Anonymous (Septuagint) · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| It also happened that seven brothers, seized together with their mother, were being forced by the king, under whips and cords, to touch the forbidden flesh of swine.
2| One of them, becoming their spokesman, said, "What are you going to ask and learn from us? We would sooner face death than break the laws handed down from our ancestors."
3| The king, enraged, ordered pans and cauldrons to be heated up.
4| And when these had at once been heated, he ordered the tongue cut out of the one who had spoken for them, and, after scalping him Scythian-style, to cut off his extremities, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on.
5| When he had been rendered useless in this way, he ordered him brought to the fire still breathing, and fried in the pan. And as the vapor from the pan spread far and wide, the others, together with their mother, urged one another to die nobly, saying:
6| "The Lord God is watching, and in truth he is moved to compassion over us, just as Moses made clear through the song that testifies to his face, saying, 'And he will be moved to compassion over his servants.'"
7| When the first had passed on in this way, they led the second forward to their sport; and having torn off the skin of his head together with the hair, they asked him, "Will you eat, before your body is punished limb by limb?"
8| He answered in the ancestral tongue and said, "No." For this reason he too received the next torment in turn, as the first had.
9| And when he was at his last breath, he said, "You, accursed one, release us from our current life, but the King of the universe will bring us back to life, since it is for his laws that we are dying, and give us a renewal of life without end."
10| After him the third was made sport of, and when his tongue was demanded he put it forward at once, and stretched out his hands courageously,
11| and said nobly, "These I got from Heaven, and because of his laws I hold them in contempt, and it is from him that I expect to get them back once more."
12| So that the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man's spirit, seeing that he set the pains at nothing.
13| And when this one too had passed on, they tortured and abused the fourth in the same way.
14| And when he came near to death, he spoke thus: "It is a good thing, when dying at men's hands, to look forward to the hopes given by God, that we will be raised up again by him; but for you there will be no resurrection to life."
15| Next they brought the fifth forward and tormented him.
16| But he looked at him and said, "You have power among men, and though you are mortal, you do what you wish; but do not think that our race has been abandoned by God.
17| As for you, hold on, and watch his mighty power, how it will torment you and your offspring."
18| After him they brought the sixth, and as he was about to die he said, "Do not deceive yourself for nothing; for we suffer these things on our own account, having sinned against our own God; things worthy of astonishment have come to pass.
19| But you—do not suppose you will go unpunished, having undertaken to fight against God."
20| The mother was exceedingly admirable and worthy of good memory, who, watching seven sons perish within a single day, bore it with good courage because of her hopes set on the Lord.
21| She encouraged each of them in the ancestral tongue, filled with a noble spirit, and stirring her womanly reasoning with manly courage, she said to them:
22| "I do not know how you came to be in my womb; it was not I who gave you spirit and life, nor was it I who set in order the elements of each of you.
23| Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the origin of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give back to you again spirit and life, since you now regard yourselves as nothing for the sake of his laws."
24| Antiochus, thinking himself despised, and suspecting the tone of reproach, while the youngest was still alive, appealed to him not merely in speech, but backed his promises with oaths, vowing to make him wealthy and enviable if he abandoned the ways of his ancestors, and pledging that he would treat him as a friend and put public affairs in his hands.
25| But when the young man paid no attention at all, the king summoned the mother and urged her to become an adviser to the boy for his own safety.
26| After he had urged her at length, she agreed to persuade her son.
27| But bending over him, mocking the cruel tyrant, she spoke thus in the ancestral tongue: "Son, have pity on me, who carried you nine months in the womb, and nursed you for three years, and reared you and brought you up to this age, and provided for you.
28| I beg you, child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see all that is in them, and know that God did not make them out of things that existed, and that the human race comes to be in the same way.
29| Do not fear this executioner, but show yourself worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in the time of mercy I may receive you back again together with your brothers."
30| While she was still speaking, the young man said, "What are you waiting for? I will not obey the command of the king; I obey the command of the law given to our fathers through Moses.
31| But you, who have become the inventor of every evil against the Hebrews, will not escape the hands of God.
32| For we are suffering because of our own sins;
33| and if our living Lord has been angered for a little while, for the sake of rebuke and discipline, he will again be reconciled with his own servants.
34| But you, unholy man, most vile of all men, do not be lifted up in vain, puffed up with uncertain hopes, as you raise your hand against the children of heaven;
35| for you have not yet escaped the judgment of God the Almighty who watches over all.
36| For our brothers, having now endured a brief pain, have come to stand within God's pledge of unending life; but you, by God's sentence, will bear the just penalties of your arrogance.
37| As for me, like my brothers, I give up both body and life for the sake of the laws of our fathers, calling upon God to be quickly merciful to our nation, and that you, through trials and plagues, may confess that he alone is God;
38| and that in me and in my brothers the wrath of the Almighty, which has justly been brought upon our whole race, may come to a stop."
39| The king, enraged, dealt with this one more cruelly than with the others, taking it bitterly that he had been mocked.
40| And so this one also passed on undefiled, putting his whole trust in the Lord.
41| Last of all the sons, the mother died.
42| Let this account of the sacrificial tortures and the excessive cruelties suffice as far as it has gone.