Chapter Five

The bloodshed in Jerusalem caused by Jason, and the shameful end of this lawbreaker’s life (2 Macc 5:1-10). The outrages of Antiochus in Jerusalem (cf. 1 Macc 1:16-28) (2 Macc 5:11-20). The oppression of the people by Antiochus’s cruel overseers (2 Macc 5:21-27).

2 Maccabees 5:1. Around this time Antiochus undertook another campaign into Egypt. On Antiochus’s campaign into Egypt — cf. 1 Macc 1:17 ff.

2 Maccabees 5:2–3. It came to pass that over the whole city, for almost forty days, there appeared in the air horsemen charging about in golden garments, armed with lances in the manner of soldiers, and squadrons of cavalry in orderly formation, and attacks and withdrawals from both sides, and shields turning, and a multitude of spears, and the brandishing of swords, and the shooting of arrows, and the gleam of golden armor and all kinds of armament. Of a similar heavenly apparition Josephus speaks (Jewish War VI, 5, 3) before the last Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem, and this is also confirmed by another, pagan, writer — Tacitus (Hist. V, 3: visae per coelum concurrere acies, rutilantia arma, et subito nubium igne collucere templum). Whether such a heavenly phenomenon — which popular imagination interprets as a portent of terrible wars and political calamities — was a pure product of an excited imagination, or actually represents the result of some inexplicable connection between heaven and earth, between the higher spiritual world and the lower, material one — this, given the limits of our knowledge, remains beyond final explanation.

2 Maccabees 5:4. Therefore all prayed that this apparition might be for good. “All prayed that this apparition might be for good...” — that is, for the victory of the Jewish people, since it in any case portended war.

2 Maccabees 5:5. When afterwards a false rumor spread that Antiochus had died, Jason gathered no fewer than a thousand men and made a sudden attack on the city; when they had ascended the wall and the city had at last been taken, Menelaus fled to the citadel. Jason exploits the rumor of Antiochus’s death for his attack on Menelaus — naturally, because Antiochus was Menelaus’s entire support. The seizure of the city by only a thousand men is perfectly plausible given that the attack was sudden, and also because Jason had quite a few supporters within the city itself who greatly assisted him in this, as Josephus presents the matter (Antiquities XIII, 5, 1).

2 Maccabees 5:6–7. But Jason pitilessly massacred his own fellow citizens, without reflecting that success against one’s kinsmen is the greatest of misfortunes, and imagining that he was winning trophies over enemies rather than his own people. The command, however, he did not attain; and the outcome of his intrigues was that he departed again in disgrace, as a fugitive, to the land of the Ammonites. “The command, however, he did not attain...” — that is, the high priesthood. Menelaus, relying on the citadel, apparently offered such strong resistance to Jason that the latter was again compelled to flee from the city.

2 Maccabees 5:8. The end of his malicious life was that, having been accused before Aretas, ruler of the Arabs, he fled from city to city, pursued and hated by everyone as a transgressor of the laws, and despised as an enemy of his homeland and his fellow citizens, and was driven out into Egypt. “The end of his malicious life was that...” — Greek: πέρας ούν κακής αναστροφής έτυχεν, έγκλεισθείς...; Slavonic more precisely: “the end of an evil life he obtained, enclosed...” More accurately in modern English this could be rendered: “The end, then, of his evil conduct he obtained as follows: shut up by Aretas” — that is, either imprisoned and having escaped, or in the sense of: being denied the possibility of finding refuge with Aretas, owing to the demands of Menelaus or of the Syrian prefect to hand over the fugitive — “he fled from city to city...” — The rulers of Arabia (τύραννος), as Aretas is here called, were at that time the Nabataean kings, whose chief city was Petra. The land of the Ammonites, where Jason had fled, belonged to their domains at that time.

2 Maccabees 5:9. He who had driven so many from their homeland died himself in a foreign land, having come to the Lacedaemonians and hoping, by reason of kinship of origin, to find refuge among them. On the kinship of origin between the Hebrews and the Lacedaemonians — see the note on 1 Macc 12.

2 Maccabees 5:10. He who had left so many without burial was himself left unlamented and did not receive a burial or a tomb among his fathers. “A tomb among his fathers...” — that is, a tomb in the family burial vault on his ancestral soil.

2 Maccabees 5:11. When word of what had happened reached the king, he concluded that Judea was in revolt against him; he set out from Egypt in a rage of soul and took the city by force of arms. “In a rage of soul...” — τεθηριωμένος τή ψυχή; Slavonic: “enraged in soul...” — literally: bestial in soul...

2 Maccabees 5:12–14. He commanded his soldiers to cut down without mercy all those they encountered, and to kill those who took refuge in their houses. So there was a slaughter of young and old, a massacre of men, women, and children, a killing of maidens and infants. In the course of three days eighty thousand perished: forty thousand fell by the sword, and no fewer than the slain were sold into slavery. In 1 Macc 1:24 — this is mentioned only briefly and vaguely, that Antiochus “committed murders...”; the plundering of the temple, however, is described in considerably greater detail (vv. 20–23). Josephus gives only the number of captives, placing this at 10,000 (Antiquities XII, 5, 4).

2 Maccabees 5:15–18. But not content with this, he dared to enter the most holy temple on earth, with Menelaus as his guide — that traitor to the laws and to his homeland. Taking the sacred vessels into his defiled hands, and other things dedicated by other kings for the glorification, glory, and honor of the holy place — seizing them with impious hands, he distributed them. And Antiochus grew arrogant in his thoughts, not perceiving that the Lord had been angered for a little while on account of the sins of those who dwelt in the city, which is why the place had been left without his care. Had they not been caught up in so many sins, then, just as with Heliodorus who was sent by King Seleucus to inspect the treasury, he too would have been punished the moment he burst in and would have abandoned his audacity. The unsuccessful attempt of Heliodorus is spoken of above — III:24 ff.

2 Maccabees 5:19. But the Lord chose the people for the sake of the place, not the place for the sake of the people. “Not the place for the sake of the people, but the people for the sake of the place...” — a saying similar to that of the Savior: “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The temple in and of itself was not the purpose of the election of the people; rather, the election and nurturing of the people was the purpose for which the Lord was pleased to have the temple and the worship conducted therein.

2 Maccabees 5:20–21. Therefore the place itself, having shared in the calamities that befell the people, afterwards shared in the benefits from the Lord; and, having been abandoned by the Almighty in his wrath, it was restored in all its glory once the Supreme Ruler was reconciled. So Antiochus, having taken from the temple one thousand eight hundred talents, hurried off to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance of heart that he could make land navigable by sea and sea passable on foot. “Thinking that he could make land navigable by sea and sea passable on foot...” — that is, considering himself capable of the most impossible things, such as the plundering of the temple just described.

2 Maccabees 5:22. Meanwhile he left overseers to oppress the people: in Jerusalem — Philip, a Phrygian by birth, and in character a man even more cruel than he who had appointed him, On Philip the Phrygian — see 1 Macc 6:14. — “He who had appointed him...” — that is, Antiochus himself.

2 Maccabees 5:23. and in Gerizim — Andronicus; and besides these, Menelaus, who surpassed the others in malice toward the inhabitants and harbored a hostile disposition toward the Jewish citizens. Gerizim, the well-known mountain near Shechem (Deut 11:29), on which the Samaritans had their temple (later VI:2; cf. Josephus, Antiquities XI, 8, 2). The name of the mountain is used in place of the city of Shechem at its foot, in order to express more vividly that the Syrian overseers were installed in the central sites of Jewish and Samaritan worship, where revolts against Syrian rule were most likely to break out. These overseers (ἐπιστάται) are to be distinguished from the inspectors (ἐπίσκοποι) mentioned in 1 Macc 1:51. The latter (ἐπίσκοποι) watched over the execution of the king’s measures and efforts to Hellenize the Jews; the former (ἐπιστάται) were appointed to suppress actual or imagined discontents and disturbances among the people and were probably under the chief command of the military governor of Coele-Syria, Samaria, and Judea. — The Andronicus left as overseer in Gerizim is obviously a different person, distinct from the one mentioned earlier (IV:31 ff.). (Menelaus) “harbored a hostile disposition toward the Jewish citizens,” that is, toward those who remained faithful to their Jewish faith and customs: πολίτης Ιουδαίος — instead of ἀνήρ Ιουδαίος (1 Macc 2:23).

2 Maccabees 5:24. He sent Apollonius, the instigator of impiety, with twenty-two thousand troops, commanding him to kill all the adult men and to sell the women and children. Apollonius mentioned here, the instigator of misfortunes (more accurately in the Slavonic: the hateful leader — μυσάρχης), is the very same chief tax collector mentioned in 1 Macc 1:29.

2 Maccabees 5:25–26. He, coming to Jerusalem and pretending to keep the peace, waited until the holy sabbath day and, catching the Jews in a time of rest, commanded his men to arm themselves. All who had come out to watch this spectacle he killed, and, forcing his way into the city with his troops, he massacred a great multitude of people. “Commanded his men to arm themselves. All who had come out to watch this spectacle he killed...” Evidently something in the nature of maneuvers or military exercises was staged, which everyone was drawn to watch as an innocent spectacle. And this became the death of many.

2 Maccabees 5:27. But Judas Maccabeus, the tenth in his company, withdrew to the wilderness and lived there with his followers in the mountains after the manner of wild animals, feeding on vegetation, so as not to become a participant in the defilement. “The tenth in his company...” — δεκατός που γενηθείς — an expression of cardinal, not ordinal, meaning: the tenth, that is, with nine others, analogous to the expression: ὄγδοον Νώε (2 Pet 2:5) — “Noah the eighth,” that is, with seven other members of his family (“in eight souls”). — “Withdrew to the wilderness...” — εἰς τήν ἔρημον — that is, to the Judean wilderness (see note on 1 Macc 2:29). — “Feeding on vegetation (χορτώδης τροφή — plant-based food), so as not to become a participant in the defilement” — through eating meat, which they were by force and various ruses compelled to eat from animals offered in sacrifice to pagan gods (cf. 1 Macc 1:62).