4 Maccabees 4–7: Let My Blood Be a Purification for Them": The Temple, the Tyrant, and Eleazar

For a certain man named Simon, who was in opposition to an honorable and good man who once held the high priesthood for life, named Onias. After slandering Onias in every way, Simon couldn’t injure him with the people, so he went away as an exile, with the intention of betraying his country. When coming to Apollonius, the military governor of Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia, he said, “Having good will to the king’s affairs, I have come to inform you that tens of thousands in private wealth is laid up in the treasuries of Jerusalem which do not belong to the temple, but belong to King Seleucus.” Apollonius, acquainting himself with the particulars of this, praised Simon for his care of the king’s interests, and going up to Seleucus informed him of the treasure. Getting authority about it, and quickly advancing into our country with the accursed Simon and a very heavy force, he said that he came with the commands of the king that he should take the private money of the treasury. The nation, indignant at this proclamation, and replying to the effect that it was extremely unfair that those who had committed deposits to the sacred treasury should be deprived of them, resisted as well as they could. But Appolonius went away with threats into the temple. The priests, with the women and children, asked God to throw his shield over the holy, despised place, and Appolonius was going up with his armed force to seize the treasure, when angels from heaven appeared riding on horseback, all radiant in armor, filling them with much fear and trembling. Apollonius fell half dead on the court which is open to all nations, and extended his hands to heaven, and implored the Hebrews, with tears, to pray for him, and take away the wrath of the heavenly army. For he said that he had sinned, so as to be consequently worthy of death, and that if he were saved, he would proclaim to all people the blessedness of the holy place. Onias the high priest, induced by these words, although for other reasons anxious that King Seleucus wouldn’t suppose that Apollonius was slain by human device and not by Divine punishment, prayed for him; and he being thus unexpectedly saved, departed to report to the king what had happened to him. But on the death of Seleucus the king, his son Antiochus Epiphanes succeeded to the kingdom—a terrible man of arrogant pride.

He, having deposed Onias from the high priesthood, appointed his brother Jason to be high priest, who had made a covenant, if he would give him this authority, to pay yearly three thousand six hundred and sixty talents. He committed to him the high priesthood and rulership over the nation. He both changed the manner of living of the people, and perverted their civil customs into all lawlessness. So that he not only erected a gymnasium on the very citadel of our country, but neglected the guardianship of the temple. Because of that, Divine vengeance was grieved and instigated Antiochus himself against them. For being at war with Ptolemy in Egypt, he heard that on a report of his death being spread abroad, the inhabitants of Jerusalem had exceedingly rejoiced, and he quickly marched against them. Having subdued them, he established a decree that if any of them lived according to the ancestral laws, he should die. When he could by no means destroy by his decrees the obedience to the law of the nation, but saw all his threats and punishments without effect, for even women, because they continued to circumcise their children, were flung down a precipice along with them, knowing beforehand of the punishment. When, therefore, his decrees were disregarded by the people, he himself compelled by means of tortures every one of this race, by tasting forbidden meats, to renounce the Jewish religion.

The tyrant Antiochus, therefore, sitting in public state with his assessors upon a certain lofty place, with his armed troops standing in a circle around him, commanded his spearbearers to seize every one of the Hebrews, and to compel them to taste swine’s flesh and things offered to idols. Should any of them be unwilling to eat the accursed food, they were to be tortured on the wheel and so killed. When many had been seized, a foremost man of the assembly, a Hebrew, by name Eleazar, a priest by family, by profession a lawyer, and advanced in years, and for this reason known to many of the king’s followers, was brought near to him.

Antiochus, seeing him, said, “I would counsel you, old man, before your tortures begin, to taste the swine’s flesh, and save your life; for I feel respect for your age and hoary head, which since you have had so long, you appear to me to be no philosopher in retaining the superstition of the Jews. For therefore, since nature has conferred upon you the most excellent flesh of this animal, do you loathe it? It seems senseless not to enjoy what is pleasant, yet not disgraceful; and from notions of sinfulness, to reject the gifts of nature. You will be acting, I think, still more senselessly, if you follow vain conceits about the truth. You will, moreover, be despising me to your own punishment. Won’t you awake from your trifling philosophy, give up the folly of your notions, and regaining understanding worthy of your age, search into the truth of an expedient course? Won’t you respect my kindly admonition and have pity on your own years? For bear in mind that if there is any power which watches over this religion of yours, it will pardon you for all transgressions of the law which you commit through compulsion.”

While the tyrant incited him in this manner to the unlawful eating of meat, Eleazar begged permission to speak. Having received permission to speak, he began to address the people as follows: “We, O Antiochus, who are persuaded that we live under a divine law, consider no compulsion to be so forcible as obedience to that law. Therefore we consider that we ought not to transgress the law in any way. Indeed, were our law (as you suppose) not truly divine, and if we wrongly think it divine, we would have no right even in that case to destroy our sense of religion. Don’t think that eating unclean meat is a trifling offense. For transgression of the law, whether in small or great matters, is of equal importance; for in either case the law is equally slighted. But you deride our philosophy, as though we lived in it irrationally. Yet it instructs us in self-control, so that we are superior to all pleasures and lusts; and it trains us in courage, so that we cheerfully undergo every grievance. It instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we give what is due. It teaches us piety, so that we properly worship the one and only God. That is why we don’t eat the unclean; for believing that the law was established by God, we are convinced that the Creator of the world, in giving his laws, sympathizes with our nature. Those things which are suitable for our souls, he has directed us to eat; but those which are not, he has forbidden. But, tyrant-like, you not only force us to break the law, but also to eat, that you may ridicule us as we thus profanely eat. But you won’t have this cause of laughter against me, nor will I transgress the sacred oaths of my forefathers to keep the law. No, not if you pluck out my eyes, and consume my entrails. I am not so old, and void of courage as to not be youthful in reason and in defense of my religion. Now then, prepare your wheels, and kindle a fiercer flame. I will not so pity my old age, as on my account to break the law of my country. I will not play false to you, O law, my instructor, or forsake you, O beloved self-control! I will not put you to shame, O philosopher Reason, or deny you, O honored priesthood and knowledge of the law. Mouth! You shall not pollute my old age, nor the full stature of a perfect life. My ancestors will receive me as pure, not having feared your compulsion, even to death. For you will rule like a tyrant over the ungodly, but you will not lord it over my thoughts about religion, either by your arguments, or through deeds.”

When Eleazar had in this manner answered the exhortations of the tyrant, the spearbearers came up, and rudely dragged Eleazar to the instruments of torture. First, they stripped the old man, adorned as he was with the beauty of piety. Then tying back his arms and hands, they disdainfully flogged him. A herald opposite cried out, “Obey the commands of the king!”

But the high-minded and truly noble Eleazar, as one tortured in a dream, ignored it. But raising his eyes on high to heaven, the old man’s flesh was stripped off by the scourges, and his blood streamed down, and his sides were pierced through. Falling on the ground from his body having no power to endure the pains, he still kept his reasoning upright and unbending. Then one of the harsh spearbearers rushed at him and began to kick him in the side to force him to get up again after he fell. But he endured the pains, despised the cruelty, and persevered through the indignities. Like a noble athlete, the old man, when struck, vanquished his torturers. His face sweating, and he panting for breath, he was admired even by the torturers for his courage.

Therefore, partly in pity for his old age, partly from the sympathy of acquaintance, and partly in admiration of his endurance, some of the attendants of the king said, “Why do you unreasonably destroy yourself, O Eleazar, with these miseries? We will bring you some meat cooked by yourself, and you can save yourself by pretending that you have eaten swine’s flesh.”

Eleazar, as though the advice more painfully tortured him, cried out, “Let us who are children of Abraham not be so evil advised as to give way and make use of an unbecoming pretense. For it would be irrational, if having lived up to old age in all truth, and having scrupulously guarded our character for it, we would now turn back and ourselves become a pattern of impiety to the young, as being an example of eating pollution. It would be disgraceful if we would live on some short time, and that scorned by all men for cowardice, and be condemned by the tyrant for cowardice by not contending to the death for our divine law. Therefore you, O children of Abraham, die nobly for your religion. You spearbearers of the tyrant, why do you linger?”

Beholding him so high-minded against misery, and not changing at their pity, they led him to the fire. Then with their wickedly contrived instruments they burned him on the fire, and poured stinking fluids down into his nostrils.

He being at length burned down to the bones, and about to expire, raised his eyes Godward, and said, “You know, O God, that when I might have been saved, I am slain for the sake of the law by tortures of fire. Be merciful to your people, and be satisfied with the punishment of me on their account. Let my blood be a purification for them, and take my life in exchange for theirs.” Thus speaking, the holy man departed, noble in his torments, and even to the agonies of death resisted in his reasoning for the sake of the law. Confessedly, therefore, religious reasoning is master of the emotions. For had the emotions been superior to reasoning, I would have given them the witness of this mastery. But now, since reasoning conquered the emotions, we befittingly award it the authority of first place. It is only fair that we should allow that the power belongs to reasoning, since it masters external miseries. It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so. I prove that reasoning has not only mastered pains, but that it is also superior to the pleasures, and withstands them.

The reasoning of our father Eleazar, like a first-rate pilot, steering the vessel of piety in the sea of emotions, and flouted by the threats of the tyrant, and overwhelmed with the breakers of torture, in no way shifted the rudder of piety until it sailed into the harbor of victory over death. No besieged city has ever held out against many and various war machines as that holy man did when his pious soul was tried with the fiery trial of tortures and rackings and moved his besiegers through the religious reasoning that shielded him. For father Eleazar, projecting his disposition, broke the raging waves of the emotions as with a jutting cliff. O priest worthy of the priesthood! You didn’t pollute your sacred teeth, nor make your appetite, which had always embraced the clean and lawful, a partaker of profanity. O harmonizer with the law, and sage devoted to a divine life! Of such a character ought those to be who perform the duties of the law at the risk of their own blood, and defend it with generous sweat by sufferings even to death. You, father, have gloriously established our right government by your endurance; and making of much account our past service, prevented its destruction, and by your deeds, have made credible the words of philosophy. O aged man of more power than tortures, elder more vigorous than fire, greatest king over the emotions, Eleazar! For as father Aaron, armed with a censer, hastening through the consuming fire, vanquished the flame-bearing angel, so, Eleazar, the descendant of Aaron, wasted away by the fire, didn’t give up his reasoning. What is most wonderful is that though he was an old man, though the labors of his body were now spent, his muscles were relaxed, and his sinews worn out, he recovered youth. By the spirit of reasoning, and the reasoning of Isaac, he rendered powerless the many-headed rack. O blessed old age, and reverend hoar head, and life obedient to the law, which the faithful seal of death perfected. If, then, an old man, through religion, despised tortures even to death, then certainly religious reasoning is ruler of the emotions. But perhaps some might say, “It is not all who conquer emotions, as not all possess wise reasoning.” But those who have meditated upon religion with their whole heart, these alone can master the emotions of the flesh: they who believe that to God they don’t die; for, as our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they live to God. This circumstance, then, is by no means an objection, that some who have weak reasoning are governed by their emotions, since what person, walking religiously by the whole rule of philosophy, and believing in God, and knowing that it is a blessed thing to endure all kinds of hardships for virtue, would not, for the sake of religion, master his emotion? For only the wise and brave man is lord over his emotions. This is why even boys, trained with the philosophy of religious reasoning, have conquered still more bitter tortures; for when the tyrant was manifestly vanquished in his first attempt, in being unable to force the old man to eat the unclean thing,