2 Maccabees 13:1-8: a reflection

1In the one hundred forty-ninth year, news was brought to Judas and his company that Antiochus Eupator was coming with multitudes against Judea, 2and with him Lysias his guardian and chancellor, each having a Greek force of one hundred ten thousand infantry, five thousand three hundred cavalry, twenty-two elephants, and three hundred chariots armed with scythes. 3And Menelaus also joined himself with them, and with great hypocrisy encouraged Antiochus, not for the saving of his country, but because he thought that he would be set over the government. 4But the King of kings stirred up the anger of Antiochus against the wicked wretch. When Lysias informed him that this man was the cause of all the evils, the king commanded to bring him to Beroea, and to put him to death in the way customary in that place. 5Now there is in that place a tower that is fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it had all around it a circular rim sloping steeply on every side into the ashes. 6Here one who is guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes is pushed down to destruction. 7By such a fate it happened that the breaker of the law, Menelaus, died, without obtaining so much as a grave in the earth, and that justly; 8for inasmuch as he had perpetrated many sins against the altar, whose fire and whose ashes were holy, he received his death in ashes.

Menelaus was a traitor, a man who had betrayed his own people and defiled the temple for his own advancement, and who now hypocritically urged on the invading king, hoping to be rewarded with power. But his scheming caught up with him. The King of kings, the text says, stirred things so that the very king Menelaus was flattering turned against him, and he was put to death, fittingly, in a tower of ashes, receiving his death in ashes because he had sinned against the holy altar. And that justly, the narrator adds.

Notice the conviction running through this grim account: God's justice, though it may seem slow, catches up with the treacherous. Menelaus had seemed to prosper in his betrayals, advancing himself by wickedness. But behind the shifting politics stood the King of kings, and in the end the traitor met a just fate, undone by the very powers he had schemed to please. The narrator sees God's hand: justice was done, and done fittingly.

That is a sobering assurance for a world where the treacherous often seem to get away with it. The betrayers, the schemers, the ones who advance themselves by wickedness, can appear to prosper for a long time, and it can seem that no justice will ever reach them. This account insists otherwise: there is a King of kings above the shifting powers, and his justice, however delayed, is not escaped. We are not to take vengeance ourselves or grow bitter, but we can rest in the truth that God's justice is real and will not finally be evaded. Leave the treacherous to the King of kings, and trust that he judges rightly, in his time.

Lord, Menelaus betrayed his people and defiled your altar and seemed to prosper, but your justice caught up with him in the end. When the treacherous and scheming seem to get away with their wickedness, keep me from bitterness and from taking vengeance myself. Remind me that you are the King of kings above every shifting power, and your justice, however delayed, is not escaped. I leave the treacherous to you, who judge rightly in your time.