2 Maccabees 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Seven brothers and their mother are arrested and pressed to eat pig meat, which their law forbids. One after another the brothers refuse, each speaking to the king before he is tortured and killed while the rest look on, and several of them say that God will raise them again and will punish the king. The mother encourages each son in her own language, and when the king offers wealth and office to the youngest, she speaks to that son last; after all seven are dead, she dies too, and the writer closes the account of the sacrificial feasts and the tortures.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Seven brothers and their mother were arrested.
   • The king compelled them to taste swine's flesh.
   • Eating swine's flesh was against the law.
   • They were tormented with scourges and whips.
2. 7:2
   • One of the brothers spoke first.
   • He asked what the king wanted to ask or learn from them.
   • He said they were ready to die.
   • He said they preferred death to transgressing the laws of their fathers.
3. 7:3
   • The king became enraged.
   • The king commanded that pans and caldrons be heated.
4. 7:4
   • The pans and caldrons were heated immediately.
   • The king commanded that the tongue of the brother who spoke first be cut out.
   • The king commanded that the skin of his head be pulled off.
   • The king commanded that the extremities of his body be cut off.
   • The rest of his brothers and his mother watched this.
5. 7:5
   • The first brother was maimed in all his limbs.
   • The king commanded that he be brought to the fire while still alive.
   • The king commanded that he be fried in the pan.
   • The vapour from the pan spread for a good distance.
   • The brothers and the mother exhorted one another to die manfully.
   • They spoke the following words.
6. 7:6
   • They said the Lord God looks upon them.
   • They said God in truth has comfort in them.
   • They said Moses declared this in his song.
   • They said the song witnessed against the people to their faces.
   • They quoted the song as saying God shall be comforted in his servants.
7. 7:7
   • The first brother died in this manner.
   • They brought the second brother to be made a mocking stock.
   • They pulled the skin of his head off with the hair.
   • They asked him whether he would eat before his body was punished in every limb.
8. 7:8
   • He answered in his own language.
   • He said no.
   • He received the next torment in order, as the first had.
9. 7:9
   • When he was at his last gasp he spoke.
   • He said the king, like a fury, takes them out of this present life.
   • He said the King of the world will raise them up.
   • He said they have died for God's laws.
   • He said they will be raised to everlasting life.
10. 7:10
    • After the second brother, the third was made a mocking stock.
    • When required, he put out his tongue quickly.
    • He held forth his hands courageously.
11. 7:11
    • He said courageously that he received these from heaven.
    • He said he despises them for God's laws.
    • He said he hopes to receive them again from God.
12. 7:12
    • The king and those with him marvelled at the young man's courage.
    • The young man regarded the pains as nothing.
13. 7:13
    • The third man died.
    • They tormented and mangled the fourth in the same manner.
14. 7:14
    • When the fourth was ready to die he spoke.
    • He said it is good to be put to death by men and to look for hope from God.
    • He said that hope is to be raised up again by God.
    • He told the king that the king would have no resurrection to life.
15. 7:15
    • They brought the fifth brother afterward.
    • They mangled him.
16. 7:16
    • He looked at the king.
    • He said the king has power over men.
    • He said the king is corruptible.
    • He said the king does what he wills.
    • He told the king not to think that their nation is forsaken by God.
17. 7:17
    • He told the king to wait a while.
    • He told the king to behold God's great power.
    • He said God will torment the king and the king's seed.
18. 7:18
    • They brought the sixth brother after the fifth.
    • The sixth spoke when he was ready to die.
    • He said the king should not be deceived without cause.
    • He said they suffer these things for their own doing.
    • He said they have sinned against their own God.
    • He said marvellous things are done to them.
19. 7:19
    • He told the king not to think he would escape unpunished.
    • He said the king takes in hand to strive against God.
20. 7:20
    • The mother was marvellous above all.
    • The mother was worthy of honourable memory.
    • She saw her seven sons slain within the space of one day.
    • She bore it with good courage.
    • Her courage was because of the hope she had in the Lord.
21. 7:21
    • She exhorted each one of them in her own language.
    • She was filled with courageous spirits.
    • She stirred up her womanish thoughts with manly courage.
    • She said the following to them.
22. 7:22
    • She said she cannot tell how they came into her womb.
    • She said she did not give them breath or life.
    • She said she was not the one who formed the members of each of them.
23. 7:23
    • She said the Creator of the world formed the generation of man.
    • She said the Creator found out the beginning of all things.
    • She said the Creator will of his own mercy give them breath and life again.
    • She said they now regard not their own selves for the sake of God's laws.
24. 7:24
    • Antiochus thought himself despised.
    • Antiochus suspected the speech was reproachful.
    • The youngest brother was still alive.
    • Antiochus exhorted the youngest with words.
    • Antiochus assured him with oaths.
    • Antiochus swore he would make him rich and happy.
    • This was conditional on his turning from the laws of his fathers.
    • Antiochus swore he would take him for his friend.
    • Antiochus swore he would trust him with affairs.
25. 7:25
    • The young man would in no case listen to him.
    • The king called the young man's mother.
    • The king exhorted her to counsel the young man to save his life.
26. 7:26
    • The king exhorted her with many words.
    • She promised she would counsel her son.
27. 7:27
    • She bowed herself toward her son.
    • She laughed the cruel tyrant to scorn.
    • She spoke in her country's language.
    • She asked her son to have pity on her.
    • She said she bore him nine months in her womb.
    • She said she gave him suck three years.
    • She said she nourished him and brought him up to his present age.
    • She said she endured the troubles of raising him.
28. 7:28
    • She begged her son to look at the heaven and the earth and all that is in them.
    • She told him to consider that God made them out of things that were not.
    • She said mankind was made in the same way.
29. 7:29
    • She told him not to fear this tormentor.
    • She told him to prove worthy of his brothers.
    • She told him to accept his death.
    • She said she would then receive him again in mercy with his brothers.
30. 7:30
    • She was still speaking these words when the young man spoke.
    • He asked whom they were waiting for.
    • He said he will not obey the king's commandment.
    • He said he will obey the commandment of the law.
    • He said the law was given to their fathers by Moses.
31. 7:31
    • He said the king has been the author of all mischief against the Hebrews.
    • He said the king shall not escape the hands of God.
32. 7:32
    • He said they suffer because of their own sins.
33. 7:33
    • He said the living Lord is angry with them a little while.
    • He said the anger is for their chastening and correction.
    • He said the Lord shall be reconciled again with his servants.
34. 7:34
    • He called the king godless and most wicked of all.
    • He told the king not to be lifted up without cause.
    • He told the king not to be puffed up with uncertain hopes.
    • He said the king lifts up his hand against the servants of God.
35. 7:35
    • He said the king has not yet escaped the judgment of Almighty God.
    • He said God sees all things.
36. 7:36
    • He said their brothers have suffered a short pain.
    • He said their brothers are dead under God's covenant of everlasting life.
    • He said the king will receive just punishment for his pride.
    • He said that punishment comes through the judgment of God.
37. 7:37
    • He said he offers up his body and life, as his brothers did.
    • He said he offers them for the laws of their fathers.
    • He beseeches God to be speedily merciful to their nation.
    • He asks that the king, by torments and plagues, may confess that God alone is God.
38. 7:38
    • He asks that the wrath of the Almighty may cease in him and his brothers.
    • He said that wrath was justly brought upon their nation.
39. 7:39
    • The king fell into a rage.
    • The king handled him worse than all the rest.
    • The king took it grievously that he was mocked.
40. 7:40
    • This man died undefiled.
    • He put his whole trust in the Lord.
41. 7:41
    • The mother died last of all, after her sons.
42. 7:42
    • Let this be enough said concerning the idolatrous feasts and the extreme tortures.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

The king is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Greek ruler of the Seleucid kingdom in Syria, who controlled Judea. Around 167 BC he outlawed the practice of Jewish law on pain of death. Pork was forbidden to Jews by the food laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, so being made to eat it in front of witnesses worked as a public test of whether a person would give up that law. The KJV's "against the law" means against the Jewish law, not against the king's own law.

7:2

"Our fathers" means the people of their family long ago. The laws were the rules God gave to those people.

7:3

These were big metal cooking pots. Fires under them made the metal burning hot.

7:4

"The utmost parts of his body" means the extremities, the hands and feet. The Greek also says at this point that he was scalped, a detail the KJV leaves out here although it gives it for the second brother in verse 7.

7:6

The song is Deuteronomy 32, the long poem Moses recites just before his death, which he says is set down as a witness against the people. The line quoted comes from verse 36 of it, which the KJV renders there "and repent himself for his servants."

7:7

"A mocking stock" is an object of mockery, something set up to be jeered at. The Greek word carries the sense of a spectacle staged for onlookers: the torture is being performed for an audience. "Pulled off the skin of his head with the hair" is scalping.

7:8

The language is the ancestral one, Hebrew or Aramaic, as opposed to the Greek of the court. In a persecution aimed at replacing Jewish custom with Greek custom, answering in that language is itself part of the refusal.

7:9

The Greek word behind "like a fury" is alastor, which can mean an avenging spirit and can also mean the accursed wretch on whom vengeance falls. The KJV took the first sense, comparing the king to the Furies of Greek myth; the rendering here takes the second. "The King of the world" sets God's title against the title of the king standing in front of him.

7:10

The third brother is not being asked a question. The executioners demand his tongue and his hands so that they can cut them off, and he holds them out himself rather than have them taken.

7:11

"These" means his tongue and his hands. He believed God had given them to him.

7:18

"Be not deceived without cause" means do not fool yourself to no purpose. "Marvellous things are done unto us" uses "marvellous" in its older sense of astonishing or staggering, not pleasant; he means the horrors now happening.

7:21

In 1611 "stomach" meant spirit, temper or courage, so "a manly stomach" is a man's courage, and "womanish thoughts" simply means a woman's thoughts. No insult is intended in the Greek; the writer is praising her for a courage his culture labeled masculine. The same older sense lies behind "manfully" in verse 5, which meant bravely.

7:24

This is the first time the book names the king in this chapter: Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled from 175 to 164 BC. "Take him for his friend" is not an offer of personal friendship. "Friend of the King" was a formal rank at a Greek royal court, carrying titles, income and a place in government, which is what "trust him with affairs" means.

7:27

Nursing a child for about three years was normal practice, so she is describing an ordinary upbringing, not an unusual one. The KJV's "troubles of education" means the trouble of rearing a child, not schooling.

7:28

The Greek phrase here, ouk ex ontōn, can be read either as "not out of things that existed" or as "out of things that did not exist," and the difference matters: the first says only that God did not use pre-existing material, the second says he made everything from nothing at all. The sentence has been argued over for centuries and the Greek does not settle it.

7:31

"Mischief" in 1611 meant serious harm or wickedness, not playful trouble, and "author" means the one who devised it. "The Hebrews" is one of several names this book uses for the Jewish people.

7:33

"Be at one again" is the older English for being reconciled, brought back into one with someone. The noun "atonement" was built from exactly this phrase, at-one-ment.

7:34

Where the KJV has "the servants of God," the Greek manuscripts read "the children of heaven" or "the heavenly children," which is why modern versions differ here.

7:35

"Almighty" means the strongest one of all.

7:36

The Greek of this line is compressed and awkward, roughly "having endured brief pain, they have fallen under God's covenant of everlasting life." Translators divide over whether the everlasting life belongs to the covenant or is the thing the brief pain leads to, and both the KJV and the rendering here smooth over that difficulty.

7:37

"Plagues" here means blows or afflictions of any kind, the older general sense, not disease specifically.

7:39

"Than the king' being in a rage" is a printing error carried down in editions of the KJV Apocrypha. It should read "Then the king, being in a rage."

7:40

"Undefiled" and "pure" are ritual words here, not moral ones. He died without having eaten the forbidden meat, so he died unpolluted by it.

7:41

The Greek says only that the mother died last, after her sons. It never gives her name and never describes how she died. Later Jewish and Christian tradition supplied both, calling her Hannah, Miriam or Solomonia and telling various stories of her death, but none of that is in this text.

7:42

"The idolatrous feasts" are the sacrifices to Greek gods described in chapter 6, at which Jews were forced to take part and eat the sacrificial meat. This closing line is the narrator stepping out of the story to speak in his own voice. 2 Maccabees presents itself as a condensed version of a five volume history by Jason of Cyrene, and its abridger inserts comments like this one to mark where he is cutting material short.