proclaiming a victory; the right hand is singled out because it was the hand Nicanor had raised toward the temple when he swore to burn it.

7:49

This annual observance was known as Nicanor's Day. It falls on the day before Purim, the thirteenth of Adar, and was kept for several centuries before dropping out of use.

7:50

The Greek reads "a few days," a deliberately short measure; the next chapters show how quickly the fighting resumed.