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Context No. 727 of 4322 · 1 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

1 Maccabees 7:1-9: in context

1In the one hundred fifty first year, Demetrius the son of Seleucus came out of Rome, and went up with a few men to a city by the sea, and reigned there. 2It came to pass, when he would go into the house of the kingdom of his fathers, that the army laid hands on Antiochus and Lysias, to bring them to him. 3The thing became known to him, and he said, “Don’t show me their faces!” 4So the army killed them. Then Demetrius sat upon the throne of his kingdom. 5All the lawless and ungodly men of Israel came to him. Alcimus was their leader, desiring to be high priest. 6They accused the people to the king, saying, “Judas and his kindred have destroyed all your friends, and have scattered us from our own land. 7Now therefore send a man whom you trust, and let him go and see all the destruction which he has brought on us and the king’s country, and how he has punished them and all who helped them.” 8So the king chose Bacchides, one of the king’s friends, who was ruler in the country beyond the river, and was a great man in the kingdom, and faithful to the king. 9He sent him and that ungodly Alcimus, whom he made the high priest; and he commanded him to take vengeance upon the children of Israel.

First Maccabees turns for a moment to the palace politics behind the war. Demetrius, who had been held as a hostage in Rome, slips away, lands with a few men, and makes his move for the Seleucid throne. The army seizes the reigning boy-king, Antiochus, and his regent Lysias, and brings them to Demetrius. He does not want a scene. Do not show me their faces, he says, and on that order they are killed, and he takes the throne. It is a small, chilling line. He will have them murdered, but he will not look at them while it is done.

Then the trouble comes from inside Israel. The lawless men of the nation, led by one Alcimus who wants the high priesthood, go to the new king and accuse their own people, telling him Judas has destroyed his friends and ruined the country, and asking him to send an army. Demetrius sends the general Bacchides and installs Alcimus as high priest, with orders to take vengeance. A man buys the holiest office in his people by informing on them to a pagan king. But the detail that stays is the king's, turning his face away so he will not have to see the two he is about to kill.

Demetrius could order a killing as long as he did not have to look at the faces. Whose face do I keep out of view so that what I am doing to them stays easy?

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