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Context No. 269 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

2 Maccabees 5:1-10: in context

1Now about this time Antiochus made his second invasion into Egypt. 2It happened that throughout all the city, for almost forty days, cavalry appeared in the midst of the sky in swift motion, wearing robes woven with gold and carrying spears, equipped with troops for battle— 3drawing swords, squadrons of cavalry in array, encounters and pursuits of both armies, shaking shields, multitudes of lances, throwing of missiles, flashing of golden trappings, and putting on all sorts of armor. 4Therefore everyone prayed that the manifestation might have been given for good. 5When a false rumor had arisen that Antiochus was dead, Jason took not less than a thousand men, and suddenly made an assault upon the city. When those who were on the wall were being routed, and the city was at length nearly taken, Menelaus took refuge in the citadel. 6But Jason slaughtered his own citizens without mercy, not considering that good success against kinsmen is the greatest misfortune, but supposing himself to be setting up trophies over enemies, and not over fellow countrymen. 7He didn’t win control of the government, but receiving shame as the result of his conspiracy, he fled again as a fugitive into the country of the Ammonites. 8At last therefore he met with a miserable end. Having been imprisoned at the court of Aretas the prince of the Arabians, fleeing from city to city, pursued by all men, hated as a rebel against the laws, and abhorred as the executioner of his country and his fellow citizens, he was cast ashore in Egypt. 9He who had driven many from their own country into exile perished in exile, having crossed the sea to the Lacedaemonians, hoping to find shelter there because they were near of kin. 10He who had thrown out a multitude unburied had none to mourn for him. He didn’t have any funeral at all and no place in the tomb of his ancestors.

This passage falls in the middle of the Maccabean crisis, and it pairs a strange sign in the sky with a squalid story on the ground. For almost forty days, the text says, phantom horsemen in gold armor appeared fighting across the sky over Jerusalem, and everyone prayed the omen would turn out to mean something good.

What actually happened was the opposite of good. On a false rumor that King Antiochus had died, a man named Jason, a former high priest who had bought the office and then been pushed out of it, attacked Jerusalem with a thousand men and butchered his own fellow citizens. The writer stops to name his error exactly: he thought he was raising trophies over enemies, not seeing that a victory won against your own kinsmen is the worst kind of defeat. He did not even gain the power he was reaching for. He failed, fled, and the narrator follows his end with grim care. Hunted from town to town, hated everywhere as a traitor to his own laws and the butcher of his own people, he was finally cast up on a foreign shore and died in exile, with no one to mourn him and no place in his ancestors' grave.

Then the writer draws the shape of it out loud. The man who had driven many into exile perished in exile. The man who had left many unburied had no one to bury him. What he had done to others came back on him, feature for feature. What am I calling a victory, that I have not yet noticed is being won against my own people, and that may one day be measured back to me in kind?

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