Context No. 221 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

2 Maccabees 7:30-42: in context

30But before she had finished speaking, the young man said, “What are you all waiting for? I don’t obey the commandment of the king, but I listen to the commandment of the law that was given to our fathers through Moses. 31But you, who have devised all kinds of evil against the Hebrews, will in no way escape God’s hands. 32For we are suffering because of our own sins. 33If for rebuke and chastening, our living Lord has been angered a little while, yet he will again be reconciled with his own servants. 34But you, O unholy man and of all most vile, don’t be vainly lifted up in your wild pride with uncertain hopes, raising your hand against the heavenly children. 35For you have not yet escaped the judgment of the Almighty God who sees all things. 36For these our brothers, having endured a short pain that brings everlasting life, have now died under God’s covenant. But you, through God’s judgment, will receive in just measure the penalties of your arrogance. 37But I, as my brothers, give up both body and soul for the laws of our fathers, calling upon God that he may speedily become gracious to the nation, and that you, amidst trials and plagues, may confess that he alone is God, 38and that in me and my brothers you may bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty which has been justly brought upon our whole race.” 39But the king, falling into a rage, handled him worse than all the rest, being exasperated at his mocking. 40So he also died pure, putting his whole trust in the Lord. 41Last of all, after her sons, the mother died. 42Let it then suffice to have said thus much concerning the sacrificial feasts and the extreme tortures.

Second Maccabees 7 tells one of the hardest stories in Scripture. A mother and her seven sons have been arrested under Antiochus the Fourth and tortured to death one at a time, for refusing to eat pork and break the law of Moses. This passage is the end of it, the youngest son and then the mother.

The boy will not bend. He tells the king plainly that he obeys the commandment of the law given through Moses, not the commandment of the king. Then he does what his brothers had begun. He reads their own deaths out loud. Israel is suffering, he says, because of its own sins, and God is angry only for a little while and will be reconciled to his servants. His brothers have died under God's covenant and now have everlasting life, and he gives up his body and soul for the law, asking that God be merciful to the nation and that in him and his brothers the wrath finally end. This is one of the clearest hopes of bodily resurrection anywhere in the Old Testament, spoken by a boy under torture.

Then the shortest, heaviest verse. Last of all, after her sons, the mother died. She had watched all seven and outlived none of them. The chapter that shaped how later Jews and Christians thought about resurrection, and about suffering borne for others, ends with a woman who buried everyone. What would I still hold to, if I had already lost everything it was supposed to protect?

Sources

2 Maccabees 6-7: the persecution under Antiochus IV and the deaths of the seven brothers and their mother
2 Maccabees 7:9, 14, 23: the brothers' repeated hope that God will raise them up to everlasting life
2 Maccabees 7:37-38: the youngest son offering his death that the wrath on the nation might end