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Context No. 2370 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

2 Maccabees 12:17-23: in context

17When they had gone seven hundred fifty furlongs from there, they made their way to Charax, to the Jews that are called Tubieni. 18They didn’t find Timotheus in that district, for he had by then departed from the district without accomplishing anything, but had left behind a very strong garrison in one place. 19But Dositheus and Sosipater, who were captains under Maccabaeus, went out and destroyed those who had been left by Timotheus in the stronghold, more than ten thousand men. 20Maccabaeus, arranging his own army in divisions, set these two over the bands, and marched in haste against Timotheus, who had with him one hundred twenty thousand infantry and two thousand five hundred cavalry. 21When Timotheus heard of the approach of Judas, he at once sent away the women and the children with the baggage into the fortress called Carnion; for the place was hard to besiege and difficult to access by reason of the narrowness of the approaches on all sides. 22When the band of Judas, who led the first division, appeared in sight, and when terror and fear came upon the enemy, because the manifestation of him who sees all things came upon them, they fled in every direction, carried this way and that, so that they were often injured by their own men, and pierced with the points of their own swords. 23Judas continued the pursuit more vigorously, putting the wicked wretches to the sword, and he destroyed as many as thirty thousand men.

Second Maccabees recounts one of Judas Maccabeus's campaigns against Timotheus, whose forces vastly outnumber his own. When the fighting begins, terror falls on the enemy, and the writer names the cause: the manifestation of him who sees all things came upon them. In their panic they scatter and wound one another with their own weapons.

The account is bloody, and it belongs to a war, but the claim inside it is worth lifting out. The victory is not credited to superior force; it is credited to the awareness that God sees. The one who watches all things is not distant from the battlefield, and when the sense of that presence broke over the enemy, their own numbers turned into confusion. For the faithful, the same truth runs the other way: the God who sees all is on their side, and their confidence rests there rather than in the size of an army.

Does the truth that God sees everything steady me in a hard struggle, or have I forgotten he is present where I fight?

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