Scripture Daily

Context No. 619 of 4322 · 1 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

1 Maccabees 2:19-26: in context

19And Mattathias answered and said with a loud voice, “If all the nations that are in the house of the king’s dominion listen to him, to fall away each one from the worship of his fathers, and have chosen to follow his commandments, 20yet I and my sons and my kindred will walk in the covenant of our fathers. 21Far be it from us that we should forsake the law and the ordinances. 22We will not listen to the king’s words, to turn aside from our worship, to the right hand, or to the left.” 23When he had finished speaking these words, a Jew came in the sight of all to sacrifice on the altar which was at Modin, according to the king’s commandment. 24Mattathias saw it, so his zeal was kindled, and his guts trembled, and he vented his wrath according to judgment, and ran and killed him upon the altar. 25He killed the king’s officer, who compelled men to sacrifice, at the same time, and pulled down the altar. 26He was zealous for the law, even as Phinehas did to Zimri the son of Salu.

This is the moment the Maccabean revolt ignites. The king's officers have come to the town of Modin to force the Jews to sacrifice to idols, offering the priest Mattathias wealth and honor to go first. And Mattathias answers with a declaration that has echoed down the centuries. Even if all the nations in the king's dominion obey him, he says, every one of them abandoning the faith of their fathers, yet I and my sons and my kindred will walk in the covenant of our fathers. We will not listen to the king's words, to turn from our worship to the right or the left. It is worth pausing on the structure of that sentence: though all, yet I. Though everyone else complies, I will not.

What follows is a fierce and violent scene, and the passage is honest about it; Mattathias, in a burst of zeal, kills a compromising Jew and the king's officer at the altar. I would not hold up the violence as a model for how the faithful resist. But the resolve underneath the violence is the thing to weigh: the refusal to be moved by the fact that everyone else was giving in. The pressure Mattathias faced was not just a threat but a stampede; the whole world seemed to be conforming, and standing firm looked isolated and futile. And his answer was that the behavior of all the nations changed nothing about what he and his house would do. The universality of the compromise was not, for him, a reason to join it.

That is a resolve I need, because the hardest pressure to resist is not a direct threat but the sheer momentum of everyone else going along. When the compromise is universal, standing firm feels pointless and lonely, and the easiest thought in the world is, everyone is doing it, who am I to hold out? Mattathias said, though all the nations comply, yet I will not depart. When everyone around me is conforming to something I know is wrong, do I have that though all, yet I resolve, or does the fact that everyone else is giving in become my permission to give in too?

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