Chapter 7
On the suffering of the seven brothers and their mother.
7:1 Now it happened that seven brothers, together with their mother, having been seized, were compelled by the king to eat, against what is right, the flesh of swine, tortured with whips and scourges, etc.
What is indicated by this mother of seven sons, if not the fruitfulness of Mother Church, who through the grace of the sevenfold Spirit brings forth for God the Father adopted sons? The cruelty of typical Antiochus, that is, of Antichrist, although it tears apart through its ministers the offspring of the fathers, and through himself both them and their mother with various torments, nevertheless is in no way able to draw them into blasphemy. But what reward awaits this woman and her sons in the future for the suffering they have endured in the present, Isaiah shows, saying: Rejoice, barren woman who does not give birth; sing praise and hymn, you who were not bearing: because the deserted woman has many sons, more than she who has a husband, says the Lord. Enlarge the place of your tent, and stretch out the skins of your tabernacles, do not spare: make your cords long, and strengthen your pegs. To the right and to the left you will break forth, and your seed will inherit nations. Do not fear, for you shall not be confused nor put to shame. For you shall not be ashamed, because you will forget the confusion of your youth, and you will no longer remember the criticism of your widowhood. For he who made you will rule over you, the Lord of hosts is his name, and your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel: he shall be called the God of all the earth, because the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and like a wife rejected from youth, says your God. For a brief moment I have forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you. In a moment of indignation I hid my face from you for a little while, but with everlasting mercy I have had pity on you, says the Lord your redeemer. Poor little one, storm‑tossed, without any comfort. Behold, I will lay your stones in order, and I will found you upon sapphires. And I will set jasper as your battlements, and your gates in carved stones, and all your borders in desirable stones: all your children taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. And you shall be founded in righteousness. Stay far from oppression (Isa. 54:1-7). But the fact that after the sons the mother too was put to death shows that, after the triumphs of each of the sons of the Church, by which they overcame their enemies, they will enter with free souls into eternal rest. Finally, Mother Church herself, the mother of all the faithful, will be brought to completion at the end of the world, and, taking the trophy of glory over all her enemies, will possess the everlasting kingdom.
However, how the most blessed martyr and most gentle doctor Cyprian (On the Exhortation to Martyrdom 11) , writing about these same seven brothers to Fortunatus, would discourse upon them in eloquent speech after the manner of speakers, we have judged should be inserted in this place; and among other things he says therefore: “But what, in the Maccabees, do the seven brothers, alike in the lot both of birth and of virtues, signify, except the number seven fulfilled in the sacrament of perfect completion? For therefore the seven brothers, united in martyrdom, are as at the beginning there were, in the divine ordering, seven days containing seven thousand years; as the seven spirits and the seven angels who stand and minister before the face of the Lord; and the seven‑branched lampstand in the tabernacle of witness; and in the Apocalypse the seven golden lampstands (Rev. 1:20); and in Solomon the seven pillars on which Wisdom built her house (Prov. 9:1). So also here the number of the seven brothers, by its quantity embracing the number of the seven Churches, is in accord with what we read in the first book of Kings (1 Sam. 2:5), that the barren woman bore seven. And in Isaiah seven women seize upon one man, whose name they beg to be called upon them (Isa. 4:1). And the apostle Paul, who remembers this legitimate and fixed number, writes to seven Churches. And in the Apocalypse (Rev. 1) the Lord directs His divine commands and heavenly precepts to seven Churches and to their angels; and this number is now found here in the brothers, so that the legitimate completion may be fulfilled. “With the seven children the mother also is clearly joined, as their source and root; she who afterwards bore the seven Churches, she herself first and single, founded upon the rock by the word of the Lord. Nor is it without meaning that in the sufferings the mother alone is with her children; for the martyrs, who in their passion bear witness that they are sons of God, are now reckoned as having no Father but God alone, just as in the Gospel the Lord teaches, saying: ‘Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father, who is in heaven’ (Matt. 23:9). “How illustrious, moreover, how great were the proclamations of confession which they uttered, what great evidences of faith they provided! King Antiochus, hostile, indeed, in Antiochus the Antichrist was foreshadowed, sought to stain the glorious mouths of the martyrs, joined and invincible in the spirit of confession, with the defilement of swine’s flesh; and when he had severely beaten them with scourges and had been able to achieve nothing, he ordered pans to be heated. When these were red‑hot and blazing, he commanded that the one who had spoken first, and who by the loyalty of his courage and faith had the more provoked the king’s wrath, be brought to them and fried, after first stretching out and cutting off the tongue which had confessed God. This happened to the martyr in a more glorious way; for the tongue that had confessed the name of God ought itself to go first to God. “Next, against the second he created more cruel punishments; and before he tortured the other members, he flayed off the skin of his head with the hair, in deliberate hatred. For since the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God, he who was crushing the head in the martyr was persecuting God and Christ in the head. But he, trusting in his martyrdom and promising himself the reward of the resurrection from the recompense of God, cried out and said: ‘You indeed, powerless one, destroy us from this present life; but the King of the world will raise us who die for His laws to the eternal resurrection of life.’
“The third, when his tongue was demanded, promptly put it out; for from his brother he had already learned to despise the punishment of cutting out the tongue. He also steadfastly stretched forth his hands to be cut off, greatly blessed in this kind of punishment, to whom it befell, with hands extended for suffering, to imitate the likeness of the Lord’s passion. “Likewise the fourth, despising the tortures with equal courage and answering the king with a heavenly voice to confound him, cried out and said:
7:14 ‘It is better, being given over to death by men, to look for the hope from God, to be raised again by Him to eternal life; for you shall have no resurrection to life.’
“The fifth, besides the fact that by the strength of his faith he trampled underfoot the king’s butchery and cruel and manifold torments, was also, inspired by the spirit of divinity to foreknowledge and understanding of things to come, a prophet to the king of the indignation of God and of the vengeance that would swiftly follow:
7:16-17 ‘Having power among men,’ he says, ‘though you are mortal, you do what you will. But do not suppose that our race has been forsaken by God. Only wait, and you will see His great power, how He will torture you and your seed.’
What a relief that was to the martyr, how great, how immense a consolation in his torments, not to think of his own sufferings, but to proclaim the punishments of his torturer!
“In the sixth, moreover, not only his courage, but also his humility must be proclaimed; that the martyr claimed nothing for himself, nor puffed up the honor of his confession with proud words, but attributed to his own sins the fact that he suffered persecution from the king, while he ascribed it to God that he would afterwards be avenged. He taught that martyrs are modest, that they trust in vengeance being taken, and that they boast of nothing in their passion.
7:18-19 ‘Do not,’ he says, ‘deceive yourself in vain; for we suffer these things for our own sakes, in that we have sinned against our God. But do not think that you will remain unpunished, who have set yourself to fight against God.’
“Admirable also was the mother, who, neither broken by the weakness of her sex nor shaken by manifold bereavement, looked with willing eyes upon her dying children, and reckoned those sufferings of her offspring not as pains but as glories, offering to God as great a martyrdom by the courage of her eyes as her sons offered by the torments and suffering of their limbs.”
When six had been killed and punished and one of the brothers still remained, the king promised him riches, power, and many things, so that his cruelty and savagery might be soothed by the consolation of having at least one subdued, and he asked that the mother should plead with him to yield about the son. She did indeed plead with her son, but as was fitting for the mother of martyrs, as was fitting for one mindful of the Law and of God, as was fitting for a woman who loved her sons not delicately but courageously. For she pleaded, but that he might confess the Lord; she pleaded that her son might not be separated from his brothers in the fellowship of praise and glory; counting herself then the mother of seven sons, if it should fall to her lot to have borne seven sons to God, not to the world.
Arming him therefore and strengthening him, and in that moment bringing forth her son by a happier birth, she said:
7:27-29 “My son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb for nine months, and gave you milk for three years, and nourished you, and brought you to this age. I beg you, my son, look upon heaven and earth; and seeing all that is in them, understand that God made them out of nothing, as well as the race of men. Therefore, my son, do not fear this executioner, but, proving yourself worthy of your brothers, accept death, so that in that mercy I may receive you together with your brothers.”
Great is the praise of the mother in her call to courage, but greater still in the fear of God and in the truth of faith, in that she promised nothing for herself or for her son from the honor of the six martyrs, nor did she believe that the plea of the brothers would be of any avail for the salvation of one who denied; instead she persuaded him rather to become a sharer in their passion, so that on the day of judgment he might be found together with his brothers. After these things the mother also dies with her children; for nothing else was now fitting, since she who had borne and made martyrs should be joined with them in the fellowship of glory, and that she herself should follow those whom she had sent on before to God.