The Koine Bible

If then also a woman, and old, and mother of seven children, endured the tortures even to death while seeing her children, the devout reason is confessedly master of the passions.

I have shown, therefore, that not only men mastered their passions, but also a woman despised the greatest tortures.

And not so savage were the lions around Daniel, nor the furnace of Mishael, blazing with most fierce fire, as the nature of love for children burned that woman, seeing her seven sons being so variously tormented.

But by the reasoning of piety the mother extinguished so many and so great sufferings.

For consider also this, that if the woman had been fainthearted, though being a mother, she would have lamented over them, and perhaps she would have said these things.

O wretched I indeed, and many times thrice miserable, who, having borne seven sons, have become the mother of no one

O vain seven pregnancies and useless seven ten-month gestations and fruitless nursing by wet nurses and miserable milk-feeding

But in vain upon you, O children, I endured many pains and more grievous anxieties of upbringing

O my children, some unmarried and some married, useless, I shall not see your children, nor, called grandmother, shall I be blessed.

O woman with many children and noble children, I, a widow and alone, very much mourning

nor would I, dying, have any of my sons to bury me

But with this lament the holy and God-fearing mother bewailed none, nor did she turn back any of them so that they might not die, nor was she grieved as those dying

but, just as having a mind like adamant and begetting again into immortality the number of the sons, rather for the sake of piety she urged them on to death, beseeching them

O mother, because of godliness you conquered a soldier, an old man, and a woman; and in deeds you were found stronger than a man, and in words too.

For even when you were seized together with the children, you were standing by Eleazar, seeing him being tortured, and you were saying to the children in the Hebrew language

O noble children, the contest for which you were called, for the testimony of the nation, you have contended eagerly for the ancestral law.

For it is shameful that this old man should endure the pains because of piety, while you, the young men, should be terrified by the tortures.

Remember that on account of God, the ruler of the world, you have shared in and enjoyed life.

And for this reason you ought to endure every toil because of God.

for whom also our father Abraham hastened to slaughter Isaac, the father of the nation, his son, and seeing the paternal hand bringing down the sword-bearing arm upon him he did not shrink

And Daniel the righteous was thrown to lions, and Hananiah and Azariah and Mishael were cast into a furnace of fire and endured because of God.

And you also, therefore, having the same faith toward God, do not be embittered.

For, knowing that reverence is irrational, not to resist the pains.

Through these words the mother of seven, encouraging each one of the sons to die, persuaded them rather than to transgress the commandment of God.

And besides these things, knowing also that those who die for God live to God, as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the patriarchs.