Context No. 67 of 4322 · 1 Maccabees
Context · Reflection
1 Maccabees 3:1-9: in context
1His son Judas, who was called Maccabaeus, rose up in his place. 2All his kindred helped him, and so did all those who joined with his father, and they fought with gladness the battle of Israel. 3He got his people great glory, and put on a breastplate like a giant, and bound his warlike harness around him, and set battles in array, protecting the army with his sword. 4He was like a lion in his deeds, and like a lion’s cub roaring for prey. 5He hunted and pursued the lawless, and he burned up those who troubled his people. 6The lawless shrunk back for fear of him, and all the workers of lawlessness were very troubled, and deliverance prospered in his hand. 7He angered many kings and made Jacob glad with his acts. His memory is blessed forever. 8He went through the cities of Judah, destroyed the ungodly out of the land, and turned away wrath from Israel. 9He was renowned to the utmost part of the earth. He gathered together those who were ready to perish.
First Maccabees tells the revolt against the Greek kings of Syria who outlawed Jewish practice and desecrated the temple in the 160s BC. The rising began with an old priest, Mattathias, who refused to sacrifice to a pagan god and fled to the hills with his sons. Mattathias has just died. This passage introduces the son who takes over: Judas, called Maccabeus.
The writing shifts into poetry to do it. He put on a breastplate like a giant, girded on his weapons, and was like a lion in his deeds, like a lion's cub roaring for prey. He hunted the lawless, and the wicked shrank back in fear. It is deliberately old-fashioned language, the cadence of the songs about Israel's early heroes, applied to a guerrilla commander in a war against a Greek empire.
The name Maccabeus probably means the hammer. The book is written to place this family in the line of Joshua and the judges, and the poem is part of that argument, not decoration around it. It is also written by the winning side, in the generation that ended up ruling Judea. When I tell the story of how something was won, whose telling am I repeating, and what would the account sound like from someone who lost?
Sources
- 1 Maccabees 2: Mattathias's refusal to sacrifice and the start of the revolt
- The name Maccabeus, probably from the Aramaic or Hebrew for hammer
- 1 Maccabees written under the Hasmonean dynasty descended from this family