Chapter 5
5:5-9 But when a false rumor had gone out that Antiochus had departed this life, Jason, having gathered not fewer than a thousand men, suddenly attacked the city; and as the citizens ran together to the wall, at last, when the city was captured, Menelaus fled into the citadel. Jason, however, did not spare his own fellow-citizens in slaughter, nor did he consider that prosperity directed against his kinsmen is a very great evil, thinking that he would win trophies over enemies and not over citizens. And indeed he did not obtain the leadership; rather, the end of his plots came in confusion, and once more he went away as a fugitive into the region of the Ammonites. In the end, having been shut up to his own destruction by Aretas, the tyrant of the Arabs, fleeing from city to city, hateful to all as a deserter of the laws and abominable, as an enemy of his country and of his fellow-citizens, he was driven into Egypt; and he who had driven many from their homeland died in exile, having gone to Lacedaemon.
Menelaus, however, when under Antiochus Eupator he was planning deceit in the same way as before, the King of kings stirred up the spirit of Antiochus against this sinner, and at the suggestion of Lysias, who said that he was the cause of all the evils, he ordered that, according to their custom, he be seized and put to death in the very place. Now in that place there was a tower of fifty cubits, having a heap of ashes piled up around it on all sides; it had a total drop over the edge. From there he ordered that the sacrilegious man be thrown into the ashes, while all pushed him on to his destruction; and by such a law it happened that this transgressor of the law died, and Menelaus was not allowed to be buried in the earth, because he had committed many crimes against the altar of God, whose fire and ashes were holy; he himself was condemned to a death in ashes. Josephus reports, as we have shown in the previous book, that the son of the chief priest Onias, being still a little boy when his father died and left him, seeing that the king had killed his uncle Menelaus and had given the high priesthood to Alcimus, who did not belong to the priestly lineage, but had been persuaded by Lysias to transfer the honor from that family to another house, fled to Ptolemy, king of Egypt, and received honor from him and from his wife Cleopatra, and asked for a place in the region of Cleopatra, where he founded a city bearing his own name and built a temple in imitation of his father’s temple. Alcimus, however, bearing enmity against Judas Maccabeus, after no great length of time was struck down by the wrath of God and perished; and therefore, with the favor of all the Jews, the priesthood was granted to Judas Maccabeus. All these things seem rather to build up a moral than an allegorical understanding of the mind; they clearly show that the most just Judge and the most impartial Rewarder will restore to each one the fitting recompense, according as their wages shall have required: that is, to the virtuous and those who fear God, eternal rewards; but to the wicked, and sinners, and blasphemers, the punishment of everlasting fire. And no one ought to flatter himself because of earthly happiness and the prosperity of this present life, if he chooses to live more impurely in sins; nor should one who acts well, when pressed in this present life by severe torments or various tribulations, despair of future salvation, if he shall have persevered in the path of righteousness; because it is written: Many are the tribulations of the just, and out of all these the Lord has delivered them (Ps. 34:19); and: Many are the scourges of sinners; but mercy shall surround those who hope in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you just, and glory, all you who are upright of heart (Ps. 32:11).
Concerning the heavenly signs that occurred in Jerusalem. Concerning the death of Jason, the persecutor of the citizens. Antiochus, pursuing Judas, after slaughtering the people, plundered the temple, with Menelaus as his guide. The Lord chose the place not because of the nation, but the nation because of the place, etc.
At the same time, Antiochus prepared a second expedition into Egypt, etc. Portents therefore sometimes foreshadow prosperous events, and at other times they prefigure adverse ones; but always in accordance with what the supreme Judge determines to be fitting for each matter and each time. Nor is it surprising that in the times of the Maccabees horsemen, wearing gilded robes, and armed troops were seen rushing through the air, and that the shining splendor of golden weapons foretold coming adversity and the disaster that was to fall upon the Jews, since before the destruction of Jerusalem, as we learn from Josephus (Book VII of the Jewish War, chapter 12), a star shining like a sword was seen threatening the forsaken city on every side, and moreover a comet appeared to burn with deadly flames for an entire year.
But before the time of the downfall and the war, when the people had gathered for the feast of Unleavened Bread, on the eighth day of the month of Xanthicus, which is April, during the night, at the ninth hour, so great a brightness of light surrounded the altar and the temple that all thought it had become broad daylight; and it lasted for the space of half an hour. This seemed to the unskilled and ignorant to be a good omen; but the experts in the Law and all worthy teachers were not unaware that it was a deadly portent. On the same feast as well, a heifer that had been brought up for sacrifice and was standing by, gave birth to a calf in the very hands of the attendants; and the gate of the inner sanctuary, which faced east, though covered with solid bronze of immense weight, and which could scarcely be shut by twenty men straining with all their might, and was secured besides with iron bars and bolts, and held fast by the dropping of bars into place high above, suddenly, at the sixth hour of the night, was seen to have opened of its own accord. And after the feast day had passed, after a few days, on the twenty-first day of the month of Artemisius, which we call May, a prodigious vision appeared, almost beyond belief, which would truly have been thought false, had not the destruction that followed these evils confirmed the testimony of the witnesses. For near sunset chariots and four-horsed cars were seen being driven through the air in every direction, and companies of armed men were seen moving through the clouds and surrounding the cities.
On another feast day, which is called Pentecost, when the priests entered the temple at night to carry out the customary ministries, they first sensed certain movements and noises. Then they hear subdued voices saying: “Let us depart from here.” Something even more terrifying is added: for a certain Jesus, the son of Ananias, a man of the common people and a rustic, four years before the war, while the city was still enjoying peace and abundance, on the feast day of Tabernacles suddenly began to cry out: “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice over Jerusalem, and a voice over the temple, over bridegrooms and over brides, a voice over all this people.” And this, without ceasing day and night, going around all the streets, he shouted, until some leading men of the people, disturbed with anger as though by an ill-omened prophecy, seized the man and subjected him to many beatings; but he, speaking nothing on his own behalf, nor even begging mercy from those standing around, repeated those same cries again with equal stubbornness and shouting. Then the leaders, realizing, as was indeed the case, that the impulse moving the man was more divine, brought him to the Roman judge; and there, torn with scourges down to his very bones, he shed neither prayers nor tears, but uttering the same cry in a pitiful manner and with a kind of howling, he pronounced it almost word by word, adding also this: “Woe, woe to Jerusalem.” Therefore the wretched city suffered all these phenomena deservedly, because always, according to the testimony of the giver of the Law, it rebelled against the Lord, and, ungrateful for His favors, treated with mockery and killed the servants of the supreme householder who were sent to it by Him. And at last, by killing the very heir, they cast him outside the camp. Therefore the Lord Himself in the Gospel, rebuking the unbelieving city, says: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I wished to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house will be left to you deserted” (Matt. 23:37). For this had long been foretold: in later times those most savage murderers received the fitting reward of their guilt, so that some were killed by famine, some perished by plague, and some, slain or taken captive, were led away by their enemies into the regions of the whole world; and therefore was fulfilled that saying of Jeremiah which he prophesied concerning that same people and city, saying: “Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and the greatness of servitude; she dwells among the nations and finds no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the narrow places. The roads of Zion mourn, because there are none who come to the solemn feast. All her gates are destroyed, her priests groan, her virgins are afflicted with filth, and she herself is oppressed with bitterness” (Lam. 1:3-4).
5:11 After these things had taken place, the king suspected that the Jews were going to abandon the alliance, etc.
After the writer of the history had told of the destruction of the wicked and sacrilegious men Lysimachus and Jason, and had additionally recounted the vision of signs and omens in the sky, he returned to the sequence of the narrative, that is, to the departure of Antiochus Epiphanes from Egypt. Angered because, by order of the senate, he had been commanded to withdraw from the territory of the Ptolemies, which he had invaded, he came with savage mind into Judea, as has been shown above, and he took Jerusalem by force of arms, punished the people, plundered the temple, and committed many wicked deeds in it. That Antiochus bears the figure of Antichrist himself is, above all, made most evident by the tradition of the saints: for just as the Savior foreshadowed Solomon and the other saints as types of his coming, so Antichrist is rightly believed to have had as his type the most wicked king Antiochus, who persecuted the saints and violated the temple.
5:24 But when he had been set against the Jews, he sent the hateful ruler Apollonius with an army of twenty‑two thousand, ordering him to kill all those of full age, and to sell the women and the young people and the virgins, etc.
This passage and the preceding book make mention of him, where the slaughter of the Jews in the rest of the sabbath and Apollonius’ wickedness together with his destruction throughout Judea are recounted. Now that Antiochus commanded Apollonius to kill all of full age and to sell the women and the young people signifies that Antiochus, their enemy, chiefly plots the death of those whom he has observed to be perfect in the Christian religion; but those who are soft and unstable, of whom it is written: “The fool changes like the moon” (Sirach 27:12), he, entangling them in various errors and tossing them about through different vices, separates them from the land of the Church and casts them far away into the depth of crimes.
5:27 But Judas Maccabeus, who had been the tenth, had withdrawn into the desert, etc.
However, how he calls Judas Maccabeus the tenth I do not find, unless perhaps by the record of the high priests who were among the people of Judea in the times of the kingdom of the Greeks this history counts the years, of whom the first high priest was Onias, son of Jaddua; the second, Simon, son of Onias; the third, Eleazar, brother of Simon; the fourth, Manasseh, uncle of Eleazar; the fifth, Onias, son of Simon the Just; the sixth, Simon, son of Onias; the seventh, Onias, son of Simon; the eighth, another Onias, who is called Jason, brother of the former Onias; the ninth, Menelaus, brother of Jason; the tenth, Judas, who, when Alcimus was attempting to seize the high priesthood of the Jews and was destroyed by divine judgment, received the dignity of the first priesthood by the wondrous consent of all. But spiritually Judas is rightly said to be the tenth, because he is found to have kept the precepts of the Decalogue in perfect faith and devotion, and, by his zeal for the Law, was the first after his father to defend it with arms from the hands of the enemies. He is truly written to have led a life with his followers among the mountains, and to have eaten grass for food: because, following the examples of the saints (for they are the mountains of God), by despising the cruel habits of the persecutors, he chose a life pleasing to God, and considered it best always to feed himself on the ever‑green nourishment of virtues, so that, nourished with the unfailing nourishment of the soul, he might not feel eternal hunger.
However, the reading of the Acts of Judas is useful to us in this way only, if we are willing to imitate his virtues of faithfulness and soberness; and if we do not prefer the pleasures of the world and the pomp of this age to the righteousness and truth of God, always mindful of that saying of the Lord which says: “For what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul?” (Matt. 8:36). And again: “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world keeps it for eternal life” (Jn. 12:25).