Judas Gathers His Forces
1Meanwhile Judas, who was also called Maccabeus, and his companions slipped secretly into the villages and called their kinsmen together; and by enlisting those who had held fast to Judaism they assembled about six thousand. 2They called on the Lord to look upon the people trampled underfoot by everyone, and to have pity on the temple profaned by ungodly men, 3to show mercy to the city that was being destroyed and was about to be leveled to the ground, and to hear the blood that cried out to him, 4to remember too the lawless slaughter of innocent babies and the blasphemies uttered against his name, and to show his hatred of wickedness. 5As soon as Maccabeus had his company organized, he became irresistible to the nations, for the Lord’s wrath had turned to mercy. 6Coming upon towns and villages unexpectedly, he set them on fire; he seized strategic positions and put not a few of the enemy to flight. 7He made the nights his particular allies for such attacks, and talk of his courage resounded everywhere.
Nicanor Plans to Sell the Jews
8Philip, seeing the man advance little by little and his successes come more and more often, wrote to Ptolemy, the commander of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, to come to the help of the king’s government. 9Ptolemy promptly selected Nicanor son of Patroclus, one of the First Friends, and sent him in command of no fewer than twenty thousand men drawn from every sort of nation, to wipe out the whole race of Judea; and he joined with him Gorgias, a commander with experience in the business of war. 10Nicanor determined to raise, from the sale of Jewish captives, the two thousand talents of tribute that the king owed the Romans. 11He at once sent to the cities along the coast, inviting them to a sale of Jewish slaves and promising to let them have ninety slaves for a talent — not expecting the justice from the Almighty that was about to overtake him. 12News of Nicanor’s advance reached Judas, and when he informed his men of the army’s arrival, 13the fainthearted and those who had no faith in God’s justice slipped away and left the region. 14The rest sold everything they had left and together begged the Lord to rescue them, for the impious Nicanor had sold them before he had so much as met them, 15and to do it, if not for their own sake, then because of his covenants with their fathers, and because his revered and magnificent name had been called over them. 16Maccabeus gathered his men, six thousand of them, and urged them not to be terrified of the enemy or to fear the vast numbers of the nations advancing unjustly against them, but to fight nobly, 17keeping before their eyes the outrage those men had lawlessly committed against the holy place, the abuse of the humiliated city, and besides that the overthrow of their ancestral way of life. 18“They rely on weapons and on daring,” he said, “but we rely on God Almighty, who with a single nod can strike down those who are coming against us and even the whole world.” 19He also reminded them of the help given in their ancestors’ time, and how, in the days of Sennacherib, one hundred and eighty-five thousand perished, 20and of the battle fought in Babylonia against the Galatians: eight thousand men in all went into the engagement, with four thousand Macedonians; and when the Macedonians were at a loss, the eight thousand destroyed a hundred and twenty thousand, thanks to the help that came to them from heaven, and they carried off much booty.
The Rout of Nicanor
21Having put fresh heart into them with these words and made them ready to die on behalf of the laws and their country, he divided the army into four sections. 22He placed his brothers at the head of the divisions — Simon, Joseph, and Jonathan — assigning fifteen hundred men to each, 23and Eleazar besides. Then, after reading aloud from the holy book and giving the watchword “God’s help,” he took the lead of the first division himself and engaged Nicanor. 24With the Almighty fighting as their ally, they slew more than nine thousand of the enemy, wounded and maimed most of Nicanor’s army, and forced them all to flee. 25They seized the money of those who had come to buy them. They pursued the enemy a good way, but turned back, since the hour was closing in on them, 26for it was the eve of the Sabbath; that is why they did not keep up the chase. 27When they had gathered up the enemy’s weapons and stripped them of their spoils, they turned to the Sabbath, blessing and praising the Lord without measure for having brought them safely to that day and for having appointed it as the beginning of his mercy to them. 28After the Sabbath they gave a share of the spoils to those who had been tortured and to the widows and orphans, and divided the rest among themselves and their children. 29When they had done this, they joined in a common supplication, begging the merciful Lord to be wholly reconciled with his servants. 30In battle with the forces of Timothy and Bacchides they killed more than twenty thousand of them and made themselves masters of some lofty strongholds. They divided a great quantity of plunder, giving shares equal to their own to the tortured, the orphans, the widows, and the aged as well. 31They collected the enemy’s arms and stored them all carefully at strategic points, and carried the rest of the spoils to Jerusalem. 32They killed the commander of Timothy’s forces, a thoroughly unholy man who had caused the Jews much grief. 33While they were celebrating the victory in their homeland, they burned those who had set fire to the sacred gateways, among them Callisthenes, who had fled into a small house; so he received the wages his impiety deserved. 34As for the thrice-accursed Nicanor, who had brought along the thousand merchants for the sale of the Jews, 35he was humbled, with the help of the Lord, by those he considered the least of all. He threw off his splendid robes and, like a runaway slave, made his way alone across the interior to Antioch, having achieved a success beyond all measure — the destruction of his own army. 36And the man who had undertaken to raise the tribute for the Romans from the captives of Jerusalem now proclaimed that the Jews had a champion who fought for them, and that because of this the Jews could not be harmed, since they followed the laws their champion had laid down for them.
