The Koine Bible

But about this time Antiochus prepared the second expedition into Egypt

And it happened that throughout the whole city for nearly forty days horsemen appeared running through the air, having golden-embroidered robes and armed with spears in a spiraling array, and flashes of swords

and companies of horses drawn up and attacks taking place and charges of each side and movements of shields and multitudes of spears and throws of missiles and flashes of golden adornments and all kinds of armored gear

Therefore all considered that the appearance had taken place for good

But when a false report had arisen that Antiochus had died, Jason, taking with him no fewer than a thousand men, suddenly made an attack on the city; and when those on the wall were driven together, and the city was now already being taken, Menelaus fled into the citadel

And Jason was making slaughterings of his own citizens unsparingly, not considering that prosperity toward his kinsmen is the greatest misfortune, thinking that trophies of enemies and not of those of the same nation were being set up.

He did not gain the beginning; but the end of the plot, having taken shame, he went away in flight again into the Ammanitide.

So he met with an end of evil destruction, being denounced to Aretas, the tyrant of the Arabs, fleeing from city to city, chased, hated by all, as an apostate from the laws and abhorred as a destroyer of fatherland and citizens, he was cast out into Egypt.

And he who had driven many out from the fatherland perished in a foreign land, having gone up to the Lacedaemonians, as if to obtain protection through kinship.

And he cast out a multitude unburied, and became un-mourned, and he partook of no burial at all, neither of an ancestral tomb.

And when reports concerning what had happened fell upon the king, he concluded that Judea had revolted; whereupon, having set out again from Egypt, enraged in spirit, he took the city by spear-capture.

And he ordered the soldiers to cut down without mercy those who came upon them and to slaughter those who were going up into the houses.

And there came to be slaughter of young men and elders and destruction of boys and of women and of children, and massacres of virgins and of infants

And eighty thousand in all the days three were destroyed; four indeed by the grazing of hands, but no less than those slain were sold.

And not content with these things, he dared to enter into the most holy temple of all the earth, having Menelaus as guide, the one who had become a traitor both of the laws and of his fatherland

and taking the sacred vessels with his polluted hands and dragging together with his profane hands the things dedicated by other kings for the increase and glory of the place and honor

And Antiochus was being lifted up in mind, not perceiving that because of the sins of those inhabiting the city the Master had been angered for a short time; therefore there had come about near the place a disregard

But if it had not happened that they were attached to many sins, just as Heliodorus, who was sent by King Seleucus for the inspection of the treasury, this man, being brought forward, immediately having been flogged, was overthrown from his boldness

but not because of the place did the Lord choose the nation, but because of the nation the place

Therefore the place itself also, having shared in the sufferings of the nation that came about, later shared in benefits; and it that was left behind in the wrath of the Almighty was restored again with all glory in the reconciliation of the great Master.

So Antiochus, taking away one thousand eight hundred talents from the temple, quickly separated to Antioch, thinking, because of the pride in his heart, to make the land navigable and the sea passable.

And he left also overseers to afflict the nation, in Jerusalem Philip, by race a Phrygian, but in manner more barbarous than the one who had appointed him.

And in Garizin, Andronikos; and besides these, Menelaus, who was raised up worst above the others against the citizens, having a hostile disposition toward the Jewish citizens.

And he sent Mysarchēs Apollonius with an army, and twenty thousand besides two thousand, having ordered them to slaughter all who were in their prime, and to sell the women and the younger men

But this one, having arrived in Jerusalem and pretending peace, held back until the holy day of the sabbath, and taking the Jews off guard, he ordered those under him to arm themselves against them.

And all those who had gone out for the spectacle he pierced through together, and running into the city with the weapons he laid down sufficient multitudes

But Judas, who was also called Maccabeus, having become about the tenth and withdrawn into the wilderness, lived in the mountains like wild animals, and with those with him, eating grass as food, they continued so as not to share in the defilement