Scripture Daily

Context No. 3471 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

2 Maccabees 1:7-17: in context

7In the reign of Demetrius, in the one hundred sixty-ninth year, we the Jews have already written to you in the suffering and in the distress that has come upon us in these years, from the time that Jason and his company revolted from the holy land and the kingdom, 8and set the gate on fire, and shed innocent blood. We prayed to the Lord, and were heard. We offered sacrifices and meal offerings. We lit the lamps. We set out the show bread. 9Now see that you keep the days of the feast of tabernacles in the month Chislev in the one hundred eighty-eighth year. 10The people of Jerusalem and those who are in Judea, with the senate and Judas, to Aristobulus, King Ptolemy’s teacher, who is also of the stock of the anointed priests, and to the Jews who are in Egypt, we send greetings and health. 11Having been saved by God out of great perils, as men arrayed against a king, we thank him greatly. 12For he threw out into Persia those who fought against us in the holy city. 13For when the prince had come there, with an army that seemed irresistible, they were cut to pieces in the temple of Nanaea by the treachery of Nanaea’s priests. 14For Antiochus, on the pretense that he would marry her, came into the place, he and his friends who were with him, that they might take a large part of the treasures as a dowry. 15And when the priests of Nanaea’s temple had set the treasures out, and he had come there with a small company within the wall of the sacred precinct, they locked the temple when Antiochus had come in. 16Opening the secret door of the paneled ceiling, they threw stones and struck down the prince. They cut him and his company in pieces, and cut off their heads, and threw them to the people who were outside. 17Blessed be our God in all things, who handed over those who had committed impiety.

This festival letter recalls how God delivered his people from great danger, and it ends with a grim account of how the proud Antiochus met his end, killed in a pagan temple he had entered by deceit, intending to plunder its treasures. The writer's response is not gloating but worship: blessed be our God in all things, who handed over the impious.

Underneath the violent history is a conviction that God is at work in the rise and fall of the proud, that the one who came to plunder a temple by treachery was himself brought down there. The letter's purpose is to call God's people to remember and give thanks, to keep the festival, because God had saved them from perils they could never have survived on their own. When we look back on dangers we have come through, the faithful response is not to credit our own cleverness or luck, but to bless God, who alone brought us safely out of great perils and kept us when we could not keep ourselves.

When I look back on dangers and troubles I have come through, do I bless God who delivered me, giving him thanks rather than crediting my own resources?

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