Scripture Daily

Context No. 391 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

2 Maccabees 7:1-6: in context

1It came to pass that seven brothers and their mother were at the king’s command taken and shamefully handled with scourges and cords, to compel them to taste of the abominable swine’s flesh. 2One of them made himself the spokesman and said, “What would you ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.” 3The king fell into a rage, and commanded that pans and caldrons be heated. 4When these were immediately heated, he gave orders to cut out the tongue of him who had been their spokesman, and to scalp him, and to cut off his extremities, with the rest of his brothers and his mother looking on. 5And when he was utterly maimed, the king gave orders to bring him to the fire, being yet alive, and to fry him in the pan. And as the smoke from the pan spread far, they and their mother also exhorted one another to die nobly, saying this: 6“The Lord God sees, and in truth is entreated for us, as Moses declared in his song, which witnesses against the people to their faces, saying, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’”

This is the beginning of one of the most harrowing stories in Scripture, and there is no way to read it without flinching, nor should there be. Under the persecution of Antiochus, a mother and her seven sons are arrested and tortured to force them to eat pork against the law of God. When the first brother, speaking for them all, says plainly that they are ready to die rather than break the laws of their ancestors, the enraged king has him mutilated and burned alive in a pan while his mother and brothers are made to watch. The text does not spare us the cruelty, and I will not linger on it beyond saying that it is as terrible as anything in the Bible.

What the passage does dwell on is what held them in the middle of it. There was no rescue coming; the brother died in agony. And yet, as the smoke rose, the mother and the remaining brothers exhorted one another to die nobly, and the anchor they reached for was a single conviction, drawn from the song of Moses: the Lord God sees, and he has compassion on his servants. Notice what that conviction did and did not claim. It did not claim that God would stop the torture, because he did not. It claimed that God saw what was happening, every moment of it, and that in the end he would have compassion on those who were his. That was enough to let them face the fire without abandoning their faith. Being seen by God, and held in his ultimate mercy, steadied them where nothing else could.

That is a brutal test of a comfort most of us have never had to lean on so hard. When suffering does not lift and no rescue comes, is the fact that God sees, truly sees, and will finally have compassion on his own, a strong enough anchor to hold me, or do I only trust him as long as he is stopping the pain?

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