2 Maccabees 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Nicanor plans to attack Judas and his men on the sabbath, and dismisses the Jews who ask him to honor the day. Judas encourages his men from the law and the prophets and tells them a dream in which the former high priest Onias and the prophet Jeremiah pray for the people, and Jeremiah hands Judas a golden sword. Judas prays, the two forces meet, thirty-five thousand of the enemy are killed, and Nicanor is found dead; his head and hand are displayed in Jerusalem, and the people decree a yearly observance of the day. The writer then closes his book with a word about his own work.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • Nicanor heard that Judas and his company were in the region of Samaria
   • Nicanor resolved to attack them on the sabbath day
   • Nicanor intended to attack them in complete safety, without danger to himself
2. 15:2
   • Jews who had been compelled to accompany Nicanor spoke to him
   • They urged him not to destroy so savagely and barbarously
   • They urged him to give honor to that day
   • They said that the one who sees all things had honored that day with holiness above other days
3. 15:3
   • Nicanor, called a thrice-wicked wretch, asked whether there is a sovereign in heaven
   • He asked whether that sovereign had commanded the sabbath day to be kept
4. 15:4
   • They declared that there is a living Lord in heaven
   • They declared that he is sovereign
   • They declared that he commanded the seventh day to be observed
5. 15:5
   • Nicanor said that he too is a sovereign, on earth
   • Nicanor said that he commands them to take up arms and carry out the king's business
   • Nicanor did not succeed in carrying out his cruel purpose
6. 15:6
   • Nicanor was boastful in complete arrogance
   • Nicanor determined to set up a public monument of his victory over Judas and those with him
7. 15:7
   • Maccabeus trusted unceasingly, with full hope, that he would obtain help from the Lord
8. 15:8
   • He urged those with him not to fear the attack of the gentiles
   • He urged them to keep in mind the help that had come to them from heaven in former times
   • He urged them now to expect the victory that would come to them from the Almighty
9. 15:9
   • He encouraged them out of the law and the prophets
   • He reminded them of the battles they had already fought
   • He made them more eager
10. 15:10
    • He roused their spirits
    • He gave them their orders
    • He pointed out the faithlessness of the gentiles
    • He pointed out their breaking of oaths
11. 15:11
    • He armed each of them not so much with the security of shields and spears as with the encouragement of good words
    • He told them a dream worthy to be believed
    • The King James adds that the dream was told as if it had been so indeed
    • The dream gladdened them all exceedingly
12. 15:12
    • The vision was of Onias, who had been high priest
    • Onias was a noble and good man
    • Onias was modest in bearing
    • Onias was gentle in manner
    • Onias spoke fittingly
    • Onias had been trained from childhood in all points of virtue
    • Onias held out his hands and prayed for the whole body of the Jews
13. 15:13
    • Then a man appeared, distinguished by gray hair and by glory
    • The dignity surrounding him was wonderful and most majestic
14. 15:14
    • Onias answered and said that this man is the lover of the brethren
    • Onias said that this man prays much for the people and for the holy city
    • Onias identified the man as Jeremiah, the prophet of God
15. 15:15
    • Jeremiah stretched out his right hand and gave Judas a golden sword
    • In giving it, Jeremiah spoke to him
16. 15:16
    • Jeremiah told Judas to take the holy sword
    • Jeremiah said the sword is a gift from God
    • Jeremiah said that with it Judas would shatter the adversaries
17. 15:17
    • They were encouraged by the words of Judas
    • The words of Judas were very good
    • The words of Judas were able to stir men to valor and to make the souls of the young manly
    • They determined not to carry on a campaign
    • They determined to bear down on the enemy boldly
    • They determined to decide the matter by fighting hand to hand with all courage
    • They did so because the city, the holy things, and the temple were in danger
18. 15:18
    • Their concern for wives and children counted for less with them
    • Their concern for brothers and kinsfolk also counted for less with them
    • Their greatest and first fear was for the consecrated temple
19. 15:19
    • Those shut up in the city were in no slight anxiety
    • They were troubled because of the encounter in the open country
20. 15:20
    • All were now expecting the coming decision
    • The enemy had already closed in
    • The army had been drawn up in array
    • The beasts had been stationed at a convenient position
    • The cavalry had been posted on the wing
21. 15:21
    • Maccabeus observed the presence of the multitudes
    • Maccabeus observed the varied equipment of their arms
    • Maccabeus observed the fierceness of the beasts stationed at their convenient position
    • Maccabeus stretched out his hands toward heaven
    • Maccabeus called upon the Lord who works wonders
    • Maccabeus knew that victory does not come by weapons
    • Maccabeus knew that God secures the victory for those who are worthy, as he judges fit
22. 15:22
    • In his prayer he said that the Master had sent his angel in the time of Hezekiah king of Judea
    • He said that the angel killed a hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of Sennacherib
23. 15:23
    • He asked the Sovereign of the heavens to send a good angel before them now also
    • He asked that the angel bring fear and trembling
24. 15:24
    • He asked that by the greatness of God's arm those be struck with terror who come with blasphemy against God's holy people
    • He ended his prayer there
25. 15:25
    • Nicanor and those with him advanced with trumpets and battle songs
26. 15:26
    • Judas and those with him joined battle with the enemy with invocation and prayers
27. 15:27
    • They fought with their hands
    • They prayed to God with their hearts
    • They laid low no fewer than thirty-five thousand
    • They were greatly gladdened by God's manifest care for them
28. 15:28
    • When the engagement was over they were returning with joy
    • They recognized Nicanor fallen dead in his full armor
29. 15:29
    • There was shouting and tumult
    • They blessed the Sovereign in the language of their fathers
30. 15:30
    • Judas was in all things, in body and soul, the foremost champion on behalf of his fellow citizens
    • Judas kept the goodwill of his youth toward his countrymen
    • Judas commanded that Nicanor's head be cut off, and his hand with the shoulder
    • Judas commanded that they be carried to Jerusalem
31. 15:31
    • He arrived there
    • He called his countrymen together
    • He set the priests before the altar
    • He sent for those from the citadel
32. 15:32
    • He displayed the head of the vile Nicanor
    • He displayed the hand of the blasphemer
    • Nicanor had stretched out that hand against the holy house of the Almighty with proud boasting
33. 15:33
    • He cut out the tongue of the ungodly Nicanor
    • He said the tongue should be given piece by piece to the birds
    • He ordered the rewards of Nicanor's folly hung up opposite the temple
34. 15:34
    • They all blessed toward heaven the Lord who had manifested himself
    • They said, Blessed is he who has kept his own place undefiled
35. 15:35
    • He hung Nicanor's head from the tower
    • The head was visible to all
    • The head was a clear sign of the Lord's help
36. 15:36
    • They all decreed by common vote in no way to let that day pass unmarked
    • They decreed to keep as a notable day the thirtieth day of the twelfth month
    • The twelfth month is called Adar in the Syrian tongue
    • That day is the day before Mardocheus' day
37. 15:37
    • The affair of Nicanor turned out in this way
    • From that time the city was held by the Hebrews
    • The writer says he will make an end of his account here
38. 15:38
    • The writer says that if it is well done and fitting to the composition, that is what he himself desired
    • The writer says that if it is poor and mediocre, that is what he was able to attain
39. 15:39
    • It is harmful to drink wine by itself, and likewise water by itself
    • Wine mingled with water produces a delightful pleasantness
    • In the same way the fashioning of the language delights the ears of those who read the account
    • Here shall be the end

Words Worth Explaining

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

15:1

Nicanor was a general of the Seleucid kingdom, the Greek-speaking empire ruled from Syria that controlled Judea at this time, and he was acting on orders from its king, Demetrius. The sabbath is the seventh day of the week, kept as a day of complete rest on which work was forbidden. Attacking on it looked risk-free to him because strictly observant Jews were not expected to fight back that day.

15:2

These are Jews conscripted into Nicanor's force, serving under compulsion rather than by choice.

15:3

The King James "Mighty one" translates a Greek word meaning a sovereign or ruler, which is why Nicanor throws it back at them in verse 5: if there is a sovereign in heaven, he says, he himself is a sovereign on earth. The King James "most ungracious wretch" renders a Greek word meaning "thrice accursed."

15:5

The king was the foreign ruler whose army Nicanor led.

15:6

A victory monument in the Greek world was a trophy: captured enemy weapons and armor fixed to a post or tree stump on the battlefield where the enemy line broke.

15:7

"Maccabeus" is the byname of Judas, leader of the Jewish revolt, used here on its own the way a surname would be.

15:8

The King James "heathen" translates the Greek word for "the nations," the ordinary Jewish term for non-Jews. Here it means the Seleucid army specifically.

15:9

"The law and the prophets" names the two main divisions of Jewish scripture then in circulation: the five books of Moses, and the books of the prophets.

15:11

In 1611 "comfortable" meant strengthening or encouraging, close to the older sense of "fortify." It did not mean cozy or physically pleasant.

15:12

Onias is Onias III, high priest in Jerusalem, who was pushed out of office and then murdered some years before these events; this book tells that story in chapter 4. The King James "reverend in conversation" is doubly misleading now: "conversation" meant a person's whole way of living and behaving, not their talk, and "reverend" here means worthy of respect rather than being a title.

15:13

In those days gray hair showed that a person was old and respected.

15:14

Jeremiah was a prophet in Jerusalem around the time the Babylonians destroyed the city and its temple, roughly four centuries before Nicanor. "To wit" is old English for "that is to say."

15:17

The Greek uses two different words that the King James renders "the sanctuary" and "the temple": the temple precinct as a whole, and the sanctuary building standing inside it.

15:19

The King James "took not the least care" reads backwards to a modern eye. It is a double negative meaning they were in no small distress, that is, they were deeply anxious. "The conflict abroad" means the fighting out in the open country, outside the city walls.

15:20

"The beasts" are war elephants, a standard part of Seleucid armies, carrying armed men and used to break an enemy line. "Horsemen set in wings" means cavalry stationed on the two flanks of the infantry.

15:21

The King James "divers" simply means various or several kinds. "Preparations of armour" means their equipment and weaponry.

15:22

"Ezekias" is Hezekiah, king of Judah. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, besieged Jerusalem in his reign, around 701 BC, and the tradition that an angel struck down 185,000 of his soldiers comes from 2 Kings 19:35. "Fourscore" is eighty, so "an hundred fourscore and five thousand" is 185,000.

15:24

This means Nicanor had said rude and nasty things about God.

15:25

The Greek word behind "songs" means paeans: chanted battle hymns addressed to a god, sung as troops advanced.

15:27

"The appearance of God" translates a word this book uses repeatedly for God making himself visibly felt in a crisis, a manifestation rather than a private impression.

15:28

In 1611 "harness" meant a suit of body armor, with no connection to horses.

15:29

"Their own language" means the ancestral tongue, Hebrew or Aramaic, as against the Greek spoken by the Seleucid army and its officials.

15:30

Cutting off and displaying a defeated commander's head was the normal way of proving he was dead. The hand is singled out because of the gesture described in verse 32, when Nicanor pointed at the temple and threatened it.

15:31

"The tower" is the Akra, the fortified citadel in Jerusalem, still garrisoned at this point by Seleucid troops and their Jewish supporters even though Judas controlled the temple.

15:33

Leaving a body to scavenging birds rather than burying it was the deepest disgrace that could be inflicted on an enemy in this world. "The reward of his madness" means what his folly had earned him, that is, the severed head and hand themselves.

15:34

"His own place" is the temple. "The Place" was a common Jewish way of referring to it without naming it.

15:36

Adar is the twelfth month of the Jewish year, falling in February or March. The "Syrian tongue" is Aramaic, the everyday language of the region. "Mardocheus' day" is Mordecai's day, the festival of Purim on the fourteenth of Adar, which the book of Esther describes. The King James "thirtieth day" is an error in the text it followed; the Greek reads thirteenth, which the passage itself requires, since that is the day before the fourteenth.

15:37

The writer is the anonymous author who explains in chapter 2 that this whole book is his condensation of a five-volume history by Jason of Cyrene. He ends with Nicanor's defeat rather than carrying the story on to the death of Judas.

15:38

The writer is saying he tried his best to tell the story well.

15:39

In the ancient Mediterranean wine was normally served diluted with water; drinking it neat was thought crude, and plain water on its own was thought dull. The writer is comparing that ordinary mixing to the blending of plain facts with polished writing.