2 Maccabees 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

For almost forty days armed horsemen are seen riding through the air over the city, and everyone prays that the sight may turn out for good. When a false rumor of Antiochus' death goes out, Jason attacks Jerusalem and kills his fellow citizens, but he does not gain the rule and dies unmourned in a foreign land. Antiochus comes from Egypt in a rage, takes the city, kills and sells thousands, and strips the temple with Menelaus as his guide. He leaves governors behind, Apollonius attacks the city on the sabbath, and Judas Maccabeus withdraws with about nine others to live in the mountains.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • About this time Antiochus set out on his second expedition into Egypt.
2. 5:2
   • Throughout the whole city, for almost forty days, horsemen were seen running through the air.
   • The horsemen wore garments interwoven with gold.
   • The horsemen were armed with lances.
   • The horsemen were arrayed like companies of soldiers.
3. 5:3
   • Troops of horsemen were seen drawn up in array.
   • Attacks and charges were seen made by both sides against each other.
   • Shaking of shields was seen.
   • A multitude of pikes was seen.
   • Drawing of swords was seen.
   • Casting of darts was seen.
   • Flashing of golden ornaments was seen.
   • Armor of all sorts was seen.
4. 5:4
   • Everyone prayed that the apparition might turn out to be for good.
5. 5:5
   • A false rumor went out that Antiochus had died.
   • Jason took at least a thousand men.
   • Jason suddenly made an assault on the city.
   • Those on the walls were driven back.
   • The city was at length taken.
   • Menelaus fled into the citadel.
6. 5:6
   • Jason slaughtered his own fellow citizens without mercy.
   • Jason did not consider that success against his own kinsmen was the greatest misfortune.
   • Jason supposed he was winning trophies over enemies and not over his own countrymen.
7. 5:7
   • Jason did not gain the rule.
   • Jason in the end received shame as the outcome of his plot.
   • Jason fled again as a fugitive into the country of the Ammonites.
8. 5:8
   • Jason came at last to a miserable end.
   • Jason was shut up as a prisoner before Aretas the ruler of the Arabians.
   • Jason fled from city to city.
   • Jason was pursued by all men.
   • Jason was hated as a deserter of the laws.
   • Jason was abhorred as the executioner of his country and his fellow citizens.
   • Jason was cast out into Egypt.
9. 5:9
   • Jason had driven many out of their own country.
   • Jason perished in a foreign land.
   • Jason went to the Lacedemonians.
   • Jason expected to find shelter with the Lacedemonians because of kinship.
10. 5:10
    • Jason had cast out a multitude unburied.
    • Jason had no one to mourn for him.
    • Jason had no funeral rites of any kind.
    • Jason had no place in the tomb of his fathers.
11. 5:11
    • Word of what had happened reached the king.
    • The king concluded that Judea was in revolt.
    • The king set out from Egypt in a savage rage.
    • The king took the city by force of arms.
12. 5:12
    • The king commanded his soldiers to cut down without mercy those they met.
    • The king commanded his soldiers to kill those who went up into the houses.
13. 5:13
    • There was killing of young and old.
    • There was destruction of boys, women, and children.
    • There were slaughters of virgins and infants.
14. 5:14
    • Eighty thousand were destroyed within three whole days.
    • Forty thousand of them were slain in hand-to-hand fighting.
    • No fewer were sold into slavery than were slain.
15. 5:15
    • Antiochus was not satisfied with this.
    • Antiochus dared to enter the most holy temple of all the earth.
    • Menelaus acted as Antiochus's guide.
    • Menelaus had become a traitor both to the laws and to his country.
16. 5:16
    • Antiochus took the sacred vessels with polluted hands.
    • Antiochus with profane hands swept away the offerings that many kings had set up to increase the glory and honor of the place.
    • Antiochus gave those things away.
17. 5:17
    • Antiochus was lifted up in mind.
    • Antiochus did not perceive that the Lord was angry for a short time because of the sins of the inhabitants of the city.
    • Because of those sins the Lord's eye was turned away from the place.
18. 5:18
    • If the people had not been involved in many sins, Antiochus would have been scourged as soon as he came forward and turned back from his presumption.
    • Heliodorus was so scourged and turned back.
    • Seleucus the king had sent Heliodorus to inspect the treasury.
19. 5:19
    • The Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the place.
    • The Lord chose the place for the sake of the nation.
20. 5:20
    • The place itself shared in the calamities that befell the nation.
    • The place afterward shared in the benefits.
    • The place was forsaken in the wrath of the Almighty.
    • The place was restored again with all glory when the great Lord was reconciled.
21. 5:21
    • Antiochus carried off one thousand eight hundred talents from the temple.
    • Antiochus departed in haste to Antioch.
    • Antiochus in his arrogance thought he could make the land navigable and the sea passable on foot.
    • Antiochus's heart was lifted up.
22. 5:22
    • Antiochus left governors behind to afflict the nation.
    • At Jerusalem he left Philip.
    • Philip was a Phrygian by race.
    • Philip was more barbarous in character than the man who appointed him.
23. 5:23
    • At Gerizim Antiochus left Andronicus.
    • Besides these there was Menelaus.
    • Menelaus lorded it over the citizens worse than all the rest.
    • Menelaus had a hostile disposition toward the Jewish citizens.
24. 5:24
    • Antiochus sent Apollonius, the detestable ringleader, with an army.
    • The army numbered twenty-two thousand.
    • Antiochus ordered Apollonius to kill all the men of full age.
    • Antiochus ordered Apollonius to sell the women and the younger ones.
25. 5:25
    • Apollonius came to Jerusalem.
    • Apollonius pretended to be peaceable.
    • Apollonius waited until the holy day of the sabbath.
    • Apollonius found the Jews at rest from work.
    • Apollonius ordered his men to arm themselves.
26. 5:26
    • Apollonius ran through with the sword all those who came out to the spectacle.
    • Apollonius rushed into the city with the armed men.
    • Apollonius killed great multitudes.
27. 5:27
    • Judas, who is also called Maccabeus, was one of about ten who withdrew.
    • Judas lived in the mountains after the manner of wild animals with his company.
    • They continued to eat what grew wild.
    • They did this so as not to share in the defilement.

Words Worth Explaining

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

5:1

Antiochus is Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who ruled Syria and Judea from 175 BC. His two campaigns into Egypt were in about 170 and 168 BC. A "voyage" in 1611 English meant any journey or expedition, not necessarily one by sea.

5:2

In the ancient world an army seen fighting in the sky was taken as an omen, a sign of events about to come, which is why in the next verse everyone prays about what it might mean rather than doubting that it happened.

5:3

In 1611 "harness" meant a soldier's body armor, not gear for a horse. "Lances" and "pikes" are long spears for thrusting; "darts" are lighter spears meant to be thrown.

5:5

Jason and Menelaus were rivals for the high priesthood in Jerusalem, the chief office of the Jewish nation. Chapter 4 tells how Jason bought the post from Antiochus, and was then outbid and driven out by Menelaus. The "castle" is the citadel, the fortified stronghold inside Jerusalem held by the king's garrison.

5:7

"The principality" is the chief office, here the high priesthood with the civil authority that went with it. The country of the Ammonites lay east of the Jordan, outside Seleucid Judea, a usual refuge for men fleeing Jerusalem.

5:8

Aretas ruled the Nabateans, an Arab people whose territory lay east and south of Judea, with their center at Petra. Being "accused before" him means he was arrested and put on trial at the Nabatean court.

5:9

The Lacedemonians are the Spartans, in southern Greece. Jewish writing of this period claimed that Jews and Spartans were distant kin, descended from a common ancestor, and a letter making that claim is quoted in 1 Maccabees 12. Jason was counting on that claimed kinship to get him taken in.

5:10

To be left unburied, with no mourning rites and no place in the family tomb, was the worst disgrace an ancient reader could imagine. The point is that Jason suffered exactly what he had inflicted on others.

5:11

"The king's car" is a long standing misprint in many KJV printings for "the king's ear", that is, news reaching the king.

5:12

House roofs were flat and were used as extra living space, and people fleeing an attack in the streets would climb up onto them. The order covers those who ran there to hide as well as those met in the open.

5:14

Figures of this size are the conventional round numbers of ancient historical writing, meant to convey the scale of a catastrophe; eighty thousand is well beyond the likely population of Jerusalem at the time. "Fourscore" is simply eighty.

5:15

There was only one Jewish temple, in Jerusalem, and it was the only place where sacrifice was offered. Its inner rooms were open to priests alone, and non-Jews were barred from the inner courts altogether, so a foreign king walking in was an outrage in itself, quite apart from the looting that follows.

5:16

The "holy vessels" are the gold and silver utensils used in the temple service: lamps, bowls, incense pans, the table for the bread. Foreign kings commonly sent costly gifts to famous temples as a mark of respect, and earlier chapters of this book record Seleucid kings doing exactly that in Jerusalem.

5:17

"His eye was not on the place" means God was not watching over the temple then.

5:18

Chapter 3 of this book tells the story: Heliodorus, sent by King Seleucus IV (Antiochus's elder brother and predecessor) to seize the temple treasury, was struck down and whipped by figures that appeared to him, and left empty handed.

5:21

A talent was a weight of roughly seventy five pounds of silver, so eighteen hundred talents was an immense fortune, a substantial share of a year's royal revenue. Antioch, in Syria, was the Seleucid capital. Sailing over land and walking on water was a proverbial way of describing a man whose pride had outrun reality, and it recalls Xerxes of Persia, who bridged the sea with boats and cut a canal through a headland.

5:22

Phrygia was a region in central Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey. To a Greek speaker a "barbarian" was simply anyone who did not speak Greek, and calling Philip more barbarous than the Greek king who appointed him is a deliberate insult.

5:23

Garizim is Mount Gerizim, above Shechem, where the Samaritans had their own temple and their own rival worship. Appointing a governor there means Antiochus placed the Samaritans under the same regime as the Jews.

5:24

The Greek title behind "detestable ringleader" is disputed. It may mean commander of the Mysians, mercenary troops from Asia Minor, or it may be a play on that word meaning something like "chief of the filth". "Those in their best age" are grown men of fighting age; "the younger sort" are the boys.

5:25

On the sabbath Jews rested from all work, and many at this period held that it was wrong even to fight on that day except in immediate self defense. Attackers repeatedly exploited this, and it is why the timing here is treated as treachery rather than mere tactics.

5:26

The Greek word can mean a show or spectacle, so some read it as those who came out to watch the parade of armed men, while the KJV takes it of those who had gone out to keep the sabbath. Both senses are possible in the text as it stands.

5:27

This is the first appearance of Judas, son of Mattathias, who leads the revolt through the rest of the book. "Maccabeus" is a nickname, most likely meaning "the hammer". Living on wild plants was a way of eating nothing that was forbidden by the Jewish food laws or that had been offered to idols, which is the "pollution" they were avoiding.