2 Maccabees 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the one hundred forty-ninth year, Antiochus Eupator comes into Judea with Lysias and a large army, and Menelaus, who has joined them, is taken to Berea and put to death in the tower of ashes. Judas calls the people to prayer, weeping and fasting, then camps by Modin and attacks the king's camp at night with picked men. The king tries to take the Jewish strongholds, is turned back at Bethsura, and after hearing news about Philip in Antioch he makes terms with the Jews, offers sacrifice and honors the temple. At Ptolemais the people are angry about the agreement, and Lysias speaks in its defense, calms them, and goes back to Antioch.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • In the one hundred forty-ninth year, word came to Judas that Antiochus Eupator was coming into Judea.
   • Antiochus Eupator came with a great multitude of forces.
2. 13:2
   • Lysias came with Antiochus.
   • Lysias was Antiochus' guardian.
   • Lysias was in charge of the affairs of the kingdom.
   • Each of them had a Greek force of one hundred ten thousand foot soldiers.
   • Each had five thousand three hundred horsemen.
   • Each had twenty-two elephants.
   • Each had three hundred chariots armed with hooked blades.
3. 13:3
   • Menelaus joined himself with them.
   • Menelaus encouraged Antiochus with great dissimulation.
   • Menelaus did not do this for the safety of his country.
   • Menelaus did this because he expected to be set over the government.
4. 13:4
   • The King of kings stirred up the anger of Antiochus against Menelaus.
   • Menelaus was a wicked wretch.
   • Lysias informed the king that Menelaus was the cause of all the evils.
   • The king commanded that Menelaus be brought to Berea.
   • The king commanded that Menelaus be put to death.
   • The execution was to be carried out in the manner customary in that place.
5. 13:5
   • In that place there is a tower fifty cubits high.
   • The tower is full of ashes.
   • The tower had a circular device sloping steeply on every side down into the ashes.
6. 13:6
   • Anyone guilty of sacrilege is thrust down there to his destruction.
   • Anyone who has committed some other outstanding crime is thrust down there to his destruction.
   • All the people thrust such a man down.
7. 13:7
   • Menelaus, the lawbreaker, died by such a death.
   • Menelaus did not obtain even burial in the earth.
   • This happened most justly.
8. 13:8
   • Menelaus had committed many sins against the altar.
   • The fire of the altar was holy.
   • The ashes of the altar were holy.
   • Menelaus received his death in ashes.
9. 13:9
   • The king came with a barbarous and haughty mind.
   • The king intended to do to the Jews far worse than had been done in his father's time.
10. 13:10
    • Judas learned of these things.
    • Judas commanded the multitude to call upon the Lord night and day.
    • Judas asked that the Lord, if ever at any other time, would help them now also.
    • The people were on the point of being deprived of their law, their country, and the holy temple.
11. 13:11
    • Judas asked that the Lord would not allow the people to fall into subjection to the blasphemous nations.
    • The people had only just now been a little refreshed.
12. 13:12
    • They all did this together.
    • They besought the merciful Lord with weeping.
    • They besought him with fasting.
    • They besought him lying flat upon the ground.
    • They did this for three days without ceasing.
    • Judas exhorted them.
    • Judas commanded them to be in readiness.
13. 13:13
    • Judas conferred privately with the elders.
    • Judas determined to go out and decide the matter before the king's army should enter Judea.
    • Judas determined to act before the king's army should take possession of the city.
    • Judas determined to decide the matter by the help of God.
14. 13:14
    • Judas committed the outcome to the Lord of the world.
    • Judas exhorted those with him to fight nobly even unto death.
    • They were to fight for the laws, the temple, the city, the country, and their way of life.
    • Judas encamped near Modin.
15. 13:15
    • Judas gave his men the watchword "Victory is of God."
    • Judas took with him chosen young men of the bravest.
    • Judas attacked the king's tent by night.
    • Judas slew about four thousand men in the camp.
    • Judas struck down the chief of the elephants together with all who were upon it.
16. 13:16
    • At last they filled the camp with fear and tumult.
    • They departed with good success.
17. 13:17
    • This was done at the break of day.
    • It was accomplished because the Lord's protection helped Judas.
18. 13:18
    • The king had taken a taste of the boldness of the Jews.
    • The king attempted to take their positions by stratagem.
19. 13:19
    • The king advanced against Bethsura.
    • Bethsura was a fortress of the Jews.
    • The king was turned back.
    • The king failed.
    • The king suffered loss.
20. 13:20
    • Judas sent in to those inside the things that were necessary.
21. 13:21
    • Rhodocus was in the ranks of the Jews.
    • Rhodocus disclosed the secrets to the enemy.
    • Rhodocus was sought out.
    • Rhodocus was caught.
    • Rhodocus was shut up in prison.
22. 13:22
    • The king negotiated a second time with those in Bethsura.
    • The king gave his hand.
    • The king took their hand.
    • The king departed.
    • The king attacked the forces of Judas.
    • The king was defeated.
23. 13:23
    • The king heard that Philip had become desperate.
    • Philip had been left in charge of the affairs in Antioch.
    • The king was confounded.
    • The king entreated the Jews.
    • The king submitted himself.
    • The king swore to all just conditions.
    • The king came to terms with them.
    • The king offered sacrifice.
    • The king honoured the temple.
    • The king dealt kindly with the place.
24. 13:24
    • The king received Maccabeus favourably.
    • The king left Hegemonides as governor from Ptolemais to the Gerrhenians.
25. 13:25
    • The king came to Ptolemais.
    • The people of Ptolemais were displeased about the covenants.
    • They were exceedingly agitated.
    • They wished to annul the terms of the agreement.
26. 13:26
    • Lysias went up to the judgment seat.
    • Lysias made the best defence of the case that was possible.
    • Lysias persuaded them.
    • Lysias pacified them.
    • Lysias made them well disposed.
    • Lysias returned to Antioch.
    • This was how the king's invasion and withdrawal went.

Words Worth Explaining

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

13:1

The date counts from the start of the Seleucid kingdom, the Greek dynasty that ruled Syria after Alexander's empire broke up. The hundred and forty-ninth year is roughly 163 BC. Judas is Judas Maccabeus, leader of the Jewish revolt. Antiochus Eupator is Antiochus V, a boy king who had just succeeded his father Antiochus IV.

13:2

War elephants were the heavy armor of the age: each carried a wooden tower on its back with fighting men inside, which is what makes the elephant in verse 15 worth killing. The chariots had blades fixed to their axles to cut down infantry as they drove through. "Either of them" in the King James means each of the two men, not one or the other.

13:3

Menelaus was a Jew who had bought the office of high priest from the Greek king and had held it for years, as the earlier chapters of this book describe. He was not fighting for Judea; he expected the invaders to install him as governor of it.

13:4

"The King of kings" here is a title for God, not for Antiochus. Berea, or Beroea, was a Syrian city near Antioch, well outside Judea, so Menelaus was taken far from home to die.

13:5

A cubit was about eighteen inches, roughly the length of a forearm, so the tower stood about seventy-five feet high. The description is of a known Persian method of execution: the tower was filled with ash, and a sloping rim ran around the top so that anyone pushed over it slid down into the ash and suffocated.

13:6

Robbing a temple was treated as a capital crime throughout the ancient world, Greek and Jewish alike, because the goods belonged to a god rather than to a person.

13:7

Being left without a grave was a heavy disgrace in the ancient world, a punishment added on top of death, since burial was owed even to enemies.

13:8

Ash from the altar was not ordinary refuse: it was holy, and the priests carried it away to a clean place outside the camp under set rules. Menelaus had plundered the temple and its sacred vessels, and the writer is pointing at the match between the crime and the manner of death.

13:9

His father was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had outlawed Jewish worship, desecrated the temple, and executed those who kept the law, as told earlier in this book.

13:10

The law was God's rules, given long before through Moses. The temple was the one special building in Jerusalem. That is where the Jewish people worshiped God.

13:11

"Nations" translates the word for Gentiles, that is, non-Jews. The point is not their nationality but that they did not honor the God of Israel and had profaned his temple.

13:12

Fasting and lying face down on the ground were the standard bodily signs of urgent public petition and mourning, the posture of a suppliant before a king.

13:13

Elders were the older, wiser men who helped lead the people. Their advice was listened to, like advice from a grandparent.

13:14

"Their common life as a people" renders a Greek word for the whole ordered life of a community under its own laws and institutions, closer to "our way of life and self-government" than to any single law. Modin was the home village of the Maccabee family, in the low hills northwest of Jerusalem.

13:15

A watchword or password let men identify each other in a night raid. The Greek says he struck at the king's pavilion, the enclosed royal tent and the ground around it, rather than necessarily getting inside it. Manuscripts differ on the numbers: some read two thousand killed rather than four thousand. The men on the elephant were riding in the tower strapped to its back.

13:18

"By clever tactics" translates a word for maneuver and stratagem: having failed to frighten the Jews into surrender, he set about reducing their fortresses by siegecraft and negotiation instead of open battle.

13:19

Bethsura, or Beth-zur, was a fortress about fifteen miles south of Jerusalem that guarded the main road up from Idumea, the natural gateway for an army approaching from the south.

13:21

Telling your enemy your side's secrets is called betraying. It put all his own soldiers in danger.

13:22

The King James spells the same fortress two ways, Bethsura in verse 19 and Bethsum here; it is one place. Giving and taking the hand was the formal gesture that sealed a pledge, the ancient equivalent of signing a treaty.

13:23

Antioch was the Seleucid capital, in Syria. Philip had been left as regent there while the king campaigned, and a reckless regent in the capital meant the throne itself was at risk, which is why the king suddenly wanted peace. That a Gentile king offered a sacrifice at the temple was a recognized way of showing public respect for a people's god.

13:24

Maccabeus is Judas. Ptolemais is the coastal city known later as Acre, on the bay north of Mount Carmel. The Gerrhenians are hard to place; the name may point to a district near the Egyptian border, and the text is uncertain here. The Greek is also read another way: that the king left a man named Hegemonides as governor of that stretch of coast, rather than appointing Judas to it.

13:25

"The agreements" are the terms of the treaty just sworn. Ptolemais was a Greek city with a long-standing hostility to its Jewish neighbors, and its citizens wanted the treaty annulled.

13:26

The King James "judgment seat" is the bema, the raised stone platform in a Greek city from which officials addressed the assembled citizens. Lysias is speaking to a city meeting, not presiding over a trial.