4 Maccabees 8–12: How Sweet Is Every Form of Death": The Seven Brothers

then, indeed, vehemently swayed with emotion, he commanded to bring others of the adult Hebrews, and if they would eat of the unclean thing, to let them go when they had eaten; but if they objected, to torment them more grievously. The tyrant having given this charge, seven kindred were brought into his presence, along with their aged mother. They were handsome, modest, well-born, and altogether comely. When the tyrant saw them encircling their mother as in a dance, he was pleased with them. Being struck with their becoming and innocent manner, smiled at them, and calling them near, said, “O youths, with favorable feelings, I admire the beauty of each of you. Greatly honouring so numerous a band of kindred, I not only counsel you not to share the madness of the old man who has been tortured before, but I beg you to yield, and to enjoy my friendship; for I possess the power, not only of punishing those who disobey my commands, but of doing good to those who obey them. Put confidence in me, then, and you will receive places of authority in my government, if you forsake your national way of life, and, conforming to the Greek way of life, alter your rule and revel in youth’s delights. For if you provoke me by your disobedience, you will compel me to destroy every one of you with terrible punishments by tortures. Have mercy, then, upon your own selves, whom I, although an enemy, am compassionate for your age and attractive appearance. Won’t you consider this: that if you disobey, there will be nothing left for you but to die in torture?”

When he had said this, he ordered the instruments of torture to be brought forward, that fear might prevail upon them to eat unclean meat. When the spearman brought forward the wheels, the racks, the hooks, caldrons, pans, finger-racks, iron hands and wedges, and bellows, the tyrant continued: “Fear, young men, and the righteousness which you worship will be merciful to you if you transgress because of compulsion.”

Now they having listened to these words of persuasion, and seeing the fearful instruments, not only were not afraid, but even answered the arguments of the tyrant, and through their good reasoning destroyed his power. Now let’s consider the matter. Had any of them been weak-spirited and cowardly among them, what reasoning would they have employed but these? “O wretched that we are, and exceedingly senseless! When the king exhorts us, and calls us to his bounty, should we not obey him? Why do we cheer ourselves with vain counsels, and venture upon a disobedience bringing death? Shall we not fear, O kindred, the instruments of torture and weigh the threatenings of torment and shun this vain-glory and destructive pride? Let’s have compassion upon our age and relent over the years of our mother. Let’s bear in mind that we will be dying as rebels. Divine Justice will pardon us if we fear the king through necessity. Why withdraw ourselves from a most sweet life, and deprive ourselves of this pleasant world? Let’s not oppose necessity, nor seek vain-glory by our own torture. The law itself wouldn’t arbitrarily put us to death because we dread torture. Why has such angry zeal taken root in us, and such fatal obstinacy approved itself to us, when we might live unmolested by the king?”

But the young men didn’t say or think anything of this kind when about to be tortured. For they were well aware of the sufferings, and masters of the pains. So that as soon as the tyrant had ceased counselling them to eat the unclean, they all with one voice, as from the same heart said:

“Why do you delay, O tyrant? For we are more ready to die than to transgress the injunctions of our fathers. We would be disgracing our fathers if we didn’t obey the law, and take knowledge for our guide. O tyrant, counselor of law-breaking, do not, hating us as you do, pity us more than we pity ourselves. For we consider your escape to be worse than death. You try to scare us by threatening us with death by tortures, as though you had learned nothing by the death of Eleazar. But if aged men of the Hebrews have died in the cause of religion after enduring torture, more rightly should we younger men die, scorning your cruel tortures, which our aged instructor overcame. Make the attempt, then, O tyrant. If you put us to death for our religion, don’t think that you harm us by torturing us. For we through this ill-treatment and endurance will gain the rewards of virtue. But you, for the wicked and despotic slaughter of us, will, from the Divine vengeance, endure eternal torture by fire.”

When they had said this, the tyrant was not only exasperated against them for being disobedient, but enraged with them for being ungrateful. So, at his bidding, the torturers brought the oldest of them, and tearing through his tunic, bound his hands and arms on each side with straps. When they had labored hard in scourging him without effect, they hurled him on the wheel. The noble youth, extended upon this, became dislocated. With every member disjointed, he denounced the tyrant, saying, “O most accursed tyrant, and enemy of heavenly justice, and cruel-hearted, I am no murderer, nor sacrilegious man, whom you torture, but a defender of the Divine law.”

And when the spearmen said, “Consent to eat, that you may be released from your tortures,” he answered, “Not so powerful, O accursed lackeys, is your wheel, as to stifle my reasoning. Cut my limbs, and burn my flesh, and twist my joints. For through all my torments I will convince you that the children of the Hebrews are alone unconquered on behalf of virtue.”

While he was saying this, they heaped up fuel, and setting fire to it, strained him on the wheel still more. The wheel was defiled all over with blood. The hot ashes were quenched by the droppings of gore, and pieces of flesh were scattered about the axles of the machine. Although the framework of his bones was now destroyed, the high-minded and Abrahamic youth didn’t groan. But, as though transformed by fire into immortality, he nobly endured the rackings, saying, “Imitate me, O kindred. Never desert your station, nor renounce my brotherhood in courage. Fight the holy and honorable fight of religion, by which means our just and paternal Providence, becoming merciful to the nation, will punish the pestilent tyrant.” Saying this, the revered youth abruptly closed his life.

When all admired his courageous soul, the spearmen brought forward him who was second oldest, and having put on iron gauntlets with sharp hooks, bound him to the rack. When, on enquiring whether he would eat before he was tortured, they heard his noble sentiment. After they with the iron gauntlets had violently dragged all the flesh from the neck to the chin, the panther-like animals tore off the very skin of his head, but he, bearing with firmness this misery, said, “How sweet is every form of death for the religion of our fathers!” Then he said to the tyrant, “Don’t you think, most cruel of all tyrants, that you are now tortured more than I, finding your arrogant conception of tyranny conquered by our perseverance in behalf of our religion? For I lighten my suffering by the pleasures which are connected with virtue. But you are tortured with threatenings for impiety. You won’t escape, most corrupt tyrant, the vengeance of Divine wrath.”

Now this one endured this praiseworthy death. The third was brought along, and exhorted by many to taste and save his life. But he cried out and said, “Don’t you know that the father of those who are dead is my father also, and that the same mother bore me, and that I was brought up in the same way? I don’t renounce the noble relationship of my kindred. Now then, whatever instrument of vengeance you have, apply it to my body, for you aren’t able to touch my soul, even if you want to.” But they, highly incensed at his boldness of speech, dislocated his hands and feet with racking engines, and wrenching them from their sockets, dismembered him. They dragged around his fingers, his arms, his legs, and his ankles. Not being able by any means to strangle him, they tore off his skin, together with the extreme tips of his fingers, and then dragged him to the wheel, around which his vertebral joints were loosened, and he saw his own flesh torn to shreds, and streams of blood flowing from his entrails. When about to die, he said, “We, O accursed tyrant, suffer this for the sake of Divine education and virtue. But you, for your impiety and blood shedding, will endure unceasing torments.”

Thus having died worthily of his kindred, they dragged forward the fourth, saying, “Don’t share the madness of your kindred, but respect the king and save yourself.”

But he said to them, “You don’t have a fire so scorching as to make me play the coward. By the blessed death of my kindred, and the eternal punishment of the tyrant, and the glorious life of the pious, I will not repudiate the noble brotherhood. Invent, O tyrant, tortures, that you may learn, even through them, that I am the brother of those tormented before.”

When he had said this, the blood-thirsty, murderous, and unholy Antiochus ordered his tongue to be cut out. But he said, “Even if you take away the organ of speech, God still hears the silent. Behold, my tongue is extended, cut it off; for in spite of that you won’t silence our reasoning. We gladly lose our limbs on behalf of God. But God will speedily find you, since you cut off the tongue, the instrument of divine melody.”

When he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said, “I don’t intend, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is on behalf of virtue. But I have come of my own accord, that by my death you may owe heavenly vengeance and punishment for more crimes. O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood? Does it seem evil to you that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law? But this is worthy of honors, not torments, if you had been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God. Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.”

As he said this, the spearbearers bound him and drew him to the rack, to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion-fashion. With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said, “A great favor you bestow upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.”

He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out. On the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said, “I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old. I was born and reared to the same end. We are bound to die also on behalf of the same cause. So if you think it is proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!”

As he said this, they brought him to the wheel. Extended upon this, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath. Having heated sharp spits, they stabbed them into his back; and having pierced his sides, they burned away his entrails. He, while tormented, said, “O good and holy contest, in which for the sake of religion, we kindred have been called to the arena of pain, and have not been conquered. For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered. Armed with upright virtue, I also will depart with my kindred. I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O inventor of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious. We six youths have destroyed your tyranny. For isn’t your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction? Your fire is cold to us. Your racks are painless, and your violence harmless. For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders. Through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.”

When he, too, had undergone blessed martyrdom, and died in the cauldron into which he had been thrown, the seventh, the youngest of all, came forward, whom the tyrant pitying, though he had been dreadfully reproached by his kindred, seeing him already encompassed with chains, had him brought nearer, and endeavored to counsel him, saying, “You see the end of the madness of your kindred, for they have died in torture through disobedience. You, if disobedient, having been miserably tormented, will yourself perish prematurely. But if you obey, you will be my friend, and have a charge over the affairs of the kingdom.” Having thus exhorted him, he sent for the boy’s mother, that, by showing compassion to her for the loss of so many sons, he might incline her, through the hope of safety, to make the survivor obedient.

He, after his mother had urged him on in the Hebrew tongue, (as we will soon relate) said, “Release me that I may speak to the king and all his friends.” They, rejoicing exceedingly at the promise of the youth, quickly let him go. He, running up to the pans, said, “Impious tyrant, and most blasphemous man, were you not ashamed, having received prosperity and a kingdom from God, to kill His servants, and to rack the doers of godliness? Therefore the divine vengeance is reserving you for eternal fire and torments, which will cling to you for all time. Weren’t you ashamed, man as you are, yet most savage, to cut out the tongues of men of like feeling and origin, and having thus abused to torture them? But they, bravely dying, fulfilled their religion toward God. But you will groan as you deserve for having slain without cause the champions of virtue. Therefore,” he continued, “I myself, being about to die, will not forsake my kindred. I call upon the God of my fathers to be merciful to my race. But you, both living and dead, he will punish.” Thus having prayed, he hurled himself into the pans; and so expired.