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Context No. 1361 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

2 Maccabees 14:37-46: in context

37Now information was given to Nicanor against one Razis, an elder of Jerusalem, who was a lover of his countrymen and a man of very good report, and one called Father of the Jews for his good will. 38For in the former times when there was no mingling with the Gentiles, he had been accused of following the Jews’ religion, and had risked body and life with all earnestness for the religion of the Jews. 39Nicanor, wishing to make evident the ill will that he bore against the Jews, sent above five hundred soldiers to seize him; 40for he thought by seizing him to inflict an injury on them. 41But when the troops were at the point of taking the tower, and were forcing the door of the court, and asked for fire to burn the doors, he, being surrounded on every side, fell upon his sword, 42choosing rather to die nobly than to fall into the hands of the wicked wretches, and suffer outrage unworthy of his own nobleness. 43But since he missed his stroke through the excitement of the struggle, and the crowds were now rushing within the door, he ran bravely up to the wall and cast himself down bravely among the crowds. 44But as they quickly gave back, a space was made, and he fell on the middle of his side. 45Still having breath within him, and being inflamed with anger, he rose up, and though his blood gushed out in streams and his wounds were grievous, he ran through the crowds, and standing upon a steep rock, 46when as his blood was now well near spent, he drew forth his bowels through the wound, and taking them in both his hands he shook them at the crowds. Calling upon him who is Lord of life and spirit to restore him these again, he died like this.

Razis was an elder of Jerusalem, a man of good reputation, so loved by his people that he was called Father of the Jews; in earlier days he had risked his body and life for his faith when it was dangerous to keep it. Now Nicanor, seeking to injure the Jews, sends more than five hundred soldiers to seize him. Surrounded in his tower, with the soldiers breaking in and calling for fire to burn the doors, Razis chooses to die rather than fall into their hands and suffer outrage. He falls on his sword; when the wound is not fatal, he throws himself from the wall and, still living, in a final terrible act, gives up his life. The passage recounts his death in unsparing, disturbing detail.

This is a hard passage, and it does not ask to be tidied up. What the writer holds before us is a man of total devotion, one who had loved his people and his God so fiercely that he risked everything for the faith when others hid it, and who in the end would sooner die than be used to dishonor them. His courage and his love are real, and the author plainly admires them, calling his death noble. And yet the manner of his death, taking his own life, is not something scripture holds up elsewhere as the way of the faithful, and the fuller light of Christ would show a different path through such moments: the martyrs who came after did not seize their own deaths but entrusted them to God, enduring rather than ending, following the one who committed his spirit into the Father's hands. So the passage leaves us with something genuine and something to weigh. The genuine thing is the depth of Razis's devotion, a love for God and people that counted his own life as nothing beside them, and that puts a searching question to our own often shallow commitment. What would we risk for our faith; what do we love enough to suffer for? The thing to weigh is that even devotion this fierce is meant finally to be entrusted to God, including our very lives and deaths, rather than taken into our own hands. Razis's love is a rebuke to our lukewarmness; the way of Christ shows where such love was meant to lead.

Does the fierce devotion of a man who counted his own life as nothing beside his faith rebuke the shallowness of my own commitment, and can I learn both to love God that deeply and to entrust even my life and death into his hands rather than my own?

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