The Seven Brothers
1It happened also that seven brothers were arrested along with their mother, and the king, tormenting them with whips and thongs, tried to force them to partake of the unlawful pork. 2One of them, speaking for the others, said, “What do you mean to ask us and find out from us? We would sooner die than transgress our ancestral laws.” 3The king flew into a rage and ordered pans and cauldrons to be heated red-hot. 4As soon as they were glowing, he ordered the tongue of the one who had spoken for them to be cut out, and ordered him scalped in the Scythian way and his hands and feet cut off, while the rest of the brothers and their mother looked on. 5When he was completely crippled, the king ordered them to take him, still breathing, to the fire and fry him in a pan. As the fumes from the pan spread far and wide, the brothers and their mother urged one another to die nobly, saying, 6“The Lord God is watching, and truly he has compassion on us, just as Moses made plain in the song that bears witness against them to their face, when he said, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’” 7When the first had died in this way, they brought the second forward for their sport. They stripped the skin from his head, hair and all, and asked him, “Will you eat, before your body is tortured limb by limb?” 8He replied in his ancestral tongue, “No!” So he too suffered the tortures in turn, as the first had. 9When he was at his last breath, he said, “You accursed wretch, you are dismissing us from this present life, yet it is the King of the world who will raise us up, when we have died for his laws, to an eternal renewal of life.” 10After him they made sport of the third. When they demanded his tongue, he quickly thrust it out, and he held out his hands without flinching, 11and said nobly, “These I received from Heaven, and on account of his laws I disregard them, and it is from him that I hope to get them back again.” 12The king himself and those with him were astounded at the young man’s spirit, since he counted his sufferings as nothing. 13When he too had died, they tortured the fourth in the same way, mutilating him. 14When he was near his end, he said, “It is preferable, dying at the hands of men, to look for the hopes God gives of being raised again by him. For as for you, there will be no resurrection to life.” 15Next they brought the fifth and tortured him. 16He looked at the king and said, “Because you have power among men, mortal though you are, you do as you please. But do not imagine that our race has been forsaken by God. 17Just wait, and you will see his majestic might, how he will torment you and your descendants.” 18Next they brought the sixth. As he was about to die, he said, “Do not be deceived for nothing. We are suffering these things because of ourselves, for we sinned against our own God. Astonishing things have come about. 19But do not suppose that you will go unpunished for daring to fight against God.”
The Mother and Her Youngest Son
20Most wonderful of all was the mother, worthy of an honored memory: she watched seven sons perish in the span of a single day and endured it with a brave heart, because of the hopes she placed in the Lord. 21Filled with a noble resolve, she encouraged each of them in their ancestral tongue, and, rousing her woman’s reasoning with a man’s courage, she said to them, 22“I do not know how you came to appear in my womb. It was not I who bestowed on you breath and life, nor was it I who arranged the elements of each of you. 23Therefore the Creator of the world — he who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things — gives you back breath and life again in his mercy, since you now disregard yourselves on account of his laws.” 24Antiochus, feeling himself scorned and suspecting a taunt in her words, appealed to the youngest, who was still alive, not only with words but with oaths as well: he would make him rich and envied at once if he turned from his ancestral ways, and he would have him as a Friend and entrust him with high office. 25When the young man paid him no attention whatever, the king summoned the mother and urged her to counsel the boy to save his life. 26After he had pressed her a long time, she agreed to persuade her son. 27But she bent down to him, and, scoffing at the cruel tyrant, spoke to him in the ancestral tongue: “Son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb nine months, nursed you three years, reared you, brought you to this age, and cared for you. 28I beg you, child, look up at heaven and earth and see everything in them, and know that God did not make them out of things that existed. And the human race comes into being in the same way. 29Do not be afraid of this executioner. Prove worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in the mercy I may get you back again along with your brothers.” 30While she was still finishing, the young man said, “What are you waiting for? I do not obey the king’s command; I obey the command of the law given to our fathers through Moses. 31But you, the inventor of every evil against the Hebrews, will never escape God’s hands. 32For we are suffering because of our own sins. 33If our living Lord is angry for a short time, to rebuke and discipline us, he will be reconciled again with his own servants. 34But you, unholy man, most vile of all mankind, do not be lifted up for nothing, swaggering with uncertain hopes as you raise your hand against the children of heaven. 35For the judgment of God Almighty, who keeps watch, you have not yet escaped. 36Our brothers, after enduring a brief pain, have now fallen under God’s covenant of ever-flowing life; but you, by the judgment of God, will receive the just penalty for your arrogance. 37Like my brothers, I give up body and soul for our ancestral laws, and I call on God to be merciful to the nation soon, and to make you confess, through trials and scourges, that he alone is God, 38and to let the wrath of the Almighty, justly brought upon our whole race, come to a stop in me and my brothers.” 39The king, beside himself with rage, handled this one worse than the others, stung by his scorn. 40So he too departed this life pure, trusting completely in the Lord. 41The mother died last, after her sons. 42Let this much be told, then, about the eating of sacrificial entrails and the monstrous tortures.
