Judas Maccabeus Continues to Fight

¹When these agreements were made, Lysias returned to the king and the Jews turned their attention to farming.

²However, some of the governors would not let them live in peace. These governors were Timothy, Apollonius son of Genneus, Hieronymus, Demophon, and Nicanor the governor of Cyprus.

³The people of Joppa also committed an evil deed. They invited the Jews who lived among them (men, women, and children) to go for a boat ride. Since this was an obvious sign of friendship, the Jews publicly voted to accept the offer.

⁴They did not suspect a thing and wanted to be on friendly terms. But when the boats were some distance from the shore, the people of Joppa drowned at least two hundred of the Jews.

⁵As soon as Judas heard about this cruelty to his fellow Jews, he assembled his men for action.

⁶After calling upon God, the just Judge, he attacked those murderers of his fellow Jews. He set the port on fire in the night, burned the boats, and killed with the sword those who had taken refuge there.

⁷Then he left, since the town’s gates were closed. But he planned to return again to completely destroy all the people of Joppa.

⁸When he learned that the people of Jamnia also planned to wipe out the Jews who lived among them,

⁹he attacked Jamnia at night and set the port and its ships on fire. The light of the blaze was seen in Jerusalem twenty-eight miles away.[#12:9 Greek 240 stadia [45 kilometers].]

¹⁰When they had gone about a mile from Jamnia and were marching toward Timothy, over five thousand Arabian foot soldiers and more than five hundred horsemen attacked them.[#12:10 Greek 9 stadia [1.7 kilometers].]

¹¹After a hard fight and with the help of God, Judas and his men won the victory. The defeated nomads asked Judas for a peace treaty, promising to give him livestock and to help the Jews in every other way.

¹²Thinking that they might indeed be useful in many ways, Judas promised them peace. After an exchange of pledges, the Arabians returned to their tents.

¹³Judas also attacked Caspin, a certain town that was surrounded by fortifications and walls and inhabited by all sorts of Gentiles.

¹⁴Confident in the strength of the walls and their supply of food, the people there became insolent, and they taunted Judas with mockery, blasphemy, and all sorts of evil words.

¹⁵But Judas and his men called upon the great Ruler of the world, for in the time of Joshua, the Lord had crumbled the walls of Jericho without the use of battering rams or war machines. Then Judas fiercely assaulted the walls.

¹⁶By God’s will Judas and his men captured the town. They slaughtered so many people—a countless number—that a nearby lake that was about a quarter of a mile wide seemed to overflow with blood.[#12:16 Greek 2 stadia [374 meters].]

¹⁷From there they marched eighty-seven miles to Charax, to the Jews living in the land of Tob.[#12:17a Greek 750 stadia [140 kilometers].; #12:17b Or to the Jews who are called Tobiads.]

¹⁸But they did not find Timothy there, for he had left the area without doing anything, except that he left a very strong garrison in a certain fortress.

¹⁹Dositheus and Sosipater, who were captains under Maccabeus, went and killed the men Timothy had left in the fortress—over ten thousand in all.

²⁰Maccabeus separated his men into divisions and appointed officers over them. He hurried after Timothy, who had with him 120,000 foot soldiers and 2,500 horsemen.

²¹When Timothy learned that Judas was coming after him, he sent the women and children and also the baggage to a fortress called Karnaim. This fortress was hard to besiege or attack because all the approaches were so narrow.

²²But when Judas’s first band of soldiers came into sight, their enemies were struck with fear because of an apparition sent by the All-Seeing One. The enemies fled in such confusion that many of them were injured by their own companions and wounded with their own swords.

²³Judas went after them vigorously, killing the sinners by the sword, and he destroyed about 30,000 men.

²⁴Timothy himself was captured by the soldiers of Dositheus and Sosipater. With great cunning, he begged them to let him live, for he held the parents and brothers of many of them, and if he died, they would also perish.

²⁵When he had solemnly promised to return them unharmed, they released him in order to save their relatives.

²⁶Judas then went to Karnaim and the temple of Atargatis. There he killed twenty-five thousand people.

²⁷After he had destroyed these and put the rest to flight, Judas led his army to Ephron, a fortified town where Lysias and many people from various nations lived. Strong young men guarding the walls made a vigorous resistance, and they had many catapults and plenty of ammunition.

²⁸But when the Jews invoked the name of the Sovereign One, whose power breaks the strength of his enemies, they captured the town and killed twenty-five thousand of those who were inside.

²⁹From there they pressed on to Scythopolis, which lies seventy miles from Jerusalem.[#12:29 Greek 600 stadia [112 kilometers].]

³⁰But the Jews who lived in Scythopolis testified that the people of the town were kind to them, especially during times of adversity.

³¹So Judas thanked the people, strongly urging them to remain friendly to Jews in the future. They arrived back at Jerusalem just before the Festival of Pentecost.[#12:31 Greek Festival of Weeks, also known as the Festival of Harvest.]

³²After the Festival of Pentecost, Judas and his men marched out to attack Gorgias, the governor of Idumea.

³³Gorgias met them with three thousand foot soldiers and four hundred horsemen.

³⁴When the battle began, a few of the Jews were killed.

³⁵Then a certain Dositheus, one of Bacenor’s men and a strong horseman, caught hold of Gorgias and began to drag him by his cloak. Dositheus would have taken the accursed man alive, but a Thracian horseman rushed at him and cut off his arm, and so Gorgias escaped to Marisa.

³⁶Meanwhile, since Esdris and his men had fought a long time and were weary, Judas called upon the Lord to be their helper and their leader in battle.

³⁷After he chanted the battle cry in Hebrew, the language of their ancestors, accompanied by hymns, they made a surprise attack on Gorgias’s troops and caused them to flee.

³⁸Judas then assembled his army and went to the town of Adullam. Since the seventh day was approaching, they remained there to purify themselves according to custom and to keep the Sabbath.

³⁹By the day after the Sabbath, it had become urgent that the bodies of the Jews who had been killed be removed, so Judas and his men went to bury them with their relatives in the tombs of their ancestors.

⁴⁰But under the clothing of the dead they found some sacred amulets of the idols of Jamnia. The law forbids Jews to wear such things, so it was obvious to all that this was why these men had died.

⁴¹Then they all blessed the ways of the Lord, the just Judge, who reveals things that are hidden.

⁴²They spent time in prayer, asking the Lord to completely forgive the sin that had been committed. Then the noble Judas strongly urged the people to keep themselves free from sin, since they saw with their own eyes what happens to people who sin in the same way as those who had died.

⁴³Taking up a collection from each person, Judas sent two thousand silver coins to Jerusalem for a sacrifice to be offered for the sins of those who had died. In so doing he acted well and honorably, for he kept the resurrection in mind.[#12:43 Greek 2,000 drachmas of silver.]

⁴⁴If he had not expected that those who had died would rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for the dead.

⁴⁵But since he had in mind the splendid reward that awaits those who die a godly death, his thought in doing this was holy and devout. Therefore, he made this atoning sacrifice for the dead so that they might be released from their sin.