Treachery at Joppa and Jabneh
1With these agreements concluded, Lysias went back to the king, while the Jews turned to tilling their fields. 2But some of the local commanders would not let them settle down and live in quiet: Timothy and Apollonius the son of Gennaeus, and Hieronymus and Demophon as well, and on top of these Nicanor, the governor of Cyprus. 3The men of Joppa carried out an impious deed of this magnitude: they urged their Jewish neighbors to step into boats they had set ready, along with their wives and children, as if no hostility at all existed toward them. 4This was done under a decree passed by the whole city. The Jews accepted, wishing to live at peace and suspecting nothing; but once they had put out to sea, they were sent to the bottom — at least two hundred people. 5When Judas learned of the savagery inflicted on his countrymen, he gave his orders to the men with him. 6He invoked God, the righteous judge, and went against the murderers of his brothers. By night he fired the harbor and burned up the boats, and he ran through the men who had fled there for shelter. 7The place had been shut up, so he withdrew, meaning to return and uproot the entire citizen body of Joppa. 8He learned too that the people of Jabneh meant to deal in the same way with the Jews who lived among them, 9so he struck at the people of Jabneh by night and set their harbor ablaze together with the fleet, and the glare of the flames could be seen in Jerusalem, two hundred and forty stadia off.
The Campaign Against Timothy
10They had pulled away nine stadia from there and were marching against Timothy when Arabs attacked Judas, no fewer than five thousand of them, with five hundred horsemen. 11A fierce battle took place, and through the help that came from God, Judas and his men won the day. The nomads, beaten, asked Judas to give them his right hand, and promised to hand over livestock and to be of use to them in other ways. 12Judas, reckoning that they could truly serve him well in many things, consented to keep the peace with them; they received his right hand and went off to their tents. 13He also fell upon a certain city, made strong by embankments and ringed with walls, and inhabited by a medley of peoples; its name was Caspin. 14The defenders, confident in the solidity of their walls and the food they had laid in, treated Judas’s men with contempt: they reviled them, and blasphemed besides, uttering things no one may lawfully say. 15But Judas and his men called on the great Sovereign of the world, who brought Jericho crashing down in the days of Joshua without rams or siege machines, and they hurled themselves at the wall like wild beasts. 16By God’s will they captured the city and made a slaughter beyond telling, so that the lake lying beside it, two stadia across, seemed brimming and running with blood. 17Pulling away from there, they covered seven hundred and fifty stadia and came through to Charax, to the Jews known as Tubians. 18Timothy himself they did not catch in those parts; by then he had pulled out of the area with nothing achieved, though not before leaving a garrison, and a very strong one, at a certain place. 19Dositheus and Sosipater, officers of Maccabeus, sallied forth and destroyed the troops Timothy had left behind in the fortress, more than ten thousand men. 20Maccabeus drew up the army with him company by company and set Dositheus and Sosipater over the companies; then he charged at Timothy, who had with him one hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers along with two thousand five hundred horsemen. 21Hearing that Judas was on the move against him, Timothy sent the women, the children, and the rest of the baggage on ahead into the place known as Karnaim; it was a spot hard to lay siege to and hard to get at, since every approach to it was narrow. 22But when Judas’s first company came into view, dread fell upon the enemy, and terror at the manifestation of the one who watches all things; they broke into flight, rushing this way and that, so that often they were hurt by their own men and impaled on the sword points. 23Judas kept up the pursuit hard, stabbing the villains as he went, and brought down some thirty thousand men. 24Timothy himself blundered into the troops of Dositheus and Sosipater. With much trickery he pleaded to be set free unharmed, claiming that he held the parents of many of them and the brothers of others, and that these would be abandoned to their fate. 25He pledged himself over and over to the terms, promising to hand those people back unhurt, and they released him so that their brothers might be saved. 26Judas then went out to Karnaim and to the shrine of Atergatis and put to the sword twenty-five thousand people. 27With these routed and destroyed, he marched next against Ephron, a fortified city where Lysias lived with motley crowds of people. Strapping young men stood before the walls and fought back vigorously, and the place held large stores of war engines and missiles. 28Judas and his men called on the Sovereign, who in his might crushes the strength of enemies, and they brought the city under their hand; of those inside they struck down some twenty-five thousand. 29Breaking camp there, they pressed on to Scythopolis, which lies six hundred stadia from Jerusalem. 30But the Jews settled there vouched for the goodwill of the Scythopolitans toward them and the gentle welcome they had met with in their evil days; 31so they gave them thanks and pressed them to stay friendly toward their race in time to come. Then they went on to Jerusalem, for the Festival of Weeks was nearly upon them.
Gorgias Routed, and an Offering for the Dead
32After Pentecost, as it is called, they set out in haste against Gorgias, the commander of Idumea. 33He took the field with three thousand foot soldiers and four hundred horsemen. 34When the lines were joined, it came about that a small number of Jews fell. 35There was one Dositheus, a man from Bacenor’s troop, mounted and powerful, who got a grip on Gorgias. Seizing him by the cloak, he hauled him along with all his strength, eager to capture the accursed man alive; but one of the Thracian horsemen charged at Dositheus and lopped off his arm at the shoulder, and Gorgias got away to Mareshah. 36Esdris and his troops had fought on and on and were spent, so Judas invoked the Lord, begging him to appear as their ally and to lead them in the battle. 37Raising the war cry, with hymns, in the ancestral tongue, he fell on Gorgias’s men when they least expected it and routed them. 38Judas collected his forces and came to the city of Adullam. The seventh day was approaching, so they cleansed themselves there, as custom required, and observed the Sabbath. 39On the following day, since by then it had become necessary, Judas and his men came to gather up the bodies of the fallen and lay them to rest with their kin in the tombs of their fathers. 40But on every one of the dead they found, beneath the tunic, objects consecrated to the idols of Jabneh — things the law keeps the Jews away from. Everyone saw clearly that it was for this cause that these men had fallen. 41Every one of them blessed the dealings of the Lord — that righteous judge who lays bare what is hidden — 42and they turned to prayer, begging that the sin which had occurred be wholly wiped away. The noble Judas appealed to the multitude to keep themselves clear of sin, since they had seen, right before them, what had happened on account of the fallen men’s sin. 43He made a collection, man by man, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, and sent it to Jerusalem to have a sacrifice for sin offered. He acted most finely and fittingly in this, for he was reasoning with the resurrection in view. 44For had he not expected the fallen to rise again, praying for the dead would have been needless and absurd. 45Then too, he was looking toward the most beautiful recompense stored up for those who fall asleep in piety — holy and devout was the thought. Hence it was for the dead that he made the atonement, so that they might be set free from their sin.
