1But Judas, also called Maccabeus, and his companions went into the villages secretly and summoned their kinsmen. They also rallied those who had remained in Judaism and gathered about six thousand men.
2And they called upon the Lord to look upon the people who were oppressed by everyone, and also to have pity on the temple that had been profaned by impious men;
3to have mercy also on the city that was being destroyed and was about to be leveled, and to hear the blood crying out to him;
4and to remember the lawless destruction of the innocent infants and the blasphemies committed against his name, and to hate wickedness.
5But once Maccabeus had organized a company, he became irresistible to the Gentiles, for the Lord’s anger had turned to mercy.
6He made unexpected attacks on cities and countrysides and set them on fire; and seizing strategic places, he routed not a few of the enemy.
7He especially used the nights for such attacks, and the report of his valor resounded everywhere.
8So Philip, seeing that the man was making progress little by little and advancing more frequently in his successes, wrote to Ptolemy, the governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, to come to the aid of the king’s affairs.
9He quickly appointed Nicanor son of Patroclus, one of the First Friends, and sent him with no fewer than twenty thousand men of all nations to wipe out the entire race of Judea. He also appointed with him Gorgias, a general experienced in the arts of war.
10And Nicanor resolved to pay in full the king’s tribute to the Romans, which was two thousand talents, from the sale of Jewish captives.
11Immediately he sent to the coastal cities, inviting them to a sale of Jewish captives, promising to deliver ninety captives for a talent. He did not expect the judgment from the Almighty that was about to overtake him.
12But word of Nicanor’s advance reached Judas; and when he informed those with him of the army’s arrival,
13the cowardly and those who distrusted God’s justice began to scatter and leave their posts.
14But the others sold all their remaining possessions and together asked the Lord to rescue those who had been sold by the impious Nicanor before any encounter had taken place.
15And if not for their own sakes, then for the sake of the covenants with their fathers, and for the sake of the invocation of his holy and majestic name upon them.
16And Maccabeus gathered his men, six thousand in number, and exhorted them not to be terrified by the enemy, nor to fear the great number of the Gentiles who had come against them unjustly, but to fight nobly,
17keeping before their eyes the lawless outrage they had committed against the holy place, the mistreatment of the mocked city, and also the overthrow of their ancestral way of life.
18‘For they,’ he said, ‘trust in weapons and in acts of daring, but we trust in the almighty God, who is able with a single nod to strike down both those who are coming against us and the whole world.’
19He also recounted to them the acts of divine assistance that had occurred in the times of their ancestors, including the one in the time of Sennacherib, when one hundred and eighty-five thousand perished.
20and the battle that took place in Babylonia against the Galatians, how a force of eight thousand, together with four thousand Macedonians, went into the engagement. When the Macedonians were hard-pressed, the six thousand destroyed one hundred and twenty thousand because of the help that came to them from heaven, and they took much plunder.
21With these words he made them courageous and ready to die for the laws and their country, and he divided the army into four parts.
22He appointed his brothers, Simon, Joseph, and Jonathan, as commanders of divisions, assigning to each one thousand five hundred men.
23He also appointed Eleazar. Then, after reading aloud from the holy book and giving the watchword, ‘God’s help,’ Judas himself took command of the first division and engaged Nicanor.
24And with the Almighty as their ally, they slaughtered more than nine thousand of the enemy, and wounded and maimed the greater part of Nicanor’s army, forcing them all to flee.
25They took the money of those who had come to buy them. And after pursuing them for a considerable distance, they returned, being constrained by the hour.
26For it was the day before the Sabbath, for which reason they did not prolong their pursuit.
27After collecting the enemy’s weapons and stripping them of their spoils, they turned to the Sabbath, abundantly blessing and giving thanks to the Lord who had preserved them for this day, and who had appointed for them a beginning of his mercy.
28After the Sabbath, they distributed a portion of the spoils to the maimed, the widows, and the orphans, and the rest they divided among themselves and their children.
29When they had done these things, they made a common supplication, asking the merciful Lord to be fully reconciled to his servants.
30Clashing with the forces of Timothy and Bacchides, they killed more than twenty thousand of them and became masters of high strongholds. They divided a great amount of plunder, giving equal shares to the maimed, orphans, widows, and also the elderly.
31And after carefully gathering the weapons, they stored everything in suitable places, and the rest of the spoils they brought to Jerusalem.
32And they killed the commander of Timothy’s forces, a most unholy man who had greatly distressed the Jews.
33And celebrating the victory in their homeland, they set on fire those who had burned the sacred gates, and also Callisthenes, who had fled into a small house; thus he received the reward worthy of his impiety.
34But the thrice-accursed Nicanor, the one who had brought three thousand merchants for the sale of the Jews,
35was humbled by the help of the Lord, by those he had considered to be of least account. Casting off his splendid attire, he fled through the interior like a solitary runaway slave and arrived in Antioch, having achieved the ultimate success in the destruction of his army.
36And the man who had undertaken to secure the tribute for the Romans from the prisoners captured at Jerusalem was reporting that the Jews had a champion, and that for this reason the Jews were invulnerable, because they followed the laws He had ordained.
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