Second Book of Maccabees 7

¹ There were also seven brothers who were arrested with their mother. The king tried to force them to taste pig’s flesh, which the Law forbids, by torturing them with whips and scourges.

² One of them, acting as spokesman for the others, said, ‘What are you trying to find out from us? We are prepared to die rather than break the laws of our ancestors.’

³ The king, in a fury, ordered pans and cauldrons to be heated over a fire.

⁴ As soon as they were red-hot he commanded that this spokesman of theirs should have his tongue cut out, his head scalped and his extremities cut off, while the other brothers and his mother looked on.

⁵ When he had been rendered completely helpless, the king gave orders for him to be brought, still breathing, to the fire and fried alive in a pan. As the smoke from the pan drifted about, his mother and the rest encouraged one another to die nobly, with such words as these,

⁶ ‘The Lord God is watching, and surely he takes pity on us, as in the song in which Moses bore witness against the people to their face, proclaiming that “he will certainly take pity on his servants”‘.

⁷ When the first had left the world in this way, they led on the second for their brutal amusement. After stripping the skin from his head, hair and all, they asked him, ‘Will you eat, before your body is tortured limb by limb?’

⁸ But he retorted in the language of his ancestors, ‘Never!’ And so he too was put to the torture in his turn.

⁹ With his last breath he exclaimed, ‘Inhuman fiend, you may discharge us from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, since it is for his laws that we die, to live again for ever’.

¹⁰ After him, they amused themselves with the third, who on being asked for his tongue promptly thrust it out and boldly held out his hands,

¹¹ with these honourable words, ‘it was heaven that gave me these limbs; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again’.

¹² The king and his attendants were astounded at the young man’s courage and his utter indifference to suffering.

¹³ When this one was dead they subjected the fourth to the same savage torture.

¹⁴ When he neared his end he cried, ‘Ours is the better choice, to meet death at men’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him; whereas for you there can be no resurrection, no new life’.

¹⁵ Next they brought forward the fifth and began torturing him.

¹⁶ But he looked at the king and said, ‘You have power over men, mortal as you are, and can act as you please. But do not think that our race has been deserted by God. Only wait, and you shall see in your turn how his mighty power will torment you and your race.’

¹⁸ After him they led out the sixth, and his dying words were these, ‘Do not delude yourself: we are suffering like this through our own fault, having sinned against our own God; the result has been terrible,

¹⁹ but do not think you yourself will go unpunished for attempting to make war on God’.

²⁰ But the mother was especially admirable and worthy of honourable remembrance, for she watched the death of seven sons in the course of a single day, and endured it resolutely because of her hopes in the Lord.

²¹ Indeed she encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors; filled with noble conviction, she reinforced her womanly argument with manly courage, saying to them,

²² ‘I do not know how you appeared in my womb; it was not I who endowed you with breath and life, I had not the shaping of your every part.

²³ It is the creator of the world, ordaining the process of man’s birth and presiding over the origin of all things, who in his mercy will most surely give you back both breath and life, seeing that you now despise your own existence for the sake of his laws.’

²⁴ Antiochus thought he was being ridiculed, suspecting insult in the tone of her voice[*a], and as the youngest was still alive he appealed to him not with mere words but with promises on oath to make him both rich and happy if he would abandon the traditions of his ancestors; he would make him his Friend and entrust him with public office.

²⁵ The young man took no notice at all, and so the king then appealed to the mother, urging her to advise the youth to save his life.

²⁶ After a great deal of urging on his part she agreed to try persuasion on her son.

²⁷ Bending over him, she fooled the cruel tyrant with these words, uttered in the language of their ancestors, ‘My son, have pity on me; I carried you nine months in my womb and suckled you three years, fed you and reared you to the age you are now (and cherished you).

²⁸ I implore you, my child, observe heaven and earth, consider all that is in them, and acknowledge that God made them out of what did not exist, and that mankind comes into being in the same way.

²⁹ Do not fear this executioner, but prove yourself worthy of your brothers, and make death welcome, so that in the day of mercy I may receive you back in your brothers’ company.’

³⁰ She had scarcely ended when the young man said, ‘What are you all waiting for? I will not comply with the king’s ordinance; I obey the ordinance of the Law given to our ancestors through Moses.

³¹ As for you, sir, who have contrived every kind of evil against the Hebrews, you will certainly not escape the hands of God.

³² We are suffering for our own sins;

³³ and if, to punish and discipline us, our living Lord vents his wrath upon us, he will yet be reconciled with his own servants.

³⁴ But you, unholy wretch, bloodiest villain of all mankind, do not be carried away with senseless elation, crowing with false confidence as you raise your hand against his servants,

³⁵ for you have not yet escaped the judgement of God the almighty, the all-seeing.

³⁶ Our brothers already, after enduring their brief pain, now drink of ever-flowing life, by virtue of God’s covenant, while you, by God’s judgement, will have to pay the just penalty for your arrogance.

³⁷ I too, like my brothers, surrender my body and life for the laws of my ancestors, calling on God to show his kindness to our nation and that soon, and by trials and afflictions to bring you to confess that he alone is God,

³⁸ so that with my brothers and myself there may be an end to the wrath of the Almighty, rightly let loose on our whole nation.’

³⁹ The king fell into a rage and treated this one more cruelly than the others, for he was himself smarting from the young man’s scorn.

⁴⁰ And so the last brother met his end undefiled and with perfect trust in the Lord.

⁴¹ The mother was the last to die, after her sons.

⁴² But let this be sufficient account of the ritual meals and excessive torments.