2 Maccabees 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The king sends an old man from Athens to force the Jews to abandon the laws of their fathers, and the temple in Jerusalem is defiled and renamed for Olympian Zeus, as is the sanctuary at Gerizim. Sabbath keeping, ancestral festivals, and even admitting to being a Jew are forbidden, and those who refuse the Greek rites are killed, including two women who had circumcised their children and a group burned in caves. The writer pauses to tell readers that these punishments are a correction of the nation and not its destruction. The chapter then tells of Eleazar, a scribe of ninety, who refuses both to eat pork and to pretend to eat it, and dies under the beating, leaving his death as an example.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • Not long after this, the king sent out an old man of Athens.
   • The old man was sent to compel the Jews to depart from the laws of their fathers.
   • The old man was sent to compel the Jews not to live by the laws of God.
2. 6:2
   • He was sent to pollute the temple in Jerusalem.
   • He was sent to rename the temple in Jerusalem after Olympian Zeus.
   • He was sent to rename the temple on Gerizim after Zeus the protector of strangers.
   • The people who lived at Gerizim wished the temple there to be so named.
3. 6:3
   • The onset of this evil was harsh and grievous.
   • It was grievous to all.
4. 6:4
   • The temple was filled with debauchery and revelling by the Gentiles.
   • The Gentiles dallied with harlots.
   • The Gentiles had intercourse with women inside the sacred precincts.
   • The Gentiles brought unlawful things into the temple.
5. 6:5
   • The altar was filled with profane things.
   • Those things were forbidden by the laws.
6. 6:6
   • It was not permitted to keep the sabbath.
   • It was not permitted to observe the ancestral festivals.
   • It was not permitted to confess oneself to be a Jew at all.
7. 6:7
   • On the king's birthday each month the Jews were led under bitter constraint to eat of the sacrifices.
   • When the feast of Dionysus came, the Jews were compelled to walk in procession in honour of Dionysus.
   • In that procession they carried ivy.
8. 6:8
   • A decree went out to the neighbouring Greek cities.
   • The decree was issued at the suggestion of Ptolemy.
   • The decree ordered those cities to follow the same course against the Jews.
   • The decree ordered that the Jews be made to partake of the sacrifices.
9. 6:9
   • The decree ordered that those who would not go over to Greek ways be slain.
   • The misery then present could be seen by anyone.
10. 6:10
    • Two women were brought forward for having circumcised their children.
    • Their infants were hung at their breasts.
    • The women were led publicly around the city.
    • The women were thrown down headlong from the wall.
11. 6:11
    • Others had run together into caves nearby.
    • They did so to keep the sabbath day secretly.
    • They were betrayed to Philip.
    • They were all burnt together.
    • They were burnt because they scrupled to defend themselves, out of honour for the most sacred day.
12. 6:12
    • The writer entreats those who read this book not to be discouraged by these calamities.
    • The writer entreats readers to judge that these punishments were not for destruction.
    • The writer entreats readers to judge that these punishments were for the chastening of our nation.
13. 6:13
    • It is a sign of great kindness that the impious are not let alone for a long time.
    • It is a sign of great kindness that the impious immediately meet with punishment.
14. 6:14
    • With the other nations the Lord waits patiently before punishing them.
    • He waits until they have reached the full measure of their sins.
    • He does not deal with us in that way.
15. 6:15
    • He does not so deal with us lest he take vengeance on us afterwards, when we have come to the height of our sins.
16. 6:16
    • He never withdraws his mercy from us.
    • Though he chastens with calamity, he does not forsake his own people.
17. 6:17
    • Let what has been said stand as a reminder.
    • The narrative will now be resumed in a few words.
18. 6:18
    • Eleazar was one of the principal scribes.
    • Eleazar was a man already advanced in years.
    • Eleazar was of a handsome countenance.
    • Eleazar was compelled to open his mouth and eat swine's flesh.
19. 6:19
    • Eleazar chose a death with honour rather than a life with defilement.
    • Eleazar spat out the flesh.
    • Eleazar came of his own accord to the instrument of torture.
20. 6:20
    • He came as men ought to come who are resolute to stand out against things it is not lawful to taste for love of life.
21. 6:21
    • Certain men had charge of the unlawful sacrificial feast.
    • Those men had long acquaintance with Eleazar.
    • Those men took Eleazar aside privately.
    • They urged him to bring flesh of his own providing that was lawful for him to eat.
    • They urged him to pretend to be eating the sacrificial flesh commanded by the king.
22. 6:22
    • They urged this so that by doing it he might be delivered from death.
    • They urged this so that for their old friendship he might be treated kindly.
23. 6:23
    • Eleazar formed a noble resolve.
    • The resolve was worthy of his years.
    • The resolve was worthy of the dignity of his old age.
    • The resolve was worthy of the honour of his grey head.
    • The resolve was worthy of his excellent conduct from childhood.
    • The resolve was worthy above all of the holy law given by God.
    • Eleazar declared his mind accordingly.
    • Eleazar told them to send him quickly to the place of the dead.
24. 6:24
    • Eleazar said it does not become his age to dissemble.
    • He said that if he dissembled, many of the young would suppose that Eleazar at ninety years old had gone over to a foreign religion.
25. 6:25
    • He said the young would be led astray because of him, through his pretence and through his desire to live a brief and momentary time longer.
    • He said he would bring defilement and disgrace upon his old age.
26. 6:26
    • He said that even if for the present he escaped the punishment of men, he would not escape the hands of the Almighty.
    • He said he would escape them neither alive nor dead.
27. 6:27
    • He said that by bravely parting with his life now he would show himself worthy of his old age.
28. 6:28
    • He said he would leave a noble example to the young.
    • The example was to die willingly and courageously for the honourable and holy laws.
    • When he had said these words he went immediately to the instrument of torture.
29. 6:29
    • Those who were leading him changed the goodwill they had borne him shortly before into hatred.
    • They did so because they took his foregoing words to come from madness.
30. 6:30
    • When he was about to die from the blows, he groaned.
    • He said that it is manifest to the Lord, who has holy knowledge, that though he might have been delivered from death, he endures severe bodily pains from being scourged.
    • He said that in soul he gladly suffers these things because of his fear of God.
31. 6:31
    • This man died in this manner.
    • He left his death as an example of noble courage.
    • He left his death as a memorial of virtue.
    • He left it not only to the young but to the whole of his nation.

Words Worth Explaining

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

6:1

The king is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Greek ruler of the Seleucid kingdom centered in Syria, whose plundering of Jerusalem is described in the previous chapter. The Greek behind "an old man of Athens" is uncertain: it can mean an elderly Athenian, a member of an Athenian governing council sent out as an official, or a man whose name was Geron the Athenian.

6:2

The KJV calls the god "Jupiter," the Roman name, because that was the normal English usage in 1611; the Greek text says Zeus. Olympian Zeus was the chief god of the Greek pantheon. Gerizim is the mountain above Shechem in Samaria, where the Samaritans had their own temple and their own form of the religion of Israel. "Jupiter the Defender of strangers" is Zeus Xenios, Zeus in his role as protector of guests and foreigners. The closing clause is genuinely ambiguous in the Greek: it can mean that the local people asked for the renaming, or simply that the name matched the hospitable character of the people who lived there.

6:3

In the KJV "sore" means severe or bitter, not tender to the touch.

6:4

Sacred prostitution and sexual activity inside a temple enclosure belonged to some Greek and Near Eastern cults; under Jewish law any such act inside the sacred area made the whole place unclean. The "things that were not lawful" are objects, images and foods that Jewish law barred from the temple precincts.

6:5

The altar is the great open-air altar in front of the temple, where animals were burned as offerings. Loading it with "profane things" means slaughtering on it animals Jewish law forbade, above all pigs.

6:6

The sabbath is the seventh day of the week. God told his people to rest on it and not work. The old feasts were special holidays that Jewish families kept every year.

6:7

The day of the month on which Antiochus was born was marked every single month, not once a year. Refusing the meat from those sacrifices was treated as disloyalty to the king. The festival is that of Dionysus, whom the KJV calls by his Roman name Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstatic celebration; his worshipers carried ivy and wore ivy wreaths in procession, ivy being the plant sacred to him. Walking in the procession counted as an act of worship.

6:8

Ptolemy is most likely Ptolemy son of Dorymenes, a Seleucid official named earlier in the book. Some manuscripts read here not "Ptolemy" but "the citizens of Ptolemais," the Greek port city on the coast north of Judea. The KJV's "neighbour cities of the heathen" means the Greek cities surrounding Judea.

6:9

The KJV's "the manners of the Gentiles" means the whole Greek way of life that Antiochus was imposing: Greek sacrifices, Greek festivals, Greek diet and Greek customs, in place of Jewish practice.

6:10

Circumcision, the cutting away of the foreskin of a baby boy on the eighth day, was the physical sign that a family belonged to the covenant God made with Abraham. Outlawing it struck directly at the thing that marked a Jewish household as Jewish, which is why the two mothers were made a public spectacle before being killed.

6:11

Philip is the Phrygian left in charge of Jerusalem by Antiochus, named earlier in the book. The KJV's "they made a conscience to help themselves for the honour of the most sacred day" means that their scruples about the sabbath stopped them from fighting back, since defending themselves would have broken the day's required rest.

6:17

The KJV of 1611 prints "let this that we at spoken be for a warning," which is a compositor's slip for "that we have spoken."

6:18

Scribes were the trained specialists in the written law: copyists, teachers and interpreters whose rulings carried public weight, so a leading scribe made a valuable test case. The KJV's "well favoured countenance" simply means fine-looking or dignified in appearance and has nothing to do with being shown favor. Pork was forbidden by Jewish dietary law, and eating it in public had become the standard test of whether a Jew had abandoned his religion.

6:19

The KJV's "the torment" is not the pain but the device: the Greek names an instrument on which the victim was stretched out and beaten to death. The blows in verses 28 and 30 belong to it.

6:21

This was a sacrificial meal: the animal was killed as an offering to the god and the meat then shared out and eaten, so eating it was itself an act of worship. His old friends propose a substitution, meat from an animal killed in the permitted way, eaten in front of the crowd as though it came from the sacrifice.

6:23

The KJV's "send him to the grave" renders the Greek word Hades, the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, not a place of punishment for the wicked. Gray hair was itself a public mark of honor in this culture, which is why he treats it as something that can be stained.

6:24

A score is twenty, so the KJV's "fourscore years old and ten" is ninety. "Dissemble" means to hide what you really believe by acting a part.

6:25

"Hypocrisy" in the KJV carries its older and more literal sense of play-acting: pretending in public to be something you are not.

6:26

"The Almighty" is a name for God. It means he is stronger than anyone else.

6:27

"Manfully" in the KJV means bravely or with courage, and "changing this life" means leaving it, that is, dying.

6:29

The KJV's "a desperate mind" means a mind gone reckless or mad, not a mind in despair.

6:30

"Stripes" in the KJV are the marks or blows of a whip or rod, so dying with stripes means being beaten to death. "Sore pains" again means severe pains.