2 Maccabees 7:1-6: a reflection

1It came to pass that seven brothers and their mother were at the king’s command taken and shamefully handled with scourges and cords, to compel them to taste of the abominable swine’s flesh. 2One of them made himself the spokesman and said, “What would you ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.” 3The king fell into a rage, and commanded that pans and caldrons be heated. 4When these were immediately heated, he gave orders to cut out the tongue of him who had been their spokesman, and to scalp him, and to cut off his extremities, with the rest of his brothers and his mother looking on. 5And when he was utterly maimed, the king gave orders to bring him to the fire, being yet alive, and to fry him in the pan. And as the smoke from the pan spread far, they and their mother also exhorted one another to die nobly, saying this: 6“The Lord God sees, and in truth is entreated for us, as Moses declared in his song, which witnesses against the people to their faces, saying, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’”

This is one of the hardest passages in Scripture to read: the account of seven brothers and their mother, arrested and tortured for refusing to betray their faith by eating what God's law forbade. The details of their suffering are terrible, and the account does not hide them. Yet what stands out is the brothers' resolve, We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors, and the confidence that sustained them: The Lord God sees, and in truth has compassion on his servants.

Notice what held them steady in the worst of suffering. Not that the pain was small, it was not, and not that they were spared, they were not. What sustained them was a conviction about God: the Lord God sees, and he has compassion on his servants. Even in agony, even facing death, they held to the belief that God was not absent or indifferent, that he saw their suffering and that his compassion was toward them. That conviction let them face the unbearable without betraying their faith.

Most of us will never face such extremity, but the conviction that steadied them is one to hold in any suffering: the Lord God sees, and he has compassion on his servants. When you suffer, the temptation is to feel that God has looked away, that your pain goes unseen and uncared for. These martyrs, in far greater agony, held the opposite: he sees, and he cares. Whatever you are enduring, the Lord God sees it, and his compassion is toward you. Let that conviction hold you, as it held them, even when everything else is stripped away.

Lord, in unimaginable suffering these brothers held to one conviction: the Lord God sees, and has compassion on his servants. When I suffer and am tempted to feel you have looked away, that my pain is unseen and uncared for, hold me with the truth that steadied them. You see my suffering, and your compassion is toward me. Let that conviction hold me fast, even when everything else is stripped away.