Good News [1976], GOOD NEWS BIBLE WITH DEUTEROCANONICALS / APOCRYPHA Today's English Version (AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, New York) [word count] [B15000].
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Visions of a Battle
1 About this time Antiochus the
Fourth made a second attack
against Egypt.
2 For nearly forty
days people all over Jerusalem saw
visions of cavalry troops in gold armor
charging across the sky. The
horsemen were armed with spears
and their swords were drawn.
3 They
were lined up in battle against one
another, attacking and counter-attacking.
Shields were clashing,
there was a rain of spears, and arrows
flew through the air. All the
different kinds of armor and the gold
bridles on the horses flashed in the
sunlight.
4 Everyone in the city
prayed that these visions might be a
good sign.
Jason Attacks Jerusalem
5 When a false report began to
spread that Antiochus had died, Jason
took more than a thousand men
and suddenly attacked Jerusalem.
They drove back the men stationed
on the city walls and finally captured
-- --
the city. Menelaus fled for safety to
the fort, near the Temple hill,
6 while
Jason and his men went on slaughtering
their fellow Jews without
mercy. Jason did not realize that
success against one's own people is
the worst kind of failure. He even
considered his success a victory
over enemies, rather than a defeat of
his own people.
7 But Jason did not
take over the government. Instead
he was forced to flee once again to
the territory of the Ammonites, and
in the end his evil plot brought him
nothing but shame and disgrace,
8 and he died in misery. Aretas, the
ruler of the Arabs, imprisoned him;
he was looked upon as a criminal
and despised because he had betrayed
his own people; everyone was
hunting for him, and he had to run
from town to town. He fled to Egypt
for safety,
9 then to Greece, hoping
to find refuge among the Spartans,
who were related to the Jews. Finally,
this man, who had forced so
many others to flee from their own
country, died as a fugitive in a foreign
land.
10 Jason had killed many
people and left their bodies unburied,
but now his own death was
unmourned. He was not given a funeral
or even buried with his ancestors.
Antiochus Attacks Jerusalem
(1 Maccabees 1.20–63)
11 When the news of what had
happened in Jerusalem reached Antiochus,
he thought the whole country
of Judea was in revolt, and he became
as furious as a wild animal. So
he left Egypt and took Jerusalem by
storm,
12 giving his men orders to cut
down without mercy everyone they
met and to slaughter anyone they
found hiding in the houses.
13 They
murdered everyone—men and
women, boys and girls; even babies
were butchered.
14 Three days later
Jerusalem had lost 80,000 people:
40,000 killed in the attack and at
least that many taken away to be
sold as slaves.
15 But Antiochus was still not satisfied.
He even dared to enter the
holiest Temple in all the world,
guided by Menelaus, who had become
a traitor both to his religion
and to his people.
16 With his filthy
and unholy hands, Antiochus swept
away the sacred objects of worship
and the gifts which other kings had
given to increase the glory and honor
of the Temple.
17 He was so
thrilled with his conquest that he did
not realize that the Lord had let his
holy Temple be defiled because the
sin of the people of Jerusalem had
made him angry for a while.
18 If the
people of Jerusalem had not been involved
in so many sins, Antiochus
would have been punished immediately
and prevented from taking
such a foolish action. He would have
suffered the same fate as Heliodorus,
who was sent by King Seleucus
to inspect the treasury.
19 But the
Lord did not choose his people for
the sake of his Temple; he established
his Temple for the sake of his
people.
20 So the Temple shared in
the people's suffering but also later
shared in their prosperity. The Lord
-- --
abandoned it when he became angry,
but restored it when his anger
had cooled down.
Another Attack against Jerusalem
21 Antiochus took 135,000 pounds
of silver from the Temple and hurried
off to Antioch. Such was his arrogance
that he felt he could make
ships sail across dry land or troops
march across the sea.
22 He appointed
governors to cause trouble
for the people. In Jerusalem he
placed Philip, a man from Phrygia
who was more evil than Antiochus
himself.
23 At Mount Gerizim he
placed Andronicus. In addition to
these, there was Menelaus, who mistreated
his fellow Jews far worse
than the governors did. Antiochus
hated the Jews so much
24 that he
sent an army of 22,000 mercenary
troops from Mysia to Jerusalem under
the command of a man named
Apollonius, with orders to kill every
man in the city and to sell the
women and boys as slaves.
25 Apollonius
arrived in Jerusalem, pretending
to be on a peace mission. Then
on a Sabbath, when all the Jews
were observing the day of rest, he
led his troops, who were fully
armed, in a parade outside the city.
26 Suddenly he commanded his men
to kill everyone who had come out
to see them. They rushed into the
city and murdered a great many
people.
27 But Judas Maccabeus and about
nine others escaped into the barren
mountains, where they lived like
wild animals. In order not to defile
themselves, they ate only plants
which they found growing there.
Good News [1976], GOOD NEWS BIBLE WITH DEUTEROCANONICALS / APOCRYPHA Today's English Version (AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, New York) [word count] [B15000].
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