1   Again, seven brothers with their mother had been arrested, and were being tortured by the king with whips and thongs to force them to eat pork, when one of them, speaking for all, said: 2   ‘What do you expect to learn by interrogating us? We are ready to die rather than break the laws of our fathers.’ 3   The king was enraged and ordered great pans and cauldrons to be heated up, 4   and this was done at once. Then he gave orders that the spokesman's tongue should be cut out and that he should be scalped and mutilated before the eyes of his mother and his six brothers. 5   This wreck of a man the king ordered to be taken, still breathing, to the fire and roasted in one of the pans. As the smoke from it streamed out far and wide, the mother and her sons encouraged each other to die nobly. 6   ‘The Lord God is watching’, they said, ‘and without doubt has compassion on us. Did not Moses tell Israel to their faces in the song denouncing apostasy: “He will have compassion on his servants”?’

7   After the first brother had died in this way, the second was subjected to the same brutality. The skin and hair of his head were torn off, and he was asked: ‘Will you eat, before we tear you limb from limb?’ 8   He replied in his native language, ‘Never!’, and so he in turn underwent the torture. 9   With his last breath, he said: ‘Fiend though

Syrian oppression of the Jews you are, you are setting us free from this present life, and, since we die for his laws, the King of the universe will raise us up to a life everlastingly made new.’

10   After him the third was tortured. When the question was put to him, 11   he at once showed his tongue, boldly held out his hands, and said courageously: ‘The God of heaven gave me these. His laws mean far more to me than they do, and it is from him that I trust to receive them back.’ 12   When they heard this, the king and his followers were amazed at the young man's spirit and his utter disregard for suffering.

13   When he too was dead, they tortured the fourth in the same cruel way. 14   At the point of death, he said to the king: ‘Better to be killed by men and cherish God's promise to raise us again. There will be no resurrection to life for you!’

15    16   Then the fifth was dragged forward for torture. Looking at the king, he said: ‘You have authority over men, mortal as you are, and can do as you please. But do not imagine that God has abandoned our race. 17   Wait and see how his great power will torment you and your descendants.’

18   Next the sixth was brought and said with his dying breath: ‘Do not delude yourself. It is our own fault that we suffer these things; we have sinned against our God and brought these appalling disasters upon ourselves. 19   But do not suppose you will escape the consequences of trying to fight against God.’

20   The mother was the most remarkable of all, and deserves to be remembered with special honour. She watched her seven sons all die in the space of a single day, yet she bore it bravely because she put her trust in the Lord. 21   She encouraged each in turn in her native language. Filled with noble resolution, her woman's thoughts fired by a manly spirit, she said to them: 22   ‘You appeared in my womb, I know not how; it was not I who gave you life and breath and set in order your bodily frames. 23   It is the Creator of the universe who moulds man at his birth and plans the origin of all things. Therefore he, in his mercy, will give you back life and breath again, since now you put his laws above all thought of self.’

24   Antiochus felt that he was being treated with contempt and suspected an insult in her words. The youngest brother was still left, and the king, not content with appealing to him, even assured him on oath that the moment he abandoned his ancestral customs he would

Syrian oppression of the Jews make him rich and prosperous, by enrolling him as a King's Friend and entrusting him with high office. 25   Since the young man paid no attention to him, the king summoned the mother and urged her to advise the lad to save his life. 26   After much urging from the king, she agreed to persuade her son. 27   She leaned towards him, and flouting the cruel tyrant, she said in their native language: ‘My son, take pity on me. I carried you nine months in the womb, suckled you three years, reared you and brought you up to your present age. 28   I beg you, child, look at the sky and the earth; see all that is in them and realize that God made them out of nothing, and that man comes into being in the same way. 29   Do not be afraid of this butcher; accept death and prove yourself worthy of your brothers, so that by God's mercy I may receive you back again along with them.’

30   She had barely finished when the young man spoke out: ‘What are you all waiting for? I will not submit to the king's command; I obey the command of the law given by Moses to our ancestors. 31   And you, King Antiochus, who have devised all kinds of harm for the Hebrews, you will not escape God's hand. 32   We are suffering for our own sins, 33   and though to correct and discipline us our living Lord is angry for a short time, yet he will again be reconciled to his servants. 34   But you, impious man, foulest of the human race, do not indulge vain hopes or be carried away by delusions of greatness, you who lay hands on God's servants. 35   You are not yet safe from the judgement of the almighty, all-seeing God. 36   My brothers have now fallen in loyalty to God's covenant, after brief pain leading to eternal life; ^note but you will pay the just penalty of your insolence by the verdict of God. 37   I, like my brothers, surrender my body and my life for the laws of our fathers. I appeal to God to show mercy speedily to his people and by whips and scourges to bring you to admit that he alone is God. 38   With me and my brothers may the Almighty's anger, which has justly fallen on all our race, be ended!’

39   The king, exasperated by these scornful words, was beside himself with rage. 40   So he treated him worse than the others, and the young man died, putting his whole trust in the Lord, without having incurred defilement. 41   Then finally, after her sons, the mother died.

42   This, then, must conclude our account of the eating of the entrails and the monstrous outrages that accompanied it.

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