2 Maccabees 10: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Maccabeus and his men take back the temple and the city, tear down the altars and sacred enclosures the foreigners had built, cleanse the temple, build a new altar, and offer sacrifice on the twenty-fifth of Casleu, the same day the temple had been profaned; they keep eight days of gladness and decree that the whole nation keep those days every year. The account then turns to Antiochus Eupator, who makes Lysias his chief governor, and to Ptolemeus Macron, who is accused before the king and poisons himself. Maccabeus storms the Idumean strongholds, executes the men who took money to let enemies escape, and takes the two castles. When Timotheus comes against Judea, the Jews pray, and five men on horses appear from heaven; Timotheus flees to Gawra, the fortress is taken, he is killed, and the men praise the Lord with psalms and thanksgiving.

Claim by Claim

1. 10:1
   • Maccabeus and those with him recovered the temple.
   • Maccabeus and those with him recovered the city.
   • The Lord was leading them.
2. 10:2
   • They pulled down the altars that the foreigners had built in the marketplace.
   • They also pulled down the sacred precincts.
3. 10:3
   • They cleansed the temple.
   • They made another altar.
   • They struck stones together.
   • They took fire out of the stones.
   • They offered sacrifices after a lapse of two years.
   • They offered incense.
   • They set up lamps.
   • They set out the showbread.
4. 10:4
   • When they had done these things, they fell prostrate on the ground.
   • They begged the Lord that they might not fall into such evils again.
   • They begged that if they should sin, he himself would chasten them with forbearance.
   • They begged that they not be handed over to blaspheming and barbarous nations.
5. 10:5
   • The temple was cleansed on the same day of the year on which foreigners had profaned it.
   • That day was the twenty-fifth of the same month.
   • That month is Casleu.
6. 10:6
   • They kept eight days with gladness in the manner of the feast of tabernacles.
   • They remembered that a short time before they had spent the feast of tabernacles wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals.
7. 10:7
   • They carried leafy wands.
   • They carried fair branches.
   • They also carried palm fronds.
   • They gave thanks to him who had prospered the cleansing of his own place.
8. 10:8
   • They ordained by a common statute and decree.
   • The decree was for the whole nation of the Jews.
   • The decree was that those days be kept every year.
9. 10:9
   • This was the end of Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes.
10. 10:10
    • The writer says he will now declare the acts of Antiochus Eupator.
    • Antiochus Eupator was the son of that wicked man.
    • The writer says he will summarize briefly the evils of the wars.
11. 10:11
    • Antiochus Eupator succeeded to the kingdom.
    • He appointed a certain Lysias over the affairs of the realm.
    • He appointed Lysias chief governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia.
12. 10:12
    • Ptolemy was called Macron.
    • Ptolemy chose rather to maintain justice toward the Jews because of the wrong that had been done to them.
    • Ptolemy tried to deal peaceably with the Jews.
13. 10:13
    • Ptolemy was accused before Eupator by the king's friends.
    • He was called a traitor at every turn.
    • The accusation was that he had abandoned Cyprus, which Philometor had entrusted to him.
    • The accusation was that he had gone over to Antiochus Epiphanes.
    • He did not hold his office honourably.
    • He poisoned himself.
    • He died.
14. 10:14
    • Gorgias became governor of the district.
    • Gorgias maintained a force of hired soldiers.
    • Gorgias kept up war against the Jews continually.
15. 10:15
    • The Idumeans also held strongholds that were well placed.
    • The Idumeans harassed the Jews.
    • The Idumeans took in those who had been banished from Jerusalem.
    • The Idumeans attempted to keep the war going.
16. 10:16
    • Maccabeus and his men made supplication.
    • They begged God to fight on their side.
    • They rushed upon the strongholds of the Idumeans.
17. 10:17
    • They assaulted the strongholds vigorously.
    • They took control of the positions.
    • They beat off all who fought upon the wall.
    • They slaughtered those who fell into their hands.
    • They killed no fewer than twenty thousand.
18. 10:18
    • No fewer than nine thousand fled together into two very strong towers.
    • Those towers had everything needed to withstand a siege.
19. 10:19
    • Maccabeus left behind Simon and Joseph.
    • He also left Zaccheus and those with him.
    • Those left were enough to besiege the towers.
    • Maccabeus himself departed to the places that more urgently needed him.
20. 10:20
    • Simon and those with him gave way to covetousness.
    • They were bribed by some of those in the towers.
    • They took seventy thousand drachms.
    • They let some of those in the towers slip away.
21. 10:21
    • Maccabeus was told what had been done.
    • He gathered the leaders of the people together.
    • He accused those men of having sold their brethren for money.
    • He accused them of setting their enemies free to fight against them.
22. 10:22
    • He put to death those who had become traitors.
    • He immediately captured the two towers.
23. 10:23
    • He prospered with his weapons in everything he undertook.
    • He destroyed more than twenty thousand in the two strongholds.
24. 10:24
    • Timotheus had earlier been defeated by the Jews.
    • Timotheus gathered a great multitude of foreign forces.
    • Timotheus collected not a few horsemen out of Asia.
    • Timotheus came intending to take Judea by force of arms.
25. 10:25
    • As Timotheus drew near, Maccabeus and his men turned to supplication to God.
    • They sprinkled earth on their heads.
    • They girded their loins with sackcloth.
26. 10:26
    • They fell down at the step in front of the altar.
    • They begged God to be gracious to them.
    • They begged him to be an enemy to their enemies.
    • They begged him to be an adversary to their adversaries.
    • They said this is as the law declares.
27. 10:27
    • After the prayer they took up their weapons.
    • They advanced some distance out from the city.
    • When they came near the enemy, they halted.
28. 10:28
    • The dawn was just breaking.
    • Both sides joined battle.
    • One side had, besides their courage, their refuge in the Lord as a pledge of success and victory.
    • The other side made their rage the leader of their fighting.
29. 10:29
    • The battle became fierce.
    • There appeared from heaven to the enemies five splendid men on horses with golden bridles.
    • Two of those men led the Jews.
30. 10:30
    • They took Maccabeus between them.
    • They covered him with their own armour.
    • They kept him from being wounded.
    • They shot arrows at the enemies.
    • They hurled thunderbolts at the enemies.
    • The enemies were confounded with blindness.
    • The enemies were filled with confusion.
    • The enemies were cut down.
31. 10:31
    • Twenty thousand five hundred footmen were slain.
    • Six hundred horsemen were slain.
32. 10:32
    • Timotheus himself fled into a stronghold called Gazara.
    • That stronghold was a very strong fortress.
    • Chereas was commander there.
33. 10:33
    • Maccabeus and his men besieged the fortress.
    • They besieged it courageously.
    • The siege lasted four days.
34. 10:34
    • Those inside trusted in the strength of the place.
    • Those inside blasphemed exceedingly.
    • Those inside uttered unlawful words.
35. 10:35
    • Early on the fifth day, twenty young men of Maccabeus' company were inflamed with anger because of the blasphemies.
    • They assaulted the wall manfully.
    • With beastlike fury they cut down everyone they encountered.
36. 10:36
    • Others climbed up likewise while the defenders were distracted by those who had got inside.
    • They set the towers on fire.
    • They kindled fires and burned the blasphemers alive.
    • Others broke open the gates.
    • They let in the rest of the army.
    • They captured the city.
37. 10:37
    • They killed Timotheus, who was hidden in a pit.
    • They killed Chereas, the brother of Timotheus.
    • They killed Apollophanes.
38. 10:38
    • When they had accomplished these things, they blessed the Lord with hymns and thanksgiving.
    • They blessed him as the one who greatly benefits Israel.
    • They blessed him as the one who gives them the victory.

Words Worth Explaining

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

10:1

Maccabeus is Judas Maccabeus, leader of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV. The temple in Jerusalem had been seized and used for pagan worship for about three years; this chapter opens with its recapture, in 164 BC.

10:2

The "chapels" were small walled precincts, open-air enclosures set aside for the worship of foreign gods, put up in the public spaces of the city during the occupation. KJV "heathen" simply means the foreign nations, non-Jews.

10:3

Three details here are technical. Fire was struck fresh from flint rather than carried over from the existing altar, because that altar had been used for pagan sacrifice. The "lights" are the lamps of the temple lampstand, kept burning continually. "Shewbread" is the older English for the bread of the Presence, twelve loaves set out on a table inside the sanctuary and replaced each week. The two-year gap counts from the halt of the regular sacrifices.

10:4

To sin means to do wrong. They asked God to correct them kindly if they did wrong again. They did not want to be handed over to armies who made fun of God.

10:5

Casleu is the month Chislev, falling in November or December. The temple had been given over to pagan sacrifice on the twenty-fifth of that month, and it is cleansed on the anniversary of that day.

10:6

The Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, is a week-long autumn festival at which people lived in temporary shelters and carried branches. The point being made is that the fugitives had missed the real festival while hiding in the hills, so they now keep this eight-day celebration in its style.

10:7

Carrying leafy branches and palm fronds was the distinctive ritual of Tabernacles, which is why the branches are mentioned here.

10:8

This decree establishes the annual eight-day festival later known as Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication.

10:9

Antiochus IV took the title "Epiphanes," meaning "[God] made manifest," and stamped it on his coins; his enemies punned on it as "Epimanes," the madman. His death is described in the previous chapter of this book.

10:10

Antiochus V took the title "Eupator," meaning "of a noble father." He was a boy of about nine when he succeeded in 164 BC. The phrase about gathering things up in brief is the author reminding us that this book is a condensed version of a longer five-volume history by Jason of Cyrene.

10:11

Celosyria and Phenice, usually spelled Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, was a single Seleucid province covering the coastal strip and inland territory from southern Syria down through Judea. Lysias governed it and effectively ran the kingdom for the child king.

10:13

"The king's friends" was a formal rank at a Hellenistic court, an official inner circle of advisers, not simply people the king liked. Philometor is Ptolemy VI of Egypt; Cyprus was Egyptian territory, and Ptolemeus Macron had handed it over and gone across to the Seleucid side, which is why the charge of treachery stuck. The Greek of the last clause is awkward and can be read either as his failing to live up to the honor of his office or as his being denied the honor due to it.

10:14

Gorgias was a Seleucid commander with charge of the fortified posts in the south. The soldiers he hired were mercenaries, paid professionals rather than a levy.

10:15

The Idumeans are the Edomites, who after the exile occupied the land immediately south of Judea. There was long-standing hostility between them and the Jews. Those who had fled from Jerusalem were Jews who had sided with the Greek regime and could not stay in the city after its recapture.

10:18

"Castles" in the King James does not mean a medieval castle; these are fortified towers, stone strongpoints stocked with food and water so a garrison could hold out.

10:19

To besiege a place means to stand all around it. Nobody can go in or come out. The army waits until the people inside give up.

10:20

A drachm, or drachma, was a Greek silver coin worth roughly a day's wage for a laborer. Seventy thousand of them was an enormous bribe.

10:21

He called them brothers because they were all Jews together. Taking money to free enemies was a great wrong.

10:24

Timotheus was a Seleucid commander operating in the regions around Judea. "Horses out of Asia" means cavalry raised in Asia Minor and the Seleucid eastern provinces, not Asia in the modern sense. KJV "Jewry" is simply the older English word for Judea, the land.

10:25

Sprinkling dirt on the head and tying on sackcloth, a coarse cloth of goat hair worn next to the skin, were the standard public signs of grief and of urgent pleading.

10:26

The altar had a step or ledge in front of it, and that is what they fall down at. "As the law declareth" points to the promise in Exodus that God would be an enemy to Israel's enemies; the words are being quoted back.

10:28

"Virtue" in the King James here means courage or valor in the old sense, not moral goodness in general.

10:29

"Comely" in 1611 English means handsome or splendid in appearance. Gold bridles mark the riders as figures of the highest rank. The Greek says the riders appeared to the enemy, though the following clause has them leading the Jews, and the text is ambiguous about who saw what.

10:30

Armor is the metal clothing soldiers wore. It kept swords and arrows from hurting them.

10:32

The name of the fortress appears as Gawra in the King James and as Gazara in other copies; Gazara is the town of Gezer, a strongly fortified place northwest of Jerusalem.

10:33

The Greek word here is read two ways by translators, either that Maccabeus and his men were glad or that they besieged the place with courage, which is why the King James and the modern wording differ.

10:34

The men inside shouted insults about God. That is what the old word "blasphemed" means.

10:35

"Manly" in the King James is an adverb meaning with the strength and boldness expected of a man; it describes how they attacked, not who they were.

10:37

The "pit" is a cistern, a stone-lined underground tank for storing water, common in such fortresses and an obvious hiding place. Two oddities sit in this verse: Chereas was called the fortress commander a few lines earlier and is now called Timotheus' brother, and a commander named Timotheus is fighting the Jews again in a later chapter of this book.

10:38

Psalms are songs that praise God. Israel is another name for the Jewish people.