Scripture Daily

Context No. 952 of 4322 · 2 Maccabees

Context · Reflection

2 Maccabees 3:31-40: in context

31But quickly some of Heliodorus’s familiar friends implored Onias to call upon the Most High to grant life to him who lay quite at the last gasp. 32The high priest, secretly fearing lest the king might come to think that some treachery toward Heliodorus had been perpetrated by the Jews, brought a sacrifice for the recovery of the man. 33But as the high priest was making the atoning sacrifice, the same young men appeared again to Heliodorus, arrayed in the same garments. They stood and said, “Give Onias the high priest great thanks, for for his sake the Lord has granted you life. 34See that you, since you have been scourged from heaven, proclaim to all men the sovereign majesty of God.” When they had spoken these words, they vanished out of sight. 35So Heliodorus, having offered a sacrifice to the Lord and vowed great vows to him who had saved his life, and having bidden Onias farewell, returned with his army to the king. 36He testified to all men the works of the greatest God, which he had seen with his eyes. 37When the king asked Heliodorus what sort of man was fit to be sent yet once again to Jerusalem, he said, 38“If you have any enemy or conspirator against the state, send him there, and you will receive him back well scourged, if he even escapes with his life; because truly there is some power of God in that place. 39For he who has his dwelling in heaven himself has his eyes on that place and helps it. Those who come to hurt it, he strikes and destroys.” 40This was the history of Heliodorus and the keeping of the treasury.

Heliodorus, an agent of the Seleucid king, had come to Jerusalem to plunder the temple treasury. In the previous verses he was struck down by a heavenly apparition, a fearsome horseman and two radiant young men, and left near death. Now his friends beg Onias the high priest to pray for his life. Onias, fearing the king might blame the Jews for the death, offers a sacrifice for the man's recovery. The same two young men appear again to Heliodorus and tell him he lives because of Onias's prayer, so he must proclaim God's majesty to all. Restored, Heliodorus offers sacrifice, and goes back testifying to the God who guards that place.

The turn in the story is the high priest praying for the man who came to rob God's house. Onias has every reason to let Heliodorus die, the man was a temple-plunderer struck down by heaven itself, and instead the high priest intercedes for his life and offers sacrifice for his recovery. That is what changes Heliodorus. He came as an enemy of the temple and leaves as a witness to its God, not because he was crushed but because he was spared through the prayer of the man he had wronged. There is something here about how enemies are actually won, not by their destruction but by unexpected mercy from the very people they came against. Heliodorus experienced both the seriousness of God, in the blow that nearly killed him, and the kindness of God, in the priest who prayed him back, and it is the combination that sends him home a changed man. Judgment got his attention; mercy got his heart.

Is there someone who has wronged me or what I hold sacred whom I would rather see destroyed than pray back to life, as Onias prayed for Heliodorus?

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