The Last Days of Antiochus Epiphanes

¹About that time Antiochus Epiphanes returned from Persia with his armies in disarray.

²He had entered the city of Persepolis and attempted to plunder its temples and bring the town under his control. However, the people there had rushed to arms and routed the invaders, forcing them into a humiliating defeat.

³When Antiochus arrived at Ecbatana, he received the news of what had happened to Nicanor and to Timothy’s forces.

⁴He became furious and decided to make the Jews pay for the humiliation he had just suffered. So he commanded his chariot driver to take him to Jerusalem without stopping. But God’s judgment went with him because in his arrogance he had said, “When I get to Jerusalem, I will make it a mass grave for the Jews!”[#9:4 Greek the judgment of heaven.]

⁵But the Lord, the God of Israel who sees all things, struck Antiochus with an incurable and mysterious disease. For as soon as he had said these words, a dreadful pain seized his intestines—an excruciating intestinal torture that could not be stopped.

⁶This was a very just punishment indeed, considering he had tormented the intestines of others with many barbaric tortures.

⁷But not even this stopped his arrogance; he was still filled with pride. Breathing fire in his rage against the Jews, he commanded the driver to go even faster. But as they were hurrying along, he was thrown from the chariot and fell so hard that his every limb was in agony.

⁸In his superhuman arrogance, he had thought he could command the waves of the sea and weigh tall mountains on a scale, but now he was thrown to the ground and had to be carried on a stretcher. This was a clear manifestation of God’s power.

⁹Maggots swarmed out of the wicked man’s body, and while he still lived in grief and pain, his flesh rotted away. The stench of his decaying flesh made his army sick.

¹⁰No one could stand to carry the stretcher of this man who had thought only a little while earlier that he could touch the stars of heaven.

¹¹As a result of God’s curse, Antiochus was humbled and began to come to his senses, for his agony grew by the minute.

¹²When he himself could no longer stand his own stench, he said, “It is right to be subject to God, and mere humans should not think they are equal to God.”

¹³Then this wicked man vowed to the Lord (who would not show him any mercy)

¹⁴that he would set Jerusalem free rather than level it and make it a mass grave.

¹⁵He had previously said that the Jews and their children were not worthy to be buried but only to have their bodies thrown out to be eaten by wild animals and vultures. But now he promised to grant them rights equaling those of the Athenians.

¹⁶He had previously desecrated the holy Temple, but now he promised to decorate it with the finest gifts, to lavishly replace the holy vessels in it, and to pay from his own resources all the expenses connected with offering the sacrifices.

¹⁷He even said that he would become a Jew himself and go throughout the earth declaring the power of God.

¹⁸But his agony continued, for the just judgment of God had come upon him. Then, realizing he was going to die, he wrote a letter of request to the Jews:

²⁸So the murderer and blasphemer suffered terribly, much as he had made others suffer. And he died a miserable death in the mountains of a foreign country.

²⁹Philip, his close friend, carried his body home. Then, fearing the son of Antiochus, Philip went to stay with King Ptolemy Philometor in Egypt.