Anonymous (Septuagint) · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| Shortly afterward the king dispatched an elderly Athenian official to force the Jews away from the ancestral customs of their people and to stop them living according to the statutes of God,
2| and to defile the temple in Jerusalem and rename it for Olympian Zeus, and the one on Gerizim, since the people living in that place happened to be strangers, for Zeus the Friend of Strangers.
3| The onset of this evil was harsh and utterly hard to bear for everyone.
4| For the temple was filled with the licentiousness and revelry of the Gentiles, who dallied with prostitutes and had relations with women inside the sacred precincts, and brought in besides things that were not fitting.
5| The altar was covered with the abominable things forbidden by the laws.
6| It was not possible to keep the Sabbath, nor to observe the ancestral feasts, nor even simply to profess oneself a Jew.
7| Under harsh compulsion they were led month by month to the sacrificial feast held on the king's birthday, and when the festival of Dionysus came they were forced, wearing wreaths of ivy, to march in the procession of Dionysus.
8| A decree went out to the neighboring Greek cities, on the suggestion of Ptolemy, that they should follow the same policy against the Jews and make them join in the sacrifices,
9| and that those who refused to go over to Greek customs should be put to death. So one could see the misery that had come upon them.
10| For two women were brought in for having circumcised their children; these they led publicly around the city with their infants hung from their breasts, and then hurled them down from the wall.
11| Others who had run together to nearby caves to keep the seventh day in secret were betrayed to Philip and burned together, because their reverence held them back from defending themselves, out of regard for the honor of that most holy day.
12| Now I urge those who happen upon this book not to be dismayed at these calamities, but to reckon that these punishments were not for the destruction but for the discipline of our nation.
13| For it is in fact a sign of great kindness that the impious are not left alone for long, but immediately meet with retribution.
14| For in the case of the other nations the Master patiently waits before punishing them, until they have reached the full measure of their sins, but he has determined it should not be so with us,
15| so that he might not take vengeance on us afterward, once our sins had reached their fullness.
16| Therefore he never withdraws his mercy from us; and though he disciplines with calamity, he does not abandon his own people.
17| Let this much be said to bring it to remembrance; we must come, after these few words, to the narrative itself.
18| A certain Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes, a man already advanced in age and most noble in the appearance of his face, was being forced, with his mouth pried open, to eat pig's flesh.
19| But he, welcoming death with honor rather than life with defilement, went forward of his own will to the instrument of torture,
20| spitting out the meat first, in the way that those ought to approach who are resolved to hold out against things it is not right to taste, out of tender love for life.
21| Those in charge of that unlawful sacrificial feast, because of their long acquaintance with the man from earlier times, took him aside privately and urged him to bring meat of his own that it was lawful for him to use, prepared by himself, and only pretend to eat the portions of sacrificial meat prescribed by the king,
22| so that by doing this he might be released from death, and, because of their old friendship with him, find this kindness.
23| But he, forming a noble resolve worthy of his years and the dignity of his old age and the gray hair he had so honorably attained, and of his excellent conduct from childhood, and above all of the holy and God-given law, declared his answer accordingly, telling them to send him at once to Hades.
24| For it is not fitting for men of our years to play false, that many of the young should suppose that Eleazar, at ninety, had gone over to foreign ways,
25| and that through my pretense, for the sake of a brief and momentary life, they should be led astray because of me, and I should bring stain and defilement upon my old age.
26| For even if for the present I should escape the punishment of men, yet whether living or dead I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty.
27| Therefore, by manfully parting with life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age,
28| and I will leave behind to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and nobly for the sake of the honorable and holy laws. Having said this much, he went at once to the instrument of torture,
29| while those who a little before had shown him goodwill turned to ill will because of the words he had just spoken, which they took to be sheer madness.
30| And when he was about to die from the blows, he groaned and said, To the Lord, who holds the sacred knowledge, it is plain that though I might have been released from death, I am enduring terrible pains in my body under this scourging, but in my soul I gladly suffer these things because of my fear of him.
31| And so he departed this life in this manner, leaving his death as an example of nobility and a memorial of virtue not only to the young but to the greater part of the nation.