Context No. 2950 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

2 Maccabees 4:7-17: in context

7When Seleucus was deceased, and Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, succeeded to the kingdom, Jason the brother of Onias supplanted his brother in the high priesthood, 8having promised to the king at an audience three hundred sixty talents of silver, and out of another fund eighty talents. 9In addition to this, he undertook to assign one hundred fifty more, if it might be allowed him through the king’s authority to set him up a gymnasium and a body of youths to be trained in it, and to register the inhabitants of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch. 10When the king had assented, and Jason had taken possession of the office, he immediately shifted those of his own race to the Greek way of life. 11Setting aside the royal ordinances of special favor to the Jews, granted by the means of John the father of Eupolemus, who went on the mission to the Romans to establish friendship and alliance, and seeking to overthrow the lawful ways of living, he brought in new customs forbidden by the law. 12For he eagerly established a gymnasium under the citadel itself, and caused the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat. 13Thus there was an extreme of hellenization, and an advance of a foreign religion, by reason of the exceeding profaneness of Jason, who was an ungodly man and not a high priest; 14so that the priests had no more any zeal for the services of the altar; but despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to enjoy that which was unlawfully provided in the wrestling arena, after the summons to the discus-throwing. 15They despised the honors of their fathers, and valued the prestige of the Greeks best of all. 16For this reason, severe calamity overtook them. The men whose ways of living they earnestly followed, and to whom they desired to be made like in all things, these became their enemies and punished them. 17For it is not a light thing to show irreverence to God’s laws, but later events will make this clear.

Under Antiochus, a man named Jason buys the high priesthood with heavy bribes and then aggressively pushes Greek customs on his own people. He builds a gymnasium under the very citadel, enrolls the people of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch, and lures even the priests to neglect the altar and hurry off to the wrestling arena. The writer calls it an extreme of foreign fashion, and warns that severe calamity followed.

The corruption here is not a foreign army but an inside sellout. Jason, a Jewish high priest, trades his people's God-given way of life for the prestige of Greek culture, and the priests themselves come to despise the sanctuary and prefer the games. It is a picture of a community abandoning its own identity from within, chasing the admiration of the dominant culture, until the sacred is neglected for the fashionable. And the writer's verdict is sober: it is no light thing to show contempt for God's laws, and the consequences come in time.

Am I quietly trading my God-given identity for the prestige of the dominant culture around me, letting the sacred be crowded out by the fashionable?

Sources

2 Maccabees 4:17: "For it is not a light thing to show irreverence to God's laws."
Romans 12:2: "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
Galatians 1:10: "For if I were still pleasing men, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ."