2 Maccabees 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Judas Maccabeus and his men gather about six thousand fighters and pray for the people, the sanctuary, and the city, and they begin striking towns and cities, often at night. Philip writes to Ptolemy for help, and Nicanor is sent with twenty thousand troops, planning to pay the king's tribute to Rome by selling captured Jews as slaves. Judas encourages his men with past deliverances, divides his army into four parts, and they kill more than nine thousand of Nicanor's soldiers, keep the sabbath, and share the spoils with the maimed, widows, and orphans. Further fighting against the forces of Timotheus and Bacchides follows, and Nicanor escapes alone to Antioch, telling everyone that God fought for the Jews.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • Judas, also called Maccabeus, and those with him went secretly into the villages.
   • They called their kinsfolk together.
   • They took to themselves all who had continued in the religion of the Jews.
   • They assembled about six thousand men.
2. 8:2
   • They called upon the Lord.
   • They asked that he look upon the people who were being worn down by everyone.
   • They asked that he pity the temple, which had been profaned by ungodly men.
3. 8:3
   • They asked that he have compassion on the city, which was being ruined and was about to be leveled to the ground.
   • They asked that he hear the blood that cried out to him.
4. 8:4
   • They asked that he remember the lawless destruction of innocent infants.
   • They asked that he remember the blasphemies committed against his name.
   • They asked that he show his hatred of wickedness.
5. 8:5
   • Maccabeus had his company formed around him.
   • He then could not be withstood by the gentiles.
   • The wrath of the Lord had turned into mercy.
6. 8:6
   • He came upon towns and cities unexpectedly and burned them.
   • He seized the strategically advantageous places.
   • He routed no small number of the enemy.
7. 8:7
   • He especially used the nights for such attacks.
   • Report of his bravery spread everywhere.
8. 8:8
   • Philip saw that this man was increasing little by little.
   • Philip saw that his successes were growing more frequent.
   • Philip wrote to Ptolemy, the governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia.
   • Philip asked him to give more aid to the king's affairs.
9. 8:9
   • Ptolemy quickly chose Nicanor the son of Patroclus.
   • Nicanor was one of the chief friends.
   • Ptolemy sent him with no fewer than twenty thousand men of all nations under him.
   • The purpose was to root out the whole race of the Jews.
   • Ptolemy joined Gorgias with him.
   • Gorgias was a captain with great experience in matters of war.
10. 8:10
    • Nicanor undertook to raise from the sale of captive Jews the tribute of two thousand talents.
    • The king owed that tribute to the Romans.
11. 8:11
    • He immediately sent word to the cities on the sea coast.
    • He proclaimed a sale of Jewish slaves.
    • He promised to hand over ninety bodies for one talent.
    • He did not expect the vengeance that was to follow upon him from the Almighty.
12. 8:12
    • Word came to Judas about Nicanor's advance.
    • Judas told those with him that the army was at hand.
13. 8:13
    • Those who were cowardly and distrusted the justice of God ran away.
    • They removed themselves from the place.
14. 8:14
    • Others sold all that they had left.
    • At the same time they asked the Lord to deliver those whom the wicked Nicanor had sold before he had even met them.
15. 8:15
    • They asked him to do it, if not for their own sakes, then for the covenants made with their fathers.
    • They asked him to do it for the sake of his holy and glorious name, by which they were called.
16. 8:16
    • Maccabeus gathered his men together.
    • They numbered six thousand.
    • He exhorted them not to be struck with terror at the enemy.
    • He exhorted them not to fear the great multitude of the gentiles who came against them unjustly.
    • He exhorted them to fight nobly.
17. 8:17
    • He told them to set before their eyes the outrage lawlessly committed by them against the holy place.
    • He told them to set before their eyes the abuse of the city that had been made a mockery.
    • He told them to set before their eyes the abolition of the way of life received from their forefathers.
18. 8:18
    • He said that they trust in weapons and in acts of daring.
    • He said that our trust is in the Almighty God.
    • He said that God is able to cast down with a single nod both those who come against us and the whole world.
19. 8:19
    • He recounted to them the helps their forefathers had received.
    • He recounted the help given in the time of Sennacherib.
    • He said that one hundred eighty-five thousand perished then.
20. 8:20
    • He told them of the battle fought in Babylonia against the Galatians.
    • He said that eight thousand in all came to the action.
    • He said four thousand Macedonians were with them.
    • He said the Macedonians were at a loss.
    • He said the eight thousand destroyed one hundred twenty thousand.
    • He said this happened because of the help that came to them from heaven.
    • He said they took much booty.
21. 8:21
    • With these words he made them courageous.
    • He made them ready to die for the laws and for their country.
    • He divided his army into four parts.
22. 8:22
    • He set his own brothers as leaders of each division.
    • The brothers were Simon, Joseph, and Jonathan.
    • He put fifteen hundred men under each of them.
23. 8:23
    • He also appointed Eleazar to read aloud the holy book.
    • He gave the watchword "The help of God".
    • He himself led the first band.
24. 8:24
    • By the help of the Almighty they killed more than nine thousand of the enemy.
    • They wounded and maimed the greater part of Nicanor's army.
    • They forced them all to flee.
25. 8:25
    • They took the money of those who had come to buy them.
    • They pursued them a considerable distance.
    • They turned back because time constrained them.
26. 8:26
    • It was the day before the sabbath.
    • For that reason they did not keep pursuing them further.
27. 8:27
    • They gathered up the enemy's armour.
    • They stripped the spoils from the enemy.
    • They occupied themselves with the sabbath.
    • They blessed and thanked the Lord exceedingly.
    • The Lord had preserved them to that day.
    • That day was the beginning of mercy toward them.
28. 8:28
    • After the sabbath they gave a portion of the spoils to the maimed, the widows, and the orphans.
    • They divided the rest among themselves and their children.
29. 8:29
    • When they had done these things they made a common supplication.
    • They asked the merciful Lord to be fully reconciled with his servants.
30. 8:30
    • They engaged the forces of Timotheus and Bacchides.
    • They killed more than twenty thousand of them.
    • They gained control of high strongholds very easily.
    • They divided many spoils.
    • They made the maimed, the orphans, the widows, and also the aged equal sharers with themselves.
31. 8:31
    • They gathered up the enemy's armour.
    • They stored it all carefully in strategic places.
    • They carried the rest of the spoils to Jerusalem.
32. 8:32
    • They killed the commander of the tribal forces of Timotheus.
    • It is unclear whether this man is named Philarches or is designated by the office of phylarch.
    • He was a most unholy man.
    • He had done the Jews much harm.
33. 8:33
    • They kept a feast for the victory in their own country.
    • They burned those who had set fire to the holy gates.
    • Callisthenes was among them.
    • Callisthenes had fled into a little house.
    • He received a reward fitting his wickedness.
34. 8:34
    • Nicanor was most wicked.
    • Nicanor had brought a thousand merchants to buy the Jews.
35. 8:35
    • He was brought low through the help of the Lord.
    • He was brought low by those of whom he made least account.
    • He put off his glorious apparel.
    • He discharged his company.
    • He came through the inland country like a fugitive slave.
    • He arrived at Antioch.
    • He had very great dishonour because his army was destroyed.
36. 8:36
    • He had undertaken to make good the tribute to the Romans by means of captives from Jerusalem.
    • He proclaimed abroad that the Jews had God fighting for them.
    • He proclaimed that for this reason the Jews could not be hurt.
    • He proclaimed that this was because they followed the laws that God had ordained.

Words Worth Explaining

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

8:1

The background: in 167 BC the Seleucid king Antiochus IV outlawed Jewish practice in Judea, banning circumcision, the sabbath and the temple sacrifices on pain of death. Judas was one of the sons of the priest Mattathias, who had begun armed resistance. "Maccabeus" is a nickname rather than a family name; it most likely means "hammer." "Such as continued in the Jews' religion" means those who had refused to comply with the ban, at a time when complying was the safe choice.

8:2

The temple in Jerusalem had been plundered and then rededicated to Olympian Zeus, with pagan sacrifice offered on its altar. To "profane" a holy place is to treat it as ordinary and put it to common use, which for the temple meant it could no longer function at all.

8:3

"Hear the blood that cried unto him" echoes the story of Cain and Abel, where God tells Cain that his murdered brother's blood is crying out to him from the ground. Blood spilled and unavenged was thought of as calling out for justice until it was answered.

8:4

This refers back to an incident earlier in the book: two women who had circumcised their babies in defiance of the royal ban were paraded through Jerusalem with the infants hung at their breasts and then thrown from the city wall.

8:5

The King James "heathen" translates a word meaning simply "the nations," that is, everyone who was not Jewish. It is a term of ethnic and religious boundary, not a comment on how sincerely anyone believed anything.

8:7

The King James "the fruit of his holiness was spread every where" and the modern "word of his bravery spread" come from a genuine disagreement among the Greek manuscripts, which differ over whether the word here means good conduct or courage in action.

8:8

Philip had been left in charge of Jerusalem by Antiochus IV. Coelesyria and Phoenicia was a single Seleucid province covering inland southern Syria and the coastal strip, and Judea lay inside it, so Ptolemeus was the regional governor with authority over Judas's territory.

8:9

"One of his special friends" is a formal court rank, not a description of personal affection: the Friends of the King were a graded order of royal officials in the Hellenistic kingdoms. "Twenty thousand of all nations" reflects the fact that Seleucid armies were largely mercenary, recruited from many different peoples.

8:10

A talent was a unit of weight used for silver, roughly seventy-five pounds, and an enormous sum. The tribute to Rome goes back to the Treaty of Apamea in 188 BC, when Rome defeated Antiochus III and imposed a crushing indemnity on the Seleucid kingdom, payable in installments. Selling prisoners of war into slavery was a normal way for an ancient commander to turn a campaign into cash.

8:11

"Fourscore and ten" is ninety. A talent was six thousand drachmas, so ninety captives for a talent works out to a fraction of the usual market price for a slave, which ran into the hundreds of drachmas. Nicanor is advertising a clearance sale, and selling the captives before he has caught them. The coastal cities were the Phoenician and Philistine ports, the region's slave markets.

8:14

Selling what you still owned to raise cash had a specific purpose here: ransoming Jews already taken and sold was a recognized religious duty, and money was the only way to do it.

8:15

"The covenants he had made with their fathers" are the binding agreements God was believed to have sworn with Abraham and with Israel at Sinai, which obliged him regardless of the present generation's merits. To be "called by" God's name meant to belong to him the way a household belongs to its head, so that the household's disgrace was the head's disgrace.

8:17

"The taking away of the government of their forefathers" refers to Antiochus IV abolishing the ancestral constitution of Judea, under which the Jews had been permitted to live by their own law under their own high priest. Losing it meant losing not just worship but the entire legal and civic order.

8:18

"At a beck" is old English for at a nod or a flick of the hand, that is, with no effort at all.

8:19

Sennacherib was king of Assyria, who besieged Jerusalem around 701 BC. The story in 2 Kings tells of his army being struck down in a single night, with a hundred and eighty-five thousand dead, after which he withdrew. The King James "an hundred fourscore and five thousand" is that same number.

8:20

The Galatians were Gauls who had migrated into Asia Minor in the third century BC and were widely feared as mercenaries and raiders. "Macedonians" here means the Greek-speaking soldiers of the Seleucid army, who traced their military tradition to Alexander's Macedonians. The battle described, with Jewish troops serving alongside them somewhere in Babylonia, is not recorded anywhere else and cannot be identified.

8:21

"The law" means the Torah, the body of written commandments and their ancestral interpretation that governed Jewish life. Since Antiochus had outlawed keeping it, dying for the law was a live and literal prospect, not a figure of speech.

8:22

These are Judas's actual brothers, sons of Mattathias. The brother called Joseph here is called John in the parallel account in 1 Maccabees. Simon and Jonathan would each later lead the Jewish state in their turn.

8:23

Reading aloud from the scroll before battle follows an old rule that the army be addressed from the law before fighting. A watchword was a password shouted in the field, both to steady the troops and to let men recognize each other in the confusion of close combat.

8:26

The Jewish sabbath ran from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, so "the day before the sabbath" is Friday, and the pursuit had to stop before dark. Fighting on the sabbath was a real difficulty for this movement: an earlier group of Jewish rebels had let themselves be slaughtered rather than defend themselves on that day, after which Mattathias ruled that they could fight when attacked.

8:27

Collecting the enemy's weapons and stripping their bodies was the normal and expected aftermath of an ancient battle, and the arms were valuable: an army short of equipment rearmed itself from the dead.

8:28

Those "maimed" are their own men crippled in the fighting, who could no longer earn a living. Widows and orphans had no legal claim on anyone's property in this society and were the standard biblical examples of people dependent on others' charity, so paying them first out of the plunder is a deliberate order of priority. Some Greek manuscripts read "children" here rather than "servants."

8:29

"His servants" means his own people. They belonged to God and served him.

8:30

Timotheus and Bacchides were Seleucid commanders operating in the territories east and south of Judea; both appear again later in the fighting.

8:32

The King James "Philarches" is not a name but a misread title. The Greek word is "phylarch," the commander of a tribal contingent of troops, so the man killed is an officer on Timotheus's staff whose name the text does not give.

8:33

The gates of the temple had been burned during the earlier attacks on Jerusalem, a detail the book mentions again elsewhere. Burning the men who had burned the gates matches the punishment to the crime, which is the point the writer is making. The King James "meet" means fitting or deserved.

8:34

Traders are people who buy things and sell them again for money. These traders came to buy people.

8:35

The "glorious apparel" is the official dress of his rank, which would have identified him instantly. A "fugitive servant" is a runaway slave, the lowest and most hunted thing a traveler could be taken for. Antioch, on the Syrian coast north of Judea, was the Seleucid capital, so he was traveling inland to report to the king.

8:36

Captives are people caught and taken away in a war. Nicanor had promised to sell them and pay the Romans with the money.