Chapter 6
The king sent an order that the Jews be forced to abandon the law of God and to defile the temple. The Jews are compelled to offer sacrifices to idols. Concerning the suffering of two women with their infants, and of Eleazar.
6:2 But not long after, the king sent a certain old man from Antioch, who was to compel the Jews to depart from their ancestral ways and the laws of God, etc.
These same events are reported in the preceding book, namely that Antiochus, through his messengers, defiled the temple by setting up in it the idol of desolation upon the altar of God; and we have given the allegorical interpretation of that passage there.
6:6-7 Nor did anyone simply confess that he was a Jew. They were, however, led under bitter coercion on the king’s birthday to the sacrifices, etc.
They said that the Gentiles acknowledged Liber Pater as the lord of wine, whose rites Antiochus ordered to be especially celebrated on his own birthday, because he believed that this god favored his birthday. For they wish Liber to be named from libera mens (“free mind”), because, as it were, males in intercourse are freed by his benevolence when their seeds are discharged; on account of this the same Liber is depicted with a womanly and delicate body. For they say that women are assigned to him, and wine, for the arousing of lust. Therefore also his brow is encircled with a vine-leaf, but with his head having been formed, he has a vine crown and a horn, because when wine is drunk in Greek fashion [sparingly] and in moderation, it brings joy, but when beyond measure, it stirs up quarrels and, as it were, gives horns. He is also called Lyaeus from the drink called lyaeum, because with much wine the limbs are loosened. This same god is in Greek called Dionysus from Mount Nysa, where he is said to have been raised. Moreover, there is also a city Nysa in which the same Liber is worshipped, where he is called Nisaean. The rites of Liber Pater were first introduced among the Greeks by Orpheus, and he was the first to celebrate them on a mountain of Boeotia and at Thebes, where Liber was born, close by. Because he frequently resounded with the song of the cithara, he was called Cithaeron; and the rites are now called Orphic, in which he himself was torn to pieces, and afterwards also captured, almost at the same time as Faunus. But which of them came first in age can be doubted, since in those same years Latinus and Priam reigned. Likewise their fathers were Picus and Laomedon, during whose reign Orpheus, with the Argonauts, reached the shore of the Athenians.
6:18 Therefore Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes, a man advanced in age, etc.
This Eleazar, whom the wickedness of Antiochus, a most cruel king, forced in his old age to eat pork, represents the Christian people, whom the savagery of Antichrist will attempt, before the end of the world, to turn to idolatry and to the filthiness of life. Moreover, Eleazar is interpreted as “My God is my helper,” a name that most fittingly applies to the people of the faithful, who, together with the Psalmist, know how to say to the Lord: “You are my helper; do not forsake me” (Ps. 27:9); and again, “My deliverer, my God, I will hope in him” (Ps. 18:2). But just as the brutality of the wicked king was unable to compel Eleazar to eat pork, so neither will the cruelty of Antichrist be able in any way to defile the company of the elect with any uncleanness.