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Context No. 164 of 4322 · 1 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

1 Maccabees 9:28-34: in context

28All the friends of Judas were gathered together, and they said to Jonathan, 29“Since your brother Judas has died, we have no man like him to go out against our enemies and Bacchides, and among those of our nation who hate us. 30Now therefore we have chosen you this day to be our prince and leader in his place, that you may fight our battles.” 31So Jonathan took the governance upon him at that time, and rose up in the place of his brother Judas. 32When Bacchides found out, he tried to kill him. 33Jonathan, and Simon his brother, and all who were with him, knew it; and they fled into the wilderness of Tekoah, and encamped by the water of the pool of Asphar. 34Bacchides found this out on the Sabbath day, and came—he and all his army—over the Jordan.

Judas Maccabeus is dead, killed in battle against a much larger Seleucid force. This passage is his followers deciding what happens next, and their opening line is bleaker than anything a leader would want said at his succession.

Since your brother Judas died, they tell Jonathan, we have no one like him to go out against our enemies and Bacchides, and against those of our own nation who hate us. That last phrase is the hardest part. The war is not only against the empire. Part of the country is against them too. There is no pretending at unity, and the men saying this are asking Jonathan to take the job anyway.

He accepts, and the campaign that follows is not a series of victories. It is retreat into the wilderness of Tekoa, evasion, and survival, with Bacchides pursuing them on the Sabbath knowing they may not fight. Jonathan leads for years without the kind of triumph his brother had, and it is his patience that keeps the movement alive until Simon can consolidate it. Not every stretch of a long effort gets a hero's chapter. Where am I holding something together in a season that will never look like the impressive part?

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