A Mother and Her Sons Die for Their Faith

¹On another occasion a Jewish mother and her seven sons were arrested. The king was having them beaten to force them to eat pork.

²Then one of the young men said, What do you hope to gain by doing this? We would rather die than abandon the traditions of our ancestors.

³This made the king so furious that he gave orders for huge pans and kettles to be heated red hot,

⁴and it was done immediately. Then he told his men to cut off the tongue of the one who had spoken and to scalp him and chop off his hands and feet, while his mother and six brothers looked on.

⁵After the young man had been reduced to a helpless mass of breathing flesh, the king gave orders for him to be carried over and thrown into one of the pans. As a cloud of smoke streamed up from the pan, the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die bravely, saying,

⁶The Lord God is looking on and understands our suffering. Moses made this clear when he wrote a song condemning those who had abandoned the Lord. He said, The Lord will have mercy on those who serve him.

⁷After the first brother had died in this way, the soldiers started amusing themselves with the second one by tearing the hair and skin from his head. Then they asked him, Now will you eat this pork, or do you want us to chop off your hands and feet one by one?

⁸He replied in his native language, I will never eat it! So the soldiers tortured him, just as they had the first one,

⁹but with his dying breath he cried out to the king, You butcher! You may kill us, but the King of the universe will raise us from the dead and give us eternal life, because we have obeyed his laws.

¹⁰The soldiers began entertaining themselves with the third brother. When he was ordered to stick out his tongue, he quickly did so. Then he bravely held out his hands

¹¹and courageously said, God gave these to me. But his laws mean more to me than my hands, and I know God will give them back to me again.

¹²The king and those with him were amazed at his courage and at his willingness to suffer.

¹³After he had died, the soldiers tortured the fourth one in the same cruel way,

¹⁴but his final words were, I am glad to die at your hands, because we have the assurance that God will raise us from death. But there will be no resurrection to life for you, Antiochus!

¹⁵When the soldiers took the fifth boy and began torturing him,

¹⁶he looked the king squarely in the eye and said, You have the power to do whatever you want with us, even though you also are mortal. But do not think that God has abandoned our people.

¹⁷Just wait. God will use his great power to torture you and your descendants.

¹⁸Then the soldiers took the sixth boy, and just before he died he said, Make no mistake. We are suffering what we deserve, because we have sinned against our God. That's why all these terrible things are happening to us.

¹⁹But don't think for a minute that you will avoid being punished for fighting against God.

²⁰The mother was the most amazing one of them all, and she deserves a special place in our memory. Although she saw her seven sons die in a single day, she endured it with great courage because she trusted in the Lord.

²¹She combined womanly emotion with manly courage and spoke words of encouragement to each of her sons in their native language.

²²I do not know how your life began in my womb, she would say, I was not the one who gave you life and breath and put together each part of your body.

²³It was God who did it, God who created the universe, the human race, and all that exists. He is merciful and he will give you back life and breath again, because you love his laws more than you love yourself.

²⁴Antiochus was sure that the mother was making fun of him, so he did his best to convince her youngest son to abandon the traditions of his ancestors. He promised not only to make the boy rich and famous, but to place him in a position of authority and to give him the title Friend of the King.

²⁵But the boy paid no attention to him, so Antiochus tried to persuade the boy's mother to talk him into saving his life,

²⁶and after much persuasion she agreed to do so.

²⁷Leaning over her son, she fooled the cruel tyrant by saying in her native language, My son, have pity on me. Remember that I carried you in my womb for nine months and nursed you for three years. I have taken care of you and looked after all your needs up to the present day.

²⁸So I urge you, my child, to look at the sky and the earth. Consider everything you see there, and realize that God made it all from nothing, just as he made the human race.

²⁹Don't be afraid of this butcher. Give up your life willingly and prove yourself worthy of your brothers, so that by God's mercy I may receive you back with them at the resurrection.

³⁰Before she could finish speaking, the boy said, King Antiochus, what are you waiting for? I refuse to obey your orders. I only obey the commands in the Law which Moses gave to our ancestors.

³¹You have thought up all kinds of cruel things to do to our people, but you won't escape the punishment that God has in store for you.

^32-33It is true that our living Lord is angry with us and is making us suffer because of our sins, in order to correct and discipline us. But this will last only a short while, for we are still his servants, and he will forgive us.

³⁴But you are the cruelest and most disgusting thing that ever lived. So don't fool yourself with illusions of greatness while you punish God's people.

³⁵There is no way for you to escape punishment at the hands of the almighty and all-seeing God.

³⁶My brothers suffered briefly because of our faithfulness to God's covenant, but now they have entered eternal life. But you will fall under God's judgment and be punished as you deserve for your arrogance.

³⁷I now give up my body and my life for the laws of our ancestors, just as my brothers did. But I also beg God to show mercy to his people quickly and to torture you until you are forced to acknowledge that he alone is God.

³⁸May my brothers and I be the last to suffer the anger of Almighty God, which he has justly brought upon our entire nation.

³⁹These words of ridicule made Antiochus so furious that he had the boy tortured even more cruelly than his brothers.

⁴⁰And so the boy died, with absolute trust in the Lord, never unfaithful for a minute.

⁴¹Last of all, the mother was put to death.

⁴²But I have said enough about the Jews being tortured and being forced to eat the intestines of sacrificial animals.

The Destiny of the Righteous

¹But righteous people are protected by God and will never suffer torment.

²It is a foolish mistake to think that righteous people die and that their death is a terrible evil.

³They leave us, but it is not a disaster. In fact, the righteous are at peace.

⁴It might appear that they have suffered punishment, but they have the confident hope of immortality.

^5-6Their sufferings were minor compared with the blessings they will receive. God has tested them, like gold in a furnace, and found them worthy to be with him. He has accepted them, just as he accepts the sacrifices which his worshipers burn on the altar.

⁷When God comes to reward the righteous, they will blaze out against the wicked like fire in dry straw.

⁸They will rule over nations and peoples, and the Lord will be their king forever.

⁹Those who have put their trust in God will come to understand the truth of his ways. Those who have been faithful will live with him in his love, for he is kind and merciful to the ones whom he has chosen.

The Destiny of the Wicked

¹⁰The ungodly, however, will get the punishment their wicked thoughts deserve, because they rebelled against the Lord and ignored what was right.

¹¹A man who has no use for wisdom or education has a miserable life in store for him. He has nothing to hope for. His labors are useless, and he will never accomplish anything worthwhile.

¹²The woman he marries will turn out to be irresponsible, and his children will go wrong.

The Importance of Virtue

¹³All his descendants will be under a curse. On Judgment Day God will reward the woman who has never been able to have a child, provided she has not been guilty of adultery. Then she will be happy.

¹⁴On that day, even the man who has been castrated will be rewarded with happiness, if he has kept the Law and has not stored up resentment against the Lord. Because he has been faithful, he will receive a special reward more precious than having children: a place in the Lord's heavenly Temple.

¹⁵Honest deeds are like a tree that bears marvelous fruit. Wisdom is like a root that is alive and can always send up new shoots.

¹⁶But children born of adultery or of a forbidden union will die an early death.

¹⁷Yet even if they do live a long time, they will never amount to anything. They will not be respected in their old age,

¹⁸and if they die young, they will have no hope or comfort on Judgment Day.

¹⁹Children born of a forbidden union suffer a miserable fate.

¹It is better to have virtue, even if it means having no children. Your virtue will be recognized by other people and by God, and you will be remembered for it forever.

²Virtue provides an example for people to follow; when it is not there, they miss it. It has always been the finest prize a person can win, and it always will be so. It is the noblest of all the good qualities a person can have.

³No matter how many children are born of a forbidden union, none of them will ever amount to anything. They are illegitimate; they can never lay a firm foundation for themselves, never take deep root.

⁴Like trees with shallow roots, they put out leaves for a while, but they sway in the wind, and storms uproot them.

⁵Their branches snap off before they mature; their fruit never ripens, and it is good for nothing.

⁶On Judgment Day children born of a forbidden union will testify to the sin of their parents and act as witnesses against them.

⁷Righteous people, however, will find rest, even if they die young.

⁸We honor old age, but not just because a person has lived a long time.

⁹Wisdom and righteousness are signs of the maturity that should come with old age.

The Example of Enoch

¹⁰Once there was a man named Enoch who pleased God, and God loved him. While Enoch was still living among sinners, God took him away,

¹¹so that evil and falsehood could not corrupt his mind and soul. (

¹²We all know that people can be so fascinated by evil that they cannot recognize what is good even when they are looking right at it. Innocent people can be so corrupted with desire that they can think of nothing but what they want.)

¹³This man Enoch achieved in a few years' time a perfection that other people could never attain in a complete lifetime.

¹⁴The Lord was pleased with Enoch's life and quickly took him out of this wicked world. People were aware of his departure but didn't understand. They never seemed to learn the lesson

¹⁵that God is kind and merciful to his own people; he protects those whom he has chosen.

The Fate of the Wicked

¹⁶Even when righteous people are dead and gone, they put to shame the wicked people who live on after them. In their old age the wicked will be disgraced by young people who have already achieved perfection.

¹⁷The wise may die young, but the wicked will never understand that this is the Lord's way of taking them off to safety.

¹⁸They make light of a wise person's death, but the Lord will soon be laughing at them. When they die, they will not be given an honorable burial. Even the dead will hold them in scorn and disgust forever.

¹⁹God will throw them to the ground and make them speechless. Like buildings shaken from their foundations, they will be reduced to piles of ruins. They will be in torment. People will soon forget all about them.

²⁰They will come in fear to the Judgment, where their sins will be counted; they will stand condemned by their own lawless actions.

²⁷Don't build your house and establish a home until your fields are ready, and you are sure that you can earn a living.

²⁸Don't give evidence against others without good reason, or say misleading things about them.

²⁹Don't say, “I'll do to them just what they did to me! I'll get even with them!”