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2 Maccabees 1: What the Passage Says

128 claims across 36 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Maccabees 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter contains two letters sent from the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea to the Jews in Egypt. The first asks them to keep the feast of tabernacles in the month Casleu, and recalls the trouble that came after Jason and his company revolted. The second, sent in the hundred eighty-eighth year to Aristobulus and the Jews in Egypt, reports the death of Antiochus in the temple of Nanea, announces the purification of the temple on the twenty-fifth of Casleu, and tells how the altar fire hidden by the priests was found as thick water, how Neemias used it on the sacrifice, and how it was named Naphthar.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • The letter is sent by the Jews in Jerusalem and the Jews in the land of Judea.
    • The letter is addressed to their kindred, the Jews throughout Egypt.
    • The senders wish the recipients health and peace.
  2. 1:2
    • The senders pray that God be gracious to the recipients.
    • The senders pray that God remember his covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
    • Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are called God's faithful servants.
  3. 1:3
    • The senders pray that God give all of them a heart to serve him.
    • The senders pray that God enable them to do his will.
    • The serving and doing of God's will is to be with a great heart and a willing mind.
  4. 1:4
    • The senders pray that God open their hearts in his law and commandments.
    • The senders pray that God send them peace.
  5. 1:5
    • The senders pray that God hear their prayers.
    • The senders pray that God be reconciled with them.
    • The senders pray that God never forsake them in a time of trouble.
  6. 1:6
    • The senders say they are praying for the recipients where they are.
  7. 1:7
    • Demetrius was reigning at the time referred to.
    • The year was the hundred and sixty-ninth.
    • The Jews had written to the recipients previously.
    • They wrote in the extremity of trouble that came upon them in those years.
    • Jason and his company revolted from the holy land and the kingdom.
  8. 1:8
    • They burned the gate.
    • They shed innocent blood.
    • The senders prayed to the Lord.
    • The senders were heard.
    • The senders offered sacrifices and fine flour.
    • The senders lit the lamps.
    • The senders set forth the loaves.
  9. 1:9
    • The senders direct the recipients to keep the feast of tabernacles in the month Casleu.
  10. 1:10
    • The year is the hundred and eighty-eighth.
    • The senders are the people at Jerusalem and in Judea, the council, and Judas.
    • The letter is sent to Aristobulus.
    • Aristobulus is the teacher of king Ptolemeus.
    • Aristobulus is of the stock of the anointed priests.
    • The letter is also sent to the Jews in Egypt.
    • The senders send greeting and health.
  11. 1:11
    • God has delivered the senders from great perils.
    • The senders thank God highly.
    • The senders had been in battle against a king.
  12. 1:12
    • God cast out those who fought within the holy city.
  13. 1:13
    • The leader came into Persia.
    • The army with him seemed invincible.
    • They were slain in the temple of Nanea.
    • They were slain by the deceit of Nanea's priests.
  14. 1:14
    • Antiochus came to the place as though he would marry Nanea.
    • His friends came with him.
    • They came to receive money in the name of a dowry.
  15. 1:15
    • The priests of Nanea set the money forth.
    • Antiochus entered the compass of the temple with a small company.
    • The priests shut the temple as soon as Antiochus had come in.
  16. 1:16
    • They opened a secret door in the roof.
    • They threw stones like thunderbolts.
    • They struck down the captain.
    • They hewed them in pieces.
    • They cut off their heads.
    • They cast the heads to those who were outside.
  17. 1:17
    • Our God is blessed in all things.
    • God delivered up the ungodly.
  18. 1:18
    • The senders are purposed to keep the purification of the temple on the twenty-fifth day of the month Casleu.
    • The senders thought it necessary to inform the recipients of this.
    • The purpose is that the recipients also keep it, as the feast of tabernacles and of the fire.
    • The fire was given when Neemias offered sacrifice.
    • Neemias had built the temple and the altar before that.
  19. 1:19
    • The fathers of the senders were led into Persia.
    • The devout priests of that time took fire from the altar secretly.
    • They hid the fire in a hollow place of a waterless pit.
    • They kept it secure there.
    • The place was unknown to everyone.
  20. 1:20
    • Many years passed.
    • It pleased God at that time.
    • Neemias was sent from the king of Persia.
    • Neemias sent the descendants of the priests who had hidden the fire to get the fire.
    • They reported that they found no fire.
    • They reported that they found thick water instead.
  21. 1:21
    • Neemias commanded them to draw the thick water up and bring it.
    • The sacrifices were laid on.
    • Neemias commanded the priests to sprinkle the wood with the water.
    • Neemias commanded the priests to sprinkle the things laid on the wood with the water.
  22. 1:22
    • This was done.
    • The sun shone.
    • The sun had before been hidden in a cloud.
    • A great fire was kindled.
    • Every man marvelled.
  23. 1:23
    • The priests made a prayer while the sacrifice was being consumed.
    • Both the priests and all the rest prayed.
    • Jonathan began the prayer.
    • The rest answered in response.
    • They did as Neemias did.
  24. 1:24
    • The prayer was in this manner.
    • God is addressed as Lord, Lord God.
    • God is Creator of all things.
    • God is fearful and strong.
    • God is righteous and merciful.
    • God is the only King and is gracious.
  25. 1:25
    • God is the only giver of all things.
    • God is the only just one.
    • God is almighty and everlasting.
    • God delivers Israel from all trouble.
    • God chose the fathers.
    • God sanctified the fathers.
  26. 1:26
    • They ask God to receive the sacrifice for his whole people Israel.
    • They ask God to preserve his own portion.
    • They ask God to sanctify it.
  27. 1:27
    • They ask God to gather together those who are scattered.
    • They ask God to deliver those who serve among the heathen.
    • They ask God to look upon those who are despised and abhorred.
    • They ask that the heathen know that he is their God.
  28. 1:28
    • They ask God to punish those who oppress them.
    • Those oppressors wrong them with pride.
  29. 1:29
    • They ask God to plant his people again in his holy place.
    • Moses had spoken of this.
  30. 1:30
    • The priests sang psalms of thanksgiving.
  31. 1:31
    • The sacrifice was consumed.
    • Neemias commanded that the water that was left be poured on the great stones.
  32. 1:32
    • This was done.
    • A flame was kindled.
    • The flame was consumed by the light that shone from the altar.
  33. 1:33
    • The matter became known.
    • It was told to the king of Persia.
    • Water appeared in the place where the priests who were led away had hidden the fire.
    • Neemias had purified the sacrifices with that water.
  34. 1:34
    • The king enclosed the place.
    • The king made the place holy.
    • The king first tried the matter.
  35. 1:35
    • The king took many gifts.
    • The king bestowed some of them on those whom he wished to gratify.
  36. 1:36
    • Neemias called this thing Naphthar.
    • Naphthar means a cleansing.
    • Many men call it Nephi.

Words Worth Explaining

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

1:1
This is the opening of a Greek letter, in the standard form of sender, recipient, greeting. Second Maccabees begins with two such letters sent from Jews in Judea to the large Jewish community in Egypt, most of it in Alexandria; the first runs to verse 9, the second from verse 10 to 2:18. The book's own narrative does not start until chapter 3. "Brethren" here means fellow Jews, not relatives.
1:2
A covenant is a binding agreement. The one named here is the promise God made to Abraham and passed to his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, the ancestors of Israel.
1:4
God's law was the set of rules he gave his people to live by.
1:5
"Be at one with you" is 1611 English for be reconciled to you, that is, restore good relations after a breach.
1:7
Dates in this book are counted from the start of the Seleucid kingdom in 312 or 311 BC, so the hundred and sixty-ninth year is roughly 143 to 142 BC, in the reign of Demetrius II, the Greek king ruling Syria and, in name, Judea. Jason was the brother of the high priest Onias III; he bought the high priesthood from King Antiochus IV around 175 BC and promoted Greek customs in Jerusalem. His armed attempt to seize the city back is told in chapter 5.
1:8
"The porch" is the gateway of the temple. The four acts listed after the prayer are the ordinary temple worship starting up again: animal sacrifices, the grain offering of fine flour, the lamps of the sanctuary lampstand, and the twelve loaves of the bread of the Presence, set out fresh on a table inside the sanctuary each week.
1:9
The feast of tabernacles, Sukkot, was a weeklong autumn harvest festival in the seventh month, Tishri, during which people lived in leafy booths. Casleu, or Chislev, is the ninth month, falling in late November and December, so this is not the ordinary date. The eight day festival meant here is the rededication of the temple, later called Hanukkah, which 2 Maccabees 10:6 says was kept in the style of tabernacles because the fighters had spent that earlier festival hiding in the hills.
1:10
The hundred and eighty-eighth year is about 124 BC. The "council" is the gerousia, the senate of elders that governed Jerusalem alongside the high priest. Judas is Judas Maccabeus, who died in 160 BC, so his name and this date do not fit together; the difficulty has never been resolved. Ptolemeus is Ptolemy, the Greek dynasty ruling Egypt; Aristobulus was a Jewish philosopher at that court. "Of the stock of the anointed priests" means descended from the priestly families, whose high priests were installed by being anointed with oil.
1:11
The Greek is awkward. It seems to mean: as men who have been drawn up in battle line against a king and come through it.
1:12
The holy city means Jerusalem, where the temple was.
1:13
"The leader" is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king. Nanea was a goddess worshiped in Persia and Elam, whom Greeks identified with Artemis. Temples served as treasuries, and kings short of cash raided them. This account of how Antiochus died does not agree with the one in chapter 9 of this book, or with the account in 1 Maccabees 6; the book preserves all of them without harmonizing them.
1:14
A dowry was the money or property a bride's family handed over at a marriage. Claiming to marry the goddess was a legal pretext for walking off with her temple's treasure.
1:15
"The compass of the temple" is the walled sacred enclosure surrounding the temple building, not the building itself.
1:16
"Privy" in 1611 English means secret or hidden. The door was in the coffered ceiling above the chamber, so the priests dropped the stones from overhead onto the men trapped below.
1:17
"Blessed be our God" is an old way of saying "We praise God."
1:18
The purification of the temple on the twenty-fifth of Casleu is the rededication of 164 BC, after Antiochus IV had defiled the sanctuary; the eight day festival that grew from it is Hanukkah. Neemias is Nehemiah, the Judean governor under Persian rule in the fifth century BC. The story told here, that Nehemiah built the temple and altar and that a miraculous fire attended his sacrifice, is not in the book of Nehemiah, where the temple already stands.
1:19
"Led into Persia" means the deportation to Babylon in 587 BC; the writer uses Persia loosely for the eastern empire that later held the same territory. The fire mattered because the law required the fire on the altar to burn continuously and never go out (Leviticus 6:12 to 13), so a fire kindled fresh after the exile would not be the same fire.
1:20
"Thick water" is naphtha, petroleum seeping up to the surface. It looks like dirty water and burns, which is the point of the whole story.
1:23
Jonathan is otherwise unidentified. He leads the prayer line by line and the assembly answers him, the normal way a congregation prayed together.
1:24
"To be feared" here means people bow low before God in wonder. Gracious means kind and giving.
1:25
To sanctify is to set apart for God's exclusive use, not to make morally better.
1:26
"Thine own portion" pictures Israel as the share of land or property allotted to God, the way each family in Israel held its own allotment.
1:27
"The heathen" translates a Greek word simply meaning the nations, that is, all the non-Jewish peoples. It carries no sense of savagery.
1:29
The reference is to the promise in Deuteronomy 30:1 to 5 that God would gather his scattered people back into their land.
1:34
Enclosing the place means fencing it off so that no ordinary person could use it, which is what marking ground as sacred amounted to in practice.
1:35
The Greek of this verse is damaged or unclear, and translations split. The King James has the king collecting gifts and handing them on to his favorites; others have him exchanging expensive gifts for portions of the naphtha itself, which he then gave away.
1:36
Naphthar and Nephi are attempts to spell a foreign word in Greek letters; the substance is naphtha, still called that today. The writer links the name to a word meaning cleansing, a play on sound rather than a strict translation, and notes that the common pronunciation differed from the one he prefers.

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