4 Maccabees 13–15: Religion More Desirable to a Mother Than Children": The Brothers' Bond, and the Mother's Choice

If then, the seven kindred despised troubles even to death, it is admitted on all sides that righteous reasoning is absolute master over the emotions. For just as if they had eaten of the unholy as slaves to the emotions, we would have said that they had been conquered by them. Now it is not so. But by means of the reasoning which is praised by God, they mastered their emotions. It is impossible to overlook the leadership of reflection, for it gained the victory over both emotions and troubles. How, then, can we avoid according to these men mastery of emotion through right reasoning, since they didn’t withdraw from the pains of fire? For just as by means of towers projecting in front of harbors men break the threatening waves, and thus assure a still course to vessels entering port, so that seven-towered right-reasoning of the young men, securing the harbour of religion, conquered the tempest of emotions. For having arranged a holy choir of piety, they encouraged one another, saying, “Brothers, may we die brotherly for the law. Let us imitate the three young men in Assyria who despised the equally afflicting furnace. Let’s not be cowards in the manifestation of piety.” One said, “Courage, brother!” and another, “Nobly endure!” Another said, “Remember of what stock you are;” and by the hand of our father Isaac endured to be slain for the sake of piety. One and all, looking at each other serene and confident, said, “Let’s sacrifice with all our heart our souls to God who gave them, and employ our bodies for the keeping of the law. Let’s not fear him who thinks he kills; for great is the trial of soul and danger of eternal torment laid up for those who transgress the commandment of God. Let’s arm ourselves, therefore, in the self-control, which is divine reasoning. If we suffer like this, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will receive us, and all the fathers will commend us. As each one of the kindred was hauled away, the rest exclaimed, “Don’t disgrace us, O brother, nor falsify those who died before you!”

Now you are not ignorant of the charm of brotherhood, which the Divine and all wise Providence has imparted through fathers to children, and has engendered through the mother’s womb. These brothers remained an equal time in their mother’s womb, and were formed for the same period, and nourished by the same blood, and were perfected through the same principle of life. They were brought forth at equal intervals, and sucked milk from the same fountains. Their brotherly souls were reared up lovingly together, and increase more powerfully by reason of this simultaneous rearing, and by daily companionship, and by other education, and exercise in the law of God.

Brotherly love being thus sympathetically constituted, the seven kindred had a more sympathetic mutual harmony. For being educated in the same law, and practicing the same virtues, and reared up in a just course of life, they increased this harmony with each other. For the same ardor for what is right and honorable increased their goodwill and harmony toward each other. For it acting along with religion, made their brotherly feeling more desirable to them. And yet, although nature, companionship, and virtuous morals increased their brotherly love, those who were left endured to see their kindred, who were mistreated for their religion, tortured even to death.

More than this, they even urged them on to this mistreatment; so that they not only despised pains themselves, but they even got the better of their affections of brotherly love. Reasoning is more royal than a king, and freer than freemen! What a sacred and harmonious concert of the seven kindred as concerning piety! None of the seven youths turned cowardly or shrank back from death. But all of them, as though running the road to immortality, hastened on to death through tortures. For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed to death for religion’s sake, as through the immortal soul of religion. O holy seven of harmonious kindred! For as the seven days of creation, about religion, so the youths, circling around the number seven, annulled the fear of torments. We now shudder at the recital of the affliction of those young men; but they not only saw, and not only heard the immediate execution of the threat, but undergoing it, persevered; and that through the pains of fire. What could be more painful? For the power of fire, being sharp and quick, speedily dissolved their bodies. Don’t think it wonderful that reasoning ruled over those men in their torments, when even a woman’s mind despised more manifold pains. For the mother of those seven youths endured the rackings of each of her children.

Consider how comprehensive is the love of offspring, which draws every one to sympathy of affection, where irrational animals possess a similar sympathy and love for their offspring with men. The tame birds frequenting the roofs of our houses defend their fledglings. Others build their nests and hatch their young on the tops of mountains, in the precipices of valleys, and the holes and tops of trees, and keep intruders away. If not able to do this, they fly circling round them in agony of affection, calling out in their own note, and save their offspring in whatever manner they are able. But why should we point attention to the sympathy toward children shown by irrational animals? Even bees, at the season of honey-making, attack all who approach, and pierce with their sting, as with a sword, those who draw near their hive, and repel them even to death. But sympathy with her children didn’t turn away the mother of the young men, who had a spirit kindred with that of Abraham.

O reasoning of the sons, lord over the emotions, and religion more desirable to a mother than children! The mother, when two things were set before her, religion and the safety of her seven sons for a time, on the conditional promise of a tyrant, rather elected the religion which according to God preserves to eternal life. In what way can I describe ethically the affections of parents toward their children, the resemblance of soul and of form impressed into the small type of a child in a wonderful manner, especially through the greater sympathy of mothers with the feelings of those born of them! For by how much mothers are by nature weak in disposition and prolific in offspring, by so much the fonder they are of children. Of all mothers, the mother of the seven was the fondest of children, who in seven childbirths had deeply engendered love toward them. Through her many pains undergone in connection with each one, she was compelled to feel sympathy with them; yet, through fear of God, she neglected the temporary salvation of her children. Not only so, but on account of the excellent disposition to the law, her maternal affection toward them was increased. For they were both just and temperate, and courageous, high-minded, fond of their kindred, and so fond of their mother that even to death they obeyed her by observing the law.

Yet, though there were so many circumstances connected with love of children to draw on a mother to sympathy, in the case of none of them were the various tortures able to pervert her principle. But she inclined each one separately and all together to death for religion. O holy nature and parental feeling, and reward of bringing up children, and unconquerable maternal affection! At the racking and roasting of each one of them, the observant mother was prevented by religion from changing. She saw her children’s flesh dissolving around the fire, and their extremities quivering on the ground, and the flesh of their heads dropped forward down to their beards, like masks.

O you mother, who was tried at this time with bitterer pangs than those at birth! O you only woman who have produced perfect holiness! Your firstborn, expiring, didn’t turn you, nor the second, looking miserable in his torments, nor the third, breathing out his soul. You didn’t weep when you saw each of their eyes looking sternly at their tortures, and their nostrils foreboding death! When you saw children’s flesh heaped upon children’s flesh that had been torn off, heads decapitated upon heads, dead falling upon the dead, and a choir of children turned through torture into a burying ground, you didn’t lament. Not so do siren melodies or songs of swans attract the hearers to listening, O voices of children calling on your mother in the midst of torments! With what and what manner of torments was the mother herself tortured, as her sons were undergoing the wheel and the fires! But religious reasoning, having strengthened her courage in the midst of sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the time, parental love.

Although seeing the destruction of seven children, the noble mother, after one embrace, stripped off her feelings through faith in God. For just as in a council room, seeing in her own soul vehement counselors, nature and parentage and love of her children, and the racking of her children, she holding two votes, one for the death, the other for the preservation of her children, didn’t lean to that which would have saved her children for the safety of a brief space. But this daughter of Abraham remembered his holy fortitude.

O holy mother of a nation, avenger of the law, defender of religion, and prime bearer in the battle of the affections! O you nobler in endurance than males, and more courageous than men in perseverance! For like Noah’s ship, bearing the world in the world-filling flood, bore up against the waves, so you, the guardian of the law, when surrounded on every side by the flood of emotions, and assaulted by violent storms which were the torments of your children, bore up nobly against the storms against religion.