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Context No. 216 of 4322 · 1 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

1 Maccabees 3:23-37: in context

23Now when he had finished speaking, he rushed suddenly against Seron and his army, and they were defeated before him. 24They pursued them down the descent of Bethhoron to the plain, and about eight hundred men of them fell; but the rest fled into the land of the Philistines. 25The fear of Judas and his kindred, and the dread of them, began to fall on the nations around them. 26His fame reached the king, and every nation told of the battles of Judas. 27But when King Antiochus heard these words, he was full of indignation; and he sent and gathered together all the forces of his realm, an exceedingly strong army. 28He opened his treasury and gave his forces pay for a year, and commanded them to be ready for every need. 29He saw that the money was gone from his treasures, and that the tributes of the country were small, because of the dissension and disaster which he had brought upon the land, to the end that he might take away the laws which had been from the first days. 30He was afraid that he wouldn’t have enough as at other times for the charges and the gifts which he used to give with a liberal hand, more abundantly than the kings who were before him. 31And he was exceedingly perplexed in his mind, and he determined to go into Persia, and to take the tributes of those countries, and to gather much money. 32He left Lysias, an honorable man, and one of royal lineage, to be over the affairs of the king from the river Euphrates to the borders of Egypt, 33and to bring up his son Antiochus, until he came again. 34He delivered to Lysias half of his forces and the elephants, and gave him charge of all the things that he would have done, and concerning those who lived in Judea and in Jerusalem, 35that he should send an army against them to root out and destroy the strength of Israel and the remnant of Jerusalem, and to take away their memory from the place, 36and that he should make foreigners live in all their territory, and should divide their land to them by lot. 37The king took the half that remained of the forces, and left Antioch, his royal city, in the one hundred forty seventh year; and he passed over the river Euphrates, and went through the upper countries.

First Maccabees tells the story of a revolt in the 160s before Christ, when the Greek king Antiochus the Fourth outlawed the Torah, defiled the temple in Jerusalem, and tried to erase Jewish practice. Judas Maccabeus has taken up armed resistance, and in these verses he ambushes and destroys the army of Seron on the descent of Beth-horon, a pass where invading armies had been broken before.

Word reaches the king, and the writer lets us see behind the throne. Antiochus is furious, and he is also broke. His treasury is empty, and the text says plainly why: the dissension and disaster he himself brought on the land had dried up the tribute, and now he cannot pay his soldiers or hand out the lavish gifts that kings before him gave. So he splits his empire in two. He takes half the army east to Persia to squeeze more money out of the provinces, and he leaves the other half, with the war elephants, to his officer Lysias, with orders to wipe out Israel, settle foreigners in the land, and take away even the memory of the place.

The scale is worth holding next to the cause. A band of villagers in the hills has already reached the ears of the empire, and the empire is running out of money to crush them, because cruelty on that scale is expensive to keep up. What am I paying to maintain, that is quietly emptying me while I call it strength?

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