2 Maccabees 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Simon, who had been put in charge of the temple, quarrels with the high priest Onias and reports to the governor Apollonius that the treasury in Jerusalem holds huge sums, and the king sends his treasurer Heliodorus to seize the money. Onias explains that the money is on deposit for widows, orphans, and Hircanus, but Heliodorus goes ahead while the priests and the whole city pray. At the treasury a horse with a terrifying rider and two young men appear and beat Heliodorus nearly to death; at his friends' request Onias offers a sacrifice for him, the young men appear again, and Heliodorus returns to the king and testifies to God's power.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The holy city was inhabited with complete peace.
   • The laws were kept very well.
   • The peace and keeping of the laws were because of the godliness of Onias the high priest.
   • They were also because of Onias's hatred of wickedness.
   • Onias was the high priest.
2. 3:2
   • Even the kings themselves honoured the place.
   • The kings magnified the temple with their best gifts.
3. 3:3
   • Seleucus of Asia paid all the costs belonging to the service of the sacrifices.
   • Seleucus paid these costs out of his own revenues.
4. 3:4
   • A man named Simon was of the tribe of Benjamin.
   • Simon had been made governor of the temple.
   • Simon fell out with the high priest about the regulation of the market in the city.
5. 3:5
   • Simon could not overcome Onias.
   • Simon went to Apollonius.
   • Apollonius was the son of Thraseas.
   • Apollonius was at that time governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia.
6. 3:6
   • Simon told Apollonius that the treasury in Jerusalem was full of untold sums of money.
   • Simon said the multitude of the riches was innumerable.
   • Simon said those riches did not pertain to the account of the sacrifices.
   • Simon said it was possible to bring all of it into the king's hand.
7. 3:7
   • Apollonius came to the king.
   • Apollonius informed the king about the money he had been told of.
   • The king chose out Heliodorus.
   • Heliodorus was the king's treasurer, the officer over his affairs.
   • The king sent Heliodorus with a commandment to bring the aforesaid money.
8. 3:8
   • Heliodorus set out on his journey at once.
   • Heliodorus's stated pretext was to visit the cities of Coelesyria and Phoenicia.
   • Heliodorus's actual purpose was to carry out the king's intent.
9. 3:9
   • Heliodorus came to Jerusalem.
   • The high priest of the city received Heliodorus courteously.
   • Heliodorus told the high priest what information had been given about the money.
   • Heliodorus declared why he had come.
   • Heliodorus asked whether these things were truly so.
10. 3:10
    • The high priest explained that there were deposits belonging to widows and orphans.
11. 3:11
    • The high priest said some of the money belonged to Hyrcanus son of Tobias.
    • Hyrcanus was a man of very high standing.
    • The high priest said the matter was not as the wicked Simon had misrepresented it.
    • Simon was impious.
    • The sum in all was four hundred talents of silver and two hundred talents of gold.
12. 3:12
    • The high priest said it was altogether impossible that wrong should be done to those who had entrusted their money to the holiness of the place.
    • Those depositors had also trusted in the majesty and inviolable sanctity of the temple.
    • The temple was honoured over all the world.
13. 3:13
    • Heliodorus said that in any case the money must be taken into the king's treasury.
    • Heliodorus said this because of the king's commandment given him.
14. 3:14
    • Heliodorus appointed a day.
    • On that day Heliodorus entered to conduct the inspection of these matters.
    • There was no small agony throughout the whole city.
15. 3:15
    • The priests prostrated themselves before the altar.
    • The priests were in their priestly vestments.
    • The priests called toward heaven upon him who made the law concerning deposits.
    • The priests asked that the deposits be preserved safe for those who had deposited them.
16. 3:16
    • Anyone who looked at the high priest's face would have been wounded in mind.
    • The high priest's countenance and the change of his colour revealed the agony of his soul.
17. 3:17
    • Fear and a shuddering of the body had come over the man.
    • By this the pain present in his heart was made plain to those who looked at him.
18. 3:18
    • People rushed out of their houses in crowds to a general supplication.
    • They did so because the place was about to come into contempt.
19. 3:19
    • The women were girded with sackcloth under their breasts.
    • The women thronged the streets.
    • The virgins who were kept indoors ran, some to the gates.
    • Some of the virgins ran to the walls.
    • Some of the virgins looked out through the windows.
20. 3:20
    • All of them stretched out their hands toward heaven.
    • All of them made supplication.
21. 3:21
    • It was a pitiable sight to see the whole mixed multitude falling down.
    • It was a pitiable sight to see the expectation of the high priest in his great agony.
22. 3:22
    • They called upon the Almighty Lord.
    • They asked him to keep the things committed in trust safe and secure for those who had committed them.
23. 3:23
    • Heliodorus carried out what had been decreed.
24. 3:24
    • Heliodorus was present there with his guards at the treasury.
    • The Lord of spirits and of all authority caused a great manifestation.
    • All who had presumed to come in with Heliodorus were astonished at the power of God.
    • They collapsed in faintness and fear.
25. 3:25
    • A horse appeared to them.
    • The horse had a terrifying rider on it.
    • The horse was adorned with a very beautiful covering.
    • The horse rushed fiercely and struck at Heliodorus with its forefeet.
    • The one sitting on the horse appeared to have complete armour of gold.
26. 3:26
    • Two other young men appeared to Heliodorus.
    • The two young men were remarkable in strength.
    • The two young men were of surpassing beauty.
    • The two young men were splendid in their apparel.
    • The two young men stood by Heliodorus on either side.
    • The two young men scourged Heliodorus continually.
    • The two young men inflicted many stripes on him.
27. 3:27
    • Heliodorus suddenly fell to the ground.
    • Great darkness closed around Heliodorus.
    • Those with him picked him up.
    • They put him into a litter.
28. 3:28
    • Heliodorus had just entered the aforesaid treasury with a great retinue and all his guard.
    • They carried him out utterly helpless.
    • They openly acknowledged the sovereign power of God.
29. 3:29
    • Heliodorus lay prostrate through the working of God.
    • Heliodorus was speechless.
    • Heliodorus was deprived of all hope and deliverance.
30. 3:30
    • They blessed the Lord who had marvellously glorified his own place.
    • A little before, the temple had been full of fear and trouble.
    • The Almighty Lord appeared.
    • The temple was filled with joy and gladness.
31. 3:31
    • Some of Heliodorus's close companions quickly begged Onias to call upon the Most High.
    • They asked that Heliodorus be granted his life.
    • Heliodorus lay at his last breath.
32. 3:32
    • The high priest suspected that the king might suppose some treachery against Heliodorus had been done by the Jews.
    • The high priest offered a sacrifice for the recovery of the man.
33. 3:33
    • The high priest was making the atonement.
    • The same young men appeared again to Heliodorus.
    • The young men were arrayed in the same clothing.
    • The young men stood and spoke.
    • The young men said to give Onias the high priest great thanks.
    • The young men said the Lord had granted Heliodorus his life for Onias's sake.
34. 3:34
    • The young men said Heliodorus had been scourged from heaven.
    • The young men told Heliodorus to declare to all men the mighty power of God.
    • When the young men had spoken these words, they became invisible.
35. 3:35
    • Heliodorus offered a sacrifice to the Lord.
    • Heliodorus made very great vows to him who had preserved his life.
    • Heliodorus took leave of Onias.
    • Heliodorus returned with his army to the king.
36. 3:36
    • Heliodorus testified to all men the works of the greatest God.
    • Heliodorus had seen those works with his own eyes.
37. 3:37
    • The king asked Heliodorus what sort of man would be suitable to be sent to Jerusalem once again.
    • Heliodorus answered.
38. 3:38
    • Heliodorus said: if you have any enemy or plotter against the state, send him there.
    • Heliodorus said the king would receive that man back well scourged, if he escaped with his life at all.
    • Heliodorus said there is truly some power of God about that place.
39. 3:39
    • He who has his dwelling in heaven watches over that place.
    • He is the helper of that place.
    • He strikes and destroys those who come to harm it.
40. 3:40
    • This is how the matters concerning Heliodorus and the keeping of the treasury turned out.

Words Worth Explaining

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

3:1

The holy city is Jerusalem. The story is set in the 180s BC, when Judea was ruled from Syria by the Seleucid kings, the Greek dynasty that had inherited this part of Alexander the Great's empire. Onias III, the high priest, was the chief religious authority among the Jews and also, under the Seleucids, the effective head of Jewish civil government.

3:2

Foreign rulers routinely sent money and costly objects to major temples in the territories they controlled. It was ordinary statecraft, a way of buying goodwill from a population and its priesthood, and did not require the king to share the local religion.

3:3

Seleucus IV Philopator, who ruled from 187 to 175 BC. "Of Asia" is a standing description of the Seleucid kings, whose realm was called Asia in Greek usage; it does not mean the continent as we use the word. His paying for the temple's daily sacrifices out of the royal purse was a subsidy of exactly the kind described in the previous verse.

3:4

The office rendered "overseer of the temple" was an administrative post, responsible for the temple's business affairs and its order, and it was held under the high priest. What the quarrel was about is uncertain in the Greek: the word most naturally means supervision of the city market, a lucrative right that may have belonged to the temple, and the King James translators followed a reading that made it general "disorder in the city" instead.

3:5

Celosyria and Phenice, usually spelled Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, was the Seleucid province that included Judea. Its governor was the king's chief officer for the whole region and stood well above any local Jewish authority, so going to him was a way of going over Onias's head. Some manuscripts call this Apollonius "son of Thraseas" and others "of Tarsus."

3:6

Temples across the ancient world served as banks. Private individuals deposited money there because the building was guarded and because stealing from it was both theft and sacrilege, which put the deposits under the protection of the god as well as of the priests.

3:7

The King James "treasurer" translates a Greek court title meaning roughly "the man in charge of affairs," that is, the king's chief minister, not a mere bookkeeper.

3:10

Widows and orphans had no male provider and so no independent standing to defend their property; money left for them was the classic protected deposit, and Jewish law returns to their protection repeatedly.

3:11

Hircanus, usually spelled Hyrcanus, belonged to the Tobiads, a wealthy and politically powerful Jewish family that had held the right to collect the king's taxes in the region. A talent was a weight of metal of roughly seventy five pounds, so four hundred talents of silver and two hundred of gold means something on the order of fifteen tons of silver and seven and a half tons of gold: a fortune on the scale of a royal treasury.

3:12

In the Greek world a temple could hold a recognized legal status of inviolability, meaning it was immune from seizure and violence and anything deposited in it was protected. The high priest is appealing to that status, not only to religious feeling.

3:15

The priests' vestments are the special garments worn only for service in the temple. "Him that made a law concerning things given to be kept" refers to the law of deposits in Exodus 22, which governs goods one person leaves in another's keeping; the priests are calling on the God who gave that law to enforce it himself.

3:18

"The place" is a standard way of referring to the temple, here and in verses 2 and 30. The fear is not only of losing the money but of the building being shown to be unprotected, which would destroy its standing as a safe deposit and as a sanctuary.

3:19

Sackcloth was coarse dark cloth, usually of goat hair, worn against the skin as a public sign of grief or desperate appeal. Unmarried young women of respectable households were normally kept out of public view, so their pouring into the streets and up onto the walls is itself a measure of how extreme the crisis was.

3:20

Holding your hands up toward the sky was the usual way people prayed then.

3:24

"The Lord of spirits" and "the Prince of all power" are titles for God found in Jewish writing of this period; both assert authority over every other power, visible or invisible.

3:25

In 1611 English "harness" meant a warrior's body armor, a complete suit of it, and not anything strapped to the horse. The King James "complete harness of gold" describes the rider, not the mount.

3:26

Scourging was beating with a whip, a standard judicial punishment. "Stripes" are the welts the lash leaves.

3:31

The King James "ready to give up the ghost" means at the point of death; "ghost" here is the old word for breath or spirit leaving the body.

3:32

In 1611 English "health" meant recovery from illness, so a sacrifice "for the health of the man" is a sacrifice for his healing. The high priest's motive as the text gives it is political as well: if the king's minister died in Jerusalem, the Jews would be blamed for murdering him.

3:33

The King James "making an atonement" refers to the sacrifice just mentioned, an offering made to set a wrong or a danger right.

3:35

The King James "his host" means his armed escort, the troops he had traveled with.

3:37

The King James sentence is broken here: a verb has dropped out of the English, leaving "when the king Heliodorus." The Greek reads that the king asked Heliodorus what sort of man was fit to be sent to Jerusalem again.

3:38

A traitor is someone who turns against his own king or country.