First Book of Maccabees 5

¹ When the surrounding nations heard that the altar had been rebuilt and the sanctuary restored to what it had been before, they became very angry,

² and determined to destroy the whole race of Jacob living among them; they began murdering and evicting Jewish citizens.

³ Judas made war on the sons of Esau in Idumaea,[*a] in the region of Akrabattene where they held the Israelites under siege. He inflicted a crushing defeat on them, and plundered them.

⁴ He also remembered the wickedness of the sons of Baean who were a menace and a trap for the people with their ambushes on the roads.

⁵ Having blockaded them in their towers and besieged them, he vowed them to the ban; then he set fire to their towers and burned them down with everyone inside.

⁶ Next, he crossed over to the Ammonites where he found a strong fighting force and a numerous people with Timotheus for their leader.

⁷ He engaged them in many encounters, routed them and cut them to pieces.

⁸ After capturing Jazer and its outlying villages, he retired to Judaea.

⁹ The pagans in Gilead now banded together against the Israelites living on their territory, to destroy them. But they took refuge in the fortress of Dathema,

¹⁰ and sent the following letter to Judas and his brothers, ‘The pagans round us have banded themselves together against us to wipe us out,

¹¹ and they are preparing to storm the fortress in which we have taken refuge; Timotheus is in command of their forces.

¹² Come at once and rescue us from their clutches, for we have already suffered great losses.

¹³ All our countrymen living among the Tubians have been put to death, their women and children have been taken into captivity, their property has been seized, and a force about a thousand strong has been wiped out there.’

¹⁴ While the letter was being read, other messengers arrived is from Galilee with their garments torn bearing similar news,

¹⁵ ‘The people of Ptolemais,[*b] Tyre and Sidon have joined forces with the whole of heathen Galilee to destroy us!’

¹⁶ When Judas and the people heard this, a great assembly was held to decide what should be done for their oppressed countrymen who were under attack from their enemies.

¹⁷ Judas said to his brother Simon, ‘Pick your men and go and relieve your countrymen in Galilee, while my brother Jonathan and I make our way into Gilead’.

¹⁸ He left Joseph son of Zechariah and the people’s leader Azariah with the remainder of the army in Judaea to guard it,

¹⁹ and gave them these orders: ‘Take charge of this people, and do not engage the pagans until we return’.

²⁰ Simon was allotted three thousand men for the expedition into Galilee, Judas eight thousand for Gilead.

²¹ Simon advanced into Galilee, engaged the pagans in several battles and drove them off in disorder;

²² he pursued them to the gate of Ptolemais, and they lost about three thousand men, whose spoils he collected.

²³ He took away with him the Jews of Galilee and Arbatta,[*c] with their wives and children and all their possessions, and brought them into Judaea with great rejoicing.

²⁴ Meanwhile Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan crossed the Jordan and made a three days’ march through the desert,

²⁵ where they encountered the Nabataeans,[*d] who came to an understanding with them and gave them an account of all that had happened to their brothers in Gilead.

²⁶ Many of them, they said, were shut up in Bozrah and Bosor, Alema, Chaspho, Maked and Carnaim, all large fortified towns.

²⁷ Others were blockaded in the other towns of Gilead, and the enemy planned to attack and capture these strongholds the very next day, and wipe out all the people inside them in a single day.

²⁸ Judas and his army at once turned off by the desert road to Bozrah; having captured the town, he put the entire male population to the sword, plundered the town and set it on fire.

²⁹ When night came, he left the place, and they continued their march until they reached the fortress.[*e]

³⁰ In the light of dawn they saw an innumerable horde, setting up ladders and engines to capture the fortress; the assault was just beginning.

³¹ When Judas saw that the attack had begun and that the war cry was rising to heaven, mingled with trumpet calls and a great clamour,

³² he said to the men of his army, ‘You must fight today, fight for your countrymen’.

³³ Dividing them into three commands, he advanced on the enemy’s rear, with trumpets sounding and prayers shouted aloud.

³⁴ The troops of Timotheus, recognising that this was Maccabaeus, fled before his advance; Maccabaeus dealt them a crushing defeat; about eight thousand of their men fell that day.

³⁵ Then, wheeling on Alema, he attacked and captured it, put its male population to death, plundered it and burned the place down.

³⁶ From there he moved on and took Chaspho, Maked, Bosor and the remaining towns of Gilead.

³⁷ After these events, Timotheus mustered another force and pitched camp opposite Raphon, on the far side of the wadi.

³⁸ Judas sent men to reconnoitre the camp, and these reported back as follows, ‘With him are massed all the pagans surrounding us, making a very numerous army,

³⁹ with Arab mercenaries as auxiliaries; they are encamped on the far side of the wadi, and ready to launch an attack on you.’ Judas then advanced to engage them,

⁴⁰ and was approaching the watercourse with his troops when Timotheus told the commanders of his army, ‘If he crosses first we shall not be able to resist him, because he will have the advantage of us.

⁴¹ But if he is afraid and camps on the other side of the stream we will cross over to him and the advantage will then be ours.’

⁴² As soon as he reached the watercourse Judas posted the scribes of the people along the wadi, giving them this order: ‘Do not let anyone pitch his tent; all are to go into battle!’

⁴³ He was himself the first across to the enemy side, with all the people following. Driven before them, the pagans all tore off their armour and ran for refuge in the sacred precinct of Carnaim.

⁴⁴ The Jews first captured the town, and then burned down the precinct with everyone inside. And so Carnaim was overthrown, and the enemy could offer no further resistance to Judas.

⁴⁵ Next, Judas assembled all the Israelites living in Gilead, from the least to the greatest, with their wives, children and belongings, an enormous muster, to take them into the land of Judah.

⁴⁶ They reached Ephron, a large town straddling the road and strongly fortified. As it was impossible to by-pass it on the right or the left, there was nothing for it but to march straight through.

⁴⁷ But the people of the town denied them passage and barricaded the gates with stones.

⁴⁸ Judas sent them a conciliatory message in these terms, ‘Let us go through your territory to reach our own; no one will do you any harm, we only want to march through’. But they would not open up for him.

⁴⁹ So Judas sent an order down the column for everyone to halt where he stood.

⁵⁰ The fighting men took up their positions; Judas attacked the town all day and night, and it was delivered into his hands.

⁵¹ He put all the male inhabitants to the sword, razed it to the ground, plundered it and marched through the town over the bodies of the dead.

⁵² The Jews now crossed the Jordan into the great plain, opposite Bethshan,

⁵³ Judas all the time rallying the stragglers and encouraging the people the whole way until they reached the land of Judah.

⁵⁴ They climbed Mount Zion in joy and gladness, and offered holocausts because they had returned safe and sound without having lost a single man.

⁵⁵ While Judas and Jonathan were in the land of Gilead and Simon his brother in Galilee before Ptolemais,

⁵⁶ Joseph son of Zechariah, and Azariah, who were in command of the army, heard of their exploits and how well they had done in battle,

⁵⁷ and said, ‘Let us make a name for ourselves too and go and fight the nations around us’.

⁵⁸ So they issued orders to the men of the forces under them and marched on Jamnia.

⁵⁹ But Gorgias came out from the town with his men to engage them.

⁶⁰ Joseph and Azariah were routed and pursued as far as the frontiers of Judaea. That day about two thousand Israelites lost their lives.

⁶¹ And so the people met with a great reverse, because they had not listened to Judas and his brothers, but had relied on their own prowess.

⁶² These were not of the same mould as those to whom the deliverance of Israel had been entrusted.

⁶³ But that hero Judas and his brothers were held in high honour throughout Israel and among all the nations wherever their name was heard,

⁶⁴ and men gathered round them to acclaim them.

⁶⁵ Judas marched out with his brothers to fight the Edomites in the country towards the south; he stormed Hebron and its outlying villages, threw down its fortifications and burned its circle of towers.

⁶⁶ Leaving there, he made for the country of the Philistines and passed through Marisa.[*f]

⁶⁷ Among the fallen in that day’s fighting were some priests who sought to prove their courage there by joining in the battle, a foolhardy venture.

⁶⁸ Judas next turned towards Azotus, a Philistine district; he overthrew their altars, burned down the carved images of their gods, and withdrew to the land of Judah, leaving their towns utterly despoiled.