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1About this time Antiochus Epiphanes prepared for his second invasion of Egypt.
2For nearly forty days, apparitions were seen in the sky over Jerusalem. Horsemen in gold armor charged through the air, armed with lances and swords.
3Ranks of horsemen were seen with swords drawn—attacking and counterattacking, with flashing shields and numerous spears and flying arrows and shining gold armor of every sort.
4All the people prayed that this amazing apparition might be a good sign.
5A false rumor began to circulate that Antiochus had died in Egypt, so Jason returned and assaulted Jerusalem with a force of no less than a thousand men. As the defenders on the wall were being defeated and the city was open to attack, Menelaus took refuge in the citadel.
6Jason killed his own people in Jerusalem without mercy, not realizing that success at the expense of relatives is the greatest of failures. He imagined that he was winning victories over his enemies rather than over his own people.
7But he did not gain control of the government, and in the end he was disgraced as the reward for his treachery. He was forced to flee again into the land of the Ammonites.
8Jason’s life had a miserable end. After being imprisoned for a time by Aretas, king of the Arabians, he fled from town to town. He was pursued and hated by everyone as a despicable betrayer of the laws of Moses, a butcher of his own country and people. Finally, he was driven into Egypt.
9From there he went to live with the Spartans, hoping they would give him refuge because of their family ties with the Jews. Then Jason, who had exiled so many others, died in a foreign land.[#5:9a Greek the Lacedemonians, another name for the Spartans.; #5:9b See 1 Macc 12:21.]
10The man who had thrown out so many corpses to lie unburied had no one to mourn his death, no funeral, and no place in the tomb of his ancestors.
11When the news of fighting between Jason and the Jews in Jerusalem reached King Antiochus, he suspected that the Jews had revolted. So he left Egypt in a furious state of mind and took Jerusalem back by force.
12He commanded the soldiers to kill everyone they met and even to hunt down people hiding in their houses and kill them.
13They slaughtered young and old, women and children, young girls and infants.
14Within three days, there were eighty thousand victims—forty thousand killed and forty thousand sold into slavery.
15But this was not enough for Antiochus. He dared to enter the Temple, the most holy place in all the world. Menelaus, a traitor to the laws of Moses and to his country, was his guide.
16That filthy Antiochus seized the holy vessels; with defiled hands he took the ornaments that had been given as offerings by other kings to glorify and honor the Temple.
17Deluded by his pride, Antiochus did not realize he was successful only because the Lord was angry for a time with the sinful residents of Jerusalem. It was the Lord who permitted this contempt for the Holy Place.
18If the Jews had not been involved in many sins, Antiochus would have been immediately whipped for his presumption and turned back—as Heliodorus was when King Seleucus sent him to inspect the treasury.
19But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the Holy Place; rather, he chose the Holy Place for the sake of the nation.
20So the Holy Place itself suffered evils inflicted on the people, just as later it participated in their good fortune. As it was forsaken by the Almighty in his anger, so it would be restored again with great glory when the people were reconciled to the great Lord.
21After Antiochus had taken at least sixty-eight tons of silver from the Temple, he hurried back to Antioch. Carried away with pride, he believed he could sail on the land and walk on the sea.[#5:21 Greek 1,800 talents [61 metric tons].]
22He left governors to oppress the people. He left Philip, a Phrygian by birth, at Jerusalem. But Philip was even more barbaric than the one who appointed him.
23Antiochus left Andronicus at Mount Gerizim. And Menelaus remained high priest, oppressing his own people even more than the others did.
To appease his hatred of the Jews,
24Antiochus sent Apollonius, the captain of the Mysians, with an army of twenty-two thousand men and commanded him to kill all the grown men and to sell the women and children into slavery.
25Apollonius came to Jerusalem under the pretense of peace and waited until the holy day of the Sabbath. Then, as the Jews observed the holy day of rest, he ordered his men to parade around fully armed.
26After a crowd had gathered to watch them, he killed everyone who had come there. Dashing through the city with his armed men, he destroyed many others as well.
27But Judas Maccabeus and nine others escaped into the wilderness. They stayed in the hills, where they lived off the land like wild animals. They ate nothing but wild plants to avoid defiling themselves by eating forbidden animals.