1About this time, Antiochus undertook his second expedition into Egypt.
2It happened that for almost forty days, throughout the whole city, horsemen appeared charging through the air, wearing gold-embroidered robes and armed with lances in battle array,
3and the drawing of swords, and squadrons of horses drawn up in formation, and charges and pursuits on both sides, and the brandishing of shields, and a multitude of spears, and the hurling of missiles, and the flashing of golden armor, and breastplates of every kind.
4Therefore everyone prayed that the apparition might portend good.
5But when a false rumor arose that Antiochus had died, Jason took no less than a thousand men and suddenly launched an attack on the city. When the defenders on the wall were driven back and the city was finally on the verge of being captured, Menelaus fled for refuge into the citadel.
6But Jason mercilessly slaughtered his own citizens, not realizing that success against one’s own kin is the greatest misfortune, thinking he was winning trophies from enemies and not from his own countrymen.
7He did not gain power, but the end of his plot brought him shame, and he went away again as a fugitive into the land of Ammon.
8So he met a wicked end: accused before Aretas, the ruler of the Arabs, he fled from city to city, pursued by everyone, hated as an apostate from the laws, and detested as the executioner of his country and fellow citizens, until he was cast ashore in Egypt.
9He who had driven many from their own country perished in a foreign land; he had gone to the Lacedaemonians, expecting to find shelter because of their kinship.
10He who had cast out a multitude to lie unburied was himself unmourned, and he had no funeral of any kind, nor any share in his ancestral tomb.
11When reports of what had happened reached the king, he concluded that Judea was in revolt. So, marching from Egypt in a beastly rage, he took the city by storm.
12And he commanded his soldiers to cut down without mercy those they encountered and to slaughter those who fled up into their houses.
13So there was a killing of young and old, a destruction of young men, women, and children, and a slaughter of virgins and infants.
14In the course of three days, eighty thousand were destroyed: forty thousand in hand-to-hand combat, and no fewer than the slain were sold into slavery.
15But not content with this, he dared to enter the most holy temple in all the earth, with Menelaus as his guide—the man who had become a traitor to both the laws and his country.
16With his polluted hands he took the sacred vessels, and with his profane hands he swept away the votive offerings that other kings had set up for the enhancement, glory, and honor of the place.
17Antiochus became arrogant, not understanding that the Master was angry for a short time because of the sins of the city’s inhabitants, and that for this reason the place had been overlooked.
18But if they had not been entangled in many sins, Antiochus would have been flogged the moment he advanced and turned back from his audacity, just like Heliodorus, who was sent by King Seleucus to inspect the treasury.
19But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the place, but the place for the sake of the nation.
20Therefore the place itself, having shared in the misfortunes that befell the nation, afterward shared in its blessings. And the place that was forsaken in the wrath of the Almighty was again restored with all glory in the reconciliation of the great Master.
21So Antiochus, having carried away eighteen hundred talents from the temple, quickly departed for Antioch, thinking in his arrogance to make the land navigable and the sea passable on foot, because of the haughtiness of his heart.
22And he left behind governors to oppress the nation: in Jerusalem, Philip, a Phrygian by birth and more barbarous in character than the one who appointed him;
23and at Gerizim, Andronicus. And besides these, there was Menelaus, who lorded it over the citizens more wickedly than the others, holding a hostile disposition toward his fellow Jewish citizens.
24And he sent Apollonius, the commander of the Mysians, with an army of twenty-two thousand, ordering him to slaughter all those of military age and to sell the women and the younger men.
25When this man arrived in Jerusalem, he pretended to be peaceful and waited until the holy day of the Sabbath. Then, finding the Jews at rest, he ordered his men to arm themselves.
26He cut down all those who had come out to watch the spectacle, and then, rushing into the city with his armed men, he slaughtered a great multitude.
27But Judas, also called Maccabeus, withdrew with about nine others and lived in the mountains in the manner of wild beasts with his companions. They lived on a diet of plants to avoid sharing in the defilement.
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