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Context No. 691 of 4322 · 1 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

1 Maccabees 4:1-5: in context

1Gorgias took five thousand infantry, a thousand chosen cavalry, and the army moved out at night, 2that it might fall upon the army of the Jews and strike them suddenly. The men of the citadel were his guides. 3Judas heard of this, and he and the valiant men moved, that he might strike the king’s army which was at Emmaus 4while the forces were still dispersed from the camp. 5Gorgias came into the camp of Judas at night and found no man. He sought them in the mountains; for he said, “These men are running away from us.”

The revolt in First Maccabees has reached open war, and this is a night of maneuver. Gorgias, one of the Seleucid generals, takes five thousand foot and a thousand picked cavalry and moves out in the dark, meaning to fall on Judas's camp by surprise. He has guides: men from the citadel in Jerusalem, Jews who had gone over to the other side and knew the ground. It is a well-laid ambush.

But Judas has heard. Rather than wait to be surprised, he pulls his men out of the camp and marches the other way, straight for the main Seleucid force at Emmaus, while it is still spread out and its best troops are off hunting him in the hills. Gorgias reaches Judas's camp in the night and finds it empty. And he reads the empty camp exactly wrong. These men are running away from us, he says, and he goes off into the mountains looking for frightened fugitives. The camp was not empty from fear. It was empty because Judas was already behind him, about to hit the army he left undefended.

Gorgias saw an empty camp and called it cowardice, while his enemy was circling to his rear. Whose silence or retreat have I read as defeat, when it was a move I simply could not see?

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