2 Maccabees 9: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Antiochus comes back from Persia in disgrace after trying to rob a temple in Persepolis, and at Ecbatana he hears the news about Nicanor and Timotheus and plans revenge on the Jews. On the road he is struck with an incurable inner pain, falls from his chariot, and rots while still alive, until he says a mortal should not think of himself as God. He vows to free Jerusalem, restore the temple, and become a Jew himself, writes a letter to the Jews naming his son as king, and dies in the mountains in a foreign land, after which Philip carries his body away and goes to Egypt.

Claim by Claim

1. 9:1
   • At about that time Antiochus came back out of the region of Persia
   • Antiochus's return was in dishonor and disorder
2. 9:2
   • Antiochus had entered the city called Persepolis
   • Antiochus attempted to rob the temple there
   • Antiochus attempted to take control of the city
   • The crowds rushed out
   • The inhabitants turned to their weapons to defend themselves
   • The inhabitants put Antiochus and his men to flight
   • Antiochus, routed by the inhabitants, withdrew in shame
3. 9:3
   • Antiochus was at Ecbatana
   • News reached him of what had happened to Nicanor
   • News reached him of what had happened to Timotheus and his forces
4. 9:4
   • Antiochus swelled with anger
   • Antiochus intended to avenge on the Jews the disgrace done to him by those who had put him to flight
   • Antiochus ordered his charioteer to drive without stopping
   • Antiochus ordered the journey to be completed without pause
   • The judgment of heaven was already accompanying him
   • Antiochus had spoken proudly
   • Antiochus said he would make Jerusalem a common burying place of the Jews
   • Antiochus said he would do this when he arrived there
5. 9:5
   • The Lord, the God of Israel, sees all things
   • The Lord struck Antiochus with an incurable and unseen blow
   • The blow came as soon as Antiochus had finished speaking those words
   • An incurable pain of the bowels seized Antiochus
   • Bitter torments of his inward parts seized him
6. 9:6
   • The punishment was entirely just
   • Antiochus had tormented other men's bowels with many and strange torments
7. 9:7
   • Antiochus did not cease at all from his insolence
   • Antiochus was filled with still more pride
   • Antiochus breathed out fire in his rage against the Jews
   • Antiochus commanded that the journey be hastened
   • Antiochus fell from his chariot as it rushed along
   • Antiochus suffered a severe fall
   • Every limb of his body was wrenched and racked
8. 9:8
   • A little before, Antiochus had supposed he could command the waves of the sea
   • Antiochus's arrogance was beyond what belongs to a man
   • Antiochus had thought to weigh the heights of the mountains in a balance
   • Antiochus was now brought down to the ground
   • Antiochus was carried in a litter
   • His condition showed to all the manifest power of God
9. 9:9
   • Worms swarmed up out of the body of the impious man
   • Antiochus was still alive and in anguish and pain
   • His flesh fell away from him
   • The whole army was oppressed by the stench of his decay
10. 9:10
    • A little before, Antiochus had supposed he could touch the stars of heaven
    • No one could bear to carry him
    • The weight of his stench was unendurable
11. 9:11
    • Antiochus, broken, began to leave off most of his pride
    • Antiochus began to come to knowledge under the scourge of God
    • His pains increased every moment
12. 9:12
    • Antiochus could not endure his own smell
    • Antiochus said it is right to be subject to God
    • Antiochus said that a mortal man should not think proudly of himself as though he were God
13. 9:13
    • The defiled man made a vow to the Lord
    • The Lord would no longer have mercy on him
    • Antiochus spoke as follows
14. 9:14
    • Antiochus had been hurrying to the holy city to level it to the ground
    • Antiochus had intended to make the holy city a common burying place
    • Antiochus vowed he would declare the holy city free
15. 9:15
    • Antiochus had judged the Jews not worthy even of burial
    • Antiochus had decided to cast them out with their children to be eaten by birds and wild beasts
    • Antiochus vowed he would make them all equal to the citizens of Athens
16. 9:16
    • Antiochus had previously plundered the holy temple
    • Antiochus vowed he would adorn the temple with the finest offerings
    • Antiochus vowed he would restore all the holy vessels many times over
    • Antiochus vowed he would pay the costs of the sacrifices out of his own revenues
17. 9:17
    • Antiochus vowed he would himself become a Jew
    • Antiochus vowed he would travel through every inhabited place
    • Antiochus vowed he would proclaim the power of God
18. 9:18
    • Antiochus's sufferings did not cease at all
    • The just judgment of God had come upon him
    • Antiochus despaired of his own condition
    • Antiochus wrote a letter to the Jews
    • The letter had the character of a supplication
    • The letter read as follows
19. 9:19
    • The letter was from Antiochus, king and general
    • The letter was addressed to the good Jews, his citizens
    • The letter wished them much joy, health, and prosperity
20. 9:20
    • Antiochus wrote of the Jews and their children faring well
    • Antiochus wrote of their affairs being to their contentment
    • Antiochus wrote that he gave very great thanks to God
    • Antiochus wrote that his hope was in heaven
21. 9:21
    • Antiochus wrote that he was weak
    • Antiochus wrote that otherwise he would have remembered their honor and goodwill kindly
    • Antiochus wrote that he was returning out of Persia
    • Antiochus wrote that he had been seized by a grievous sickness
    • Antiochus wrote that he thought it necessary to take thought for the common safety of all
22. 9:22
    • Antiochus wrote that he was not distrusting his own health
    • Antiochus wrote that he had great hope of escaping the sickness
23. 9:23
    • Antiochus wrote that his father also had appointed a successor
    • His father did so at the time he led an army into the upper countries
24. 9:24
    • The purpose was that if anything happened contrary to expectation, the people of the land would not be troubled
    • The purpose was that if grievous news were brought, the people of the land would not be troubled
    • The people of the land would know to whom the state had been left
25. 9:25
    • Antiochus wrote that the rulers bordering and neighboring his kingdom were watching for opportunities
    • Those rulers were waiting to see what would come to pass
    • Antiochus had appointed his son Antiochus king
    • Antiochus had often entrusted and commended his son to many of them
    • He had done so when he went up into the upper provinces
    • Antiochus had written to his son what follows below
26. 9:26
    • Antiochus urged and requested them to remember the benefits done to them in common and individually
    • Antiochus asked each of them to keep his present goodwill toward Antiochus and his son
27. 9:27
    • Antiochus said he was persuaded that his son understood his mind
    • Antiochus said his son would deal with them favorably and graciously
28. 9:28
    • Antiochus was a murderer and a blasphemer
    • Antiochus suffered the worst of sufferings
    • He suffered as he had treated other men
    • Antiochus ended his life by a most pitiable death
    • He died in a foreign land among the mountains
29. 9:29
    • Philip had been brought up with Antiochus
    • Philip carried away the body of Antiochus
    • Philip feared the son of Antiochus
    • Philip withdrew into Egypt to Ptolemy Philometor

Words Worth Explaining

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

9:1

Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes, ruled the Seleucid kingdom, the Greek-speaking empire centered in Syria that controlled Judea, from 175 to 164 BC. He is the king whose looting of the Jerusalem temple and ban on Jewish practice set off the revolt this book describes. "Persia" here means the eastern inland provinces of his empire, far from his capital at Antioch.

9:2

Ancient temples served as strongrooms as well as places of worship, holding deposits of gold and silver, so a king short of money for his army raided them. Antiochus was chronically short: he owed Rome an enormous war indemnity inherited from his father. Persepolis was the old ceremonial capital of the Persian kings; other ancient accounts place this failed raid at a temple in Elymais instead, and 1 Maccabees 6 names that region.

9:3

Ecbatana, modern Hamadan in western Iran, was a royal summer residence on the road west. Nicanor and Timotheus were two of his commanders, defeated by Judas Maccabeus in the fighting described in chapter 8.

9:4

To make a city "a common burying place" is to kill its whole population and dump the bodies in a mass pit. In the ancient world the insult was as heavy as the killing: proper burial in a family tomb was what everyone owed the dead, and a common pit denied it.

9:5

In 1611 English a "plague" was any blow or stroke sent as punishment, not necessarily an epidemic disease. "Invisible" means the blow came from no hand anyone could see. Greek manuscripts differ at this point between "the all-powerful Lord" and "the all-seeing Lord"; the King James follows the first.

9:6

"Bowels" in older English means the intestines and inner organs generally.

9:7

"Breathing out fire" is a stock Greek phrase for uncontrolled rage, not a description of anything literal.

9:8

Commanding the sea and weighing mountains on a scale are the standard ancient images for claiming powers that belong to God alone; compare Isaiah 40:12. The first also recalls the story of the Persian king Xerxes having the sea whipped. A litter was a bed or couch with poles, carried by men or slung between animals, the usual transport for the sick or the very grand.

9:9

Death by worms while still alive was a conventional way ancient writers described the end of a tyrant, used of several rulers in Greek, Roman and Jewish accounts. The King James "noisome" means sickening or offensive, and has nothing to do with noise.

9:11

"Scourge" is a whip, here used as an image for punishment.

9:12

"It is meet" in the King James means it is fitting or proper.

9:13

A promise made to God is called a vow. People made vows when they badly wanted God's help.

9:14

The holy city means Jerusalem. People called it holy because God's temple was there.

9:15

Being thrown out unburied for birds and animals to eat was the ultimate degradation in the ancient world, worse than execution itself. Citizenship of Athens was a prized honor across the Greek-speaking world, granted as a reward and carrying legal privileges, so Antiochus is promising the Jews the highest civic status he can name.

9:16

The "holy vessels" are the gold and silver equipment of the temple, which Antiochus had stripped out in 169 BC. Paying for a temple's sacrifices out of royal income was normal practice for Hellenistic kings toward the sanctuaries in their territory, so this is a promise of formal royal patronage, not a personal donation.

9:17

To "become a Jew" meant to adopt Jewish law and practice as a convert. The force of the promise is that the king who had banned that practice on pain of death now offers to take it on himself.

9:18

A supplication is a petition made by an inferior to a superior. A king's letter normally commanded; the point being made is that this one begs. Historians generally take the letter that follows to be a real Seleucid document announcing the succession, reproduced here by the author.

9:19

"King and governor" renders a Greek phrase meaning king and general, a standard pair of royal titles. "Wisheth much joy" is the ordinary Greek letter greeting, roughly "greetings". Calling the Jews "his citizens" is the flattering address of a ruler to a self-governing community within his realm.

9:20

Wishing the reader and their family good health at the top of a letter, and reporting one's own, was the fixed opening formula of Greek correspondence.

9:21

The Greek of this sentence is damaged and translators differ. The King James reads it as an excuse for a delay, "I was weak, or else I would have remembered"; others read it as a straightforward compliment, "I remembered with affection your honour and good will".

9:23

His father was Antiochus III, called the Great, who ruled from 223 to 187 BC. The "high countries" or upper provinces are the eastern satrapies of the empire, inland and mountainous: Media, Persia and beyond. Naming an heir before marching east was a standard precaution.

9:25

The "princes that are borderers" are the neighboring rulers, above all the Ptolemies of Egypt and the rising power of Rome, who would exploit a disputed succession. The son named here is Antiochus V Eupator, a boy of about nine at his father's death.

9:28

"Blasphemer" here means one who spoke against the God of Israel and desecrated his temple. In older English "a strange country" means a foreign one, not an odd one.

9:29

"Brought up with him" translates a Greek court title, foster brother, given to a boy raised alongside a prince; it marked a man as a trusted intimate of the king rather than a relative. Ptolemy VI Philometor was king of Egypt from 180 to 145 BC and a nephew of Antiochus IV, so Philip was fleeing to a rival court.