4 Maccabees 5

1 The tyrant Antiochus, therefore, sitting in public state with his assessors upon a certain lofty place, with his armed troops standing in a circle around him,

2 commanded his spearbearers to seize every one of the Hebrews, and to compel them to taste swine’s flesh, and things offered to idols.

3 And should any of them be unwilling to eat the accursed food, they were to be tortured on the wheel, and so killed.

4 And when many had been seized, a foremost man of the assembly, a Hebrew, by name Eleazar, a priest by family, by profession a lawyer, and advanced in years, and for this reason known to many of the king’s followers, was brought near to him.

5 And Antiochus seeing him, said,

6 I would counsel you, old man, before your tortures begin, to taste the swine’s flesh, and save your life; for I feel respect for your age and hoary head, which since you have had so long, you appear to me to be no philosopher in retaining the superstition of the Jews.

7 For wherefore, since nature has conferred upon you the most excellent flesh of this animal, do you loathe it?

8 It seems senseless not to enjoy what is pleasant, yet not disgraceful; and from notions of sinfulness, to reject the boons of nature.

9 And you will be acting, I think, still more senselessly, if you follow vain conceits about the truth.

10 And you will, moreover, be despising me to your own punishment.

11 Will you not awake from your trifling philosophy? and give up the folly of your notions; and, regaining understanding worthy of your age, search into the truth of an expedient course?

12 and, reverencing my kindly admonition, have pity upon your own years?

13 For, bear in mind, that if there be any power which watches over this religion of yours, it will pardon you for all transgressions of the law which you commit through compulsion.

14 While the tyrant incited him in this manner to the unlawful eating of flesh, Eleazar begged permission to speak.

15 And having received power to speak, he began thus to deliver himself:

16 We, O Antiochus, who are persuaded that we live under a divine law, consider no compulsion to be so forcible as obedience to that law;

17 wherefore we consider that we ought not in any point to transgress the law.

18 And indeed, were our law (as you suppose) not truly divine, and if we wrongly think it divine, we should have no right even in that case to destroy our sense of religion.

19 think not eating the unclean, then, a trifling offense.

20 For transgression of the law, whether in small or great matters, is of equal moment;

21 for in either case the law is equally slighted.

22 But you deride our philosophy, as though we lived irrationally in it.

23 Yet it instructs us in temperance, so that we are superior to all pleasures and lusts; and it exercises us in manliness, so that we cheerfully undergo every grievance.

24 And it instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we render what is due; and it teaches us piety, so that we worship the one only God becomingly.

25 Wherefore it is that we eat not the unclean; for believing that the law was established by God, we are convinced that the Creator of the world, in giving his laws, sympathizes with our nature.

26 Those things which are convenient to our souls, he has directed us to eat; but those which are repugnant to them, he has interdicted.

27 But, tyrant-like, you not only force us to break the law, but also to eat, that you may ridicule us as we thus profanely eat:

28 but you shall not have this cause of laughter against me;

29 nor will I transgress the sacred oaths of my forefathers to keep the law.

30 No, not if you pluck out my eyes, and consume my entrails.

31 I am not so old, and void of manliness, but that my rational powers are youthful in defence of my religion.

32 Now then; prepare your wheels, and kindle a fiercer flame.

33 I will not so compassionate my old age, as on my account to break the law of my country.

34 I will not belie you, O law, my instructor! or forsake you, O beloved self-control!

35 I will not put you to shame, O philosopher Reason; or deny you, O honored priesthood, and science of the law.

36 Mouth! you shall not pollute my old age, nor the full stature of a perfect life.

37 My fathers shall receive me pure, not having quailed before your compulsion, though to death.

38 For over the ungodly you shall tyrannize; but you shall not lord it over my thoughts about religion, either by your arguments, or through deeds.

4 Maccabees 6

1 When Eleazar had in this manner answered the exhortations of the tyrant, the spearbearers came up, and rudely haled Eleazar to the instruments of torture.

2 And first, they stripped the old man, adorned as he was with the comeliness of piety.

3 Then tying back his arms and hands, they disdainfully used him with stripes;

4 a herald opposite crying out, Obey the commands of the king.

5 But Eleazar, the high-minded and truly noble, as one tortured in a dream, regarded it not all.

6 But raising his eyes on high to heaven, the old man’s flesh was stripped off by the scourges, and his blood streamed down, and his sides were pierced through.

7 And falling upon the ground, from his body having no power to support the pains, he yet kept his reasoning upright and unbending.

8 then one of the harsh spearbearers leaped upon his belly as he was falling, to force him upright.

9 But he endured the pains, and despised the cruelty, and persevered through the indignities;

10 and like a noble athlete, the old man, when struck, vanquished his torturers.

11 His countenance sweating, and he panting for breath, he was admired by the very torturers for his courage.

12 Wherefore, partly in pity for his old age,

13 partly from the sympathy of acquaintance, and partly in admiration of his endurance, some of the attendants of the king said,

14 Why do you unreasonably destroy yourself, O Eleazar, with these miseries?

15 We will bring you some meat cooked by yourself, and do you save yourself by pretending that you have eaten swine’s flesh.

16 And Eleazar, as though the advice more painfully tortured him, cried out,

17 Let not us who are children of Abraham be so evil advised as by giving way to make use of an unbecoming pretense;

18 for it were irrational, if having lived up to old age in all truth, and having scrupulously guarded our character for it, we should now turn back,

19 and ourselves should become a pattern of impiety to the young, as being an example of pollution eating.

20 It would be disgraceful if we should live on some short time, and that scorned by all men for cowardice,

21 and be condemned by the tyrant for unmanliness, by not contending to the death for our divine law.

22 Wherefore do you, O children of Abraham, die nobly for your religion.

23 You⌃ spearbearers of the tyrant, why do you⌃ linger?

24 Beholding him so high-minded against misery, and not changing at their pity, they led him to the fire:

25 then with their wickedly contrived instruments they burned him on the fire, and poured stinking fluids down into his nostrils.

26 And he being at length burned down to the bones, and about to expire, raised his eyes Godward, and said,

27 You know, O God, that when I might have been saved, I am slain for the sake of the law by tortures of fire.

28 Be merciful to your people, and be satisfied with the punishment of me on their account.

29 Let my blood be a purification for them, and take my life in recompense for theirs.

30 Thus speaking, the holy man departed, noble in his torments, and even to the agonies of death resisted in his reasoning for the sake of the law.

31 Confessedly, therefore, religious reasoning is master of the passions.

32 For had the passions been superior to reasoning, I would have given them the witness of this mastery.

33 But now, since reasoning conquered the passions, we befittingly awared it the authority of first place.

34 And it is but fair that we should allow, that the power belongs to reasoning, since it masters external miseries.

35 Ridiculous would it be were it not so; and I prove that reasoning has not only mastered pains, but that it is also superior to the pleasures, and withstands them.

4 Maccabees 7

1 The reasoning of our father Eleazar, like a first-rate pilot, steering the vessel of piety in the sea of passions,

2 and flouted by the threats of the tyrant, and overwhelmed with the breakers of torture,

3 in no way shifted the rudder of piety till it sailed into the harbour of victory over death.

4 Not so has ever a city, when besieged, held out against many and various machines, as did that holy man, when his pious soul was tried with the fiery trial of tortures and rackings, move his besiegers through the religious reasoning that shielded him.

5 For father Eleazar, projecting his disposition, broke the raging waves of the passions as with a jutting promontory.

6 O priest worthy of the priesthood! you did not pollute your sacred teeth; nor make your appetite, which had always embraced the clean and lawful, a partaker of profanity.

7 O harmonizer with the law, and sage devoted to a divine life!

8 Of such a character ought those to be who perform the duties of the law at the risk of their own blood, and defend it with generous sweat by sufferings even to death.

9 You, father, have gloriously established our right government by your endurance; and making of much account our service past, prevented its destruction, and, by your deeds, have made credible the words of philosophy.

10 O aged man of more power than tortures, elder more vigorous than fire, greatest king over the passions, Eleazar!

11 For as father Aaron, armed with a censer, hastening through the consuming fire, vanquished the flame-bearing angel,

12 so, Eleazar, the descendant of Aaron, wasted away by the fire, did not give up his reasoning.

13 And, what is most wonderful, though an old man, though the labors of his body were now spent, and his fibres were relaxed, and his sinews worn out, he recovered youth.

14 By the spirit of reasoning, and the reasoning of Isaac, he rendered powerless the many-headed instrument.

15 O blessed old age, and reverend hoar head, and life obedient to the law, which the faithful seal of death perfected.

16 If, then, an old man, through religion, despised tortures even to death, confessedly religious reasoning is ruler of the passions.

17 But perhaps some might say, It is not all who conquer passions, as all do not possess wise reasoning.

18 But they who have meditated upon religion with their whole heart, these alone can master the passions of the flesh;

19 they who believe that to God they die not; for, as our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they live to God.

20 This circumstance, then, is by no means an objection, that some who have weak reasoning, are governed by their passions:

21 since what person, walking religiously by the whole rule of philosophy, and believing in God,

22 and knowing that it is a blessed thing to endure all kinds of hardships for virtue, would not, for the sake of religion, master his passion?

23 For the wise and brave man only is lord over his passions.

24 Whence it is, that even boys, imbued with the philosophy of religious reasoning, have conquered still more bitter tortures:

25 for when the tyrant was manifestly vanquished in his first attempt, in being unable to force the old man to eat the unclean thing,—

4 Maccabees 9

1 Why delay you, O tyrant? for we are readier to die than to transgress the injunctions of our fathers.

2 And we should be disgracing our fathers if we did not obey the law, and take knowledge for our guide.

3 O tyrant, counsellor of law-breaking, do not, hating us as you do, pity us more than we pity ourselves.

4 For we account escape to be worse than death.

5 And you think to scare us, by threatening us with death by tortures, as though you had learned nothing by the death of Eleazar.

6 But if aged men of the Hebrews have died in the cause of religion after enduring torture, more rightly should we younger men die, scorning your cruel tortures, which our aged instructor overcame.

7 Make the attempt, then, O tyrant; and if you put us to death for our religion, think not that you harm us by torturing us.

8 For we through this ill-treatment and endurance shall bear off the rewards of virtue.

9 But you, for the wicked and despotic slaughter of us, shall, from the Divine vengeance, endure eternal torture by fire.

10 When they had thus spoken, the tyrant was not only exasperated against them as being refractory, but enraged with them as being ungrateful.

11 So that, at his bidding, the torturers brought forth the oldest of them, and tearing through his tunic, bound his hands and arms on each side with thongs.

12 And when they had laboured hard without effect in scourging him, they hurled him upon the wheel.

13 And the noble youth, extended upon this, became dislocated.

14 And with every member disjointed, he exclaimed in expostulation,

15 O most accursed tyrant, and enemy of heavenly justice, and cruel-hearted, I am no murderer, nor sacrilegious man, whom you thus ill-usest; but a defender of the Divine law.

16 And when the spearmen said, Consent to eat, that you may be released from your tortures,—

17 he answered, Not so powerful, O accursed ministers, is your wheel, as to stifle my reasoning; cut my limbs, and burn my flesh, and twist my joints.

18 For through all my torments I will convince you that the children of the Hebrews are alone unconquered in behalf of virtue.

19 While he was saying this, they heaped up fuel, and setting fire to it, strained him upon the wheel still more.

20 And the wheel was defiled all over with blood, and the hot ashes were quenched by the droppings of gore, and pieces of flesh were scattered about the axles of the machine.

21 And although the framework of his bones was now destroyed the high-minded and Abrahamic youth did not groan.

22 But, as though transformed by fire into immortality, he nobly endured the rackings, saying

23 Imitate me, O brethren, nor ever desert your station, nor abjure my brotherhood in courage: fight the holy and honorable fight of religion;

24 by which means our just and paternal Providence, becoming merciful to the nation, will punish the pestilent tyrant.

25 And saying this, the revered youth abruptly closed his life.

26 And when all admired his courageous soul, the spearmen brought forward him who was second in point of age, and having put on iron hands, bound him with pointed hooks to the catapelt.

27 And when, on enquiring whether he would eat before he was tortured, they heard his noble sentiment,

28 after they with the iron hands had violently dragged all the flesh from the neck to the chin, the panther-like beasts tore off the very skin of his head: but he, bearing with firmness this misery, said,

29 How sweet is every form of death for the religion of our fathers! and he said to the tyrant,

30 Thinkest you not, most cruel of all tyrants, that you are now tortured more than I, finding your overweening conception of tyranny conquered by our perseverance in behalf of our religion?

31 For I lighten my suffering by the pleasures which are connected with virtue.

32 But you are tortured with threatenings for impiety; and you shall not escape, most corrupt tyrant, the vengeance of Divine wrath.

4 Maccabees 10

1 Now this one, having endured this praiseworthy death, the third was brought along, and exhorted by many to taste and save his life.

2 But he cried out and said, Know you⌃ not, that the father of those who are dead, became the father of me also; and that the same mother bare me; and that I was brought up in the same tenets?

3 I abjure not the noble relationship of my brethren.

4 Now then, whatever instrument of vengeance you⌃ have, apply it to my body, for you⌃ are not able to touch, even if you⌃ wish it, my soul.

5 But they, highly incensed at his boldness of speech, dislocated his hands and feet with racking engines, and wrenching them from their sockets, dismembered him.

6 And they dragged round his fingers, and his arms, and his legs, and his ankles.

7 And not being able by any means to strangle him, they tore off his skin, together with the extreme tips of his fingers, flayed him, and then haled him to the wheel;

8 around which his vertebral joints were loosened, and he saw his own flesh torn to shreds, and streams of blood flowing from his entrails.

9 And when about to die, he said,

10 We, O accursed tyrant, suffer this for the sake of Divine education and virtue.

11 But you, for your impiety and blood shedding, shall endure indissoluble torments.

12 And thus having died worthily of his brethren, they dragged forward the fourth, saying,

13 Do not you share the madness of your brethren: but give regard to the king, and save yourself.

14 But he said to them, You have not a fire so scorching as to make me play the coward.

15 By the blessed death of my brethren, and the eternal punishment of the tyrant, and the glorious life of the pious, I will not repudiate the noble brotherhood.

16 Invent, O tyrant, tortures; that you may learn, even through them, that I am the brother of those tormented before.

17 When he had said this, the blood-thirsty, and murderous, and unhallowed Antiochus ordered his tongue to be cut out.

18 But he said, Even if you take away the organ of speech, yet God hears the silent.

19 Behold, my tongue is extended, cut it off; for not for that halt you extirpate our reasoning.

20 Gladly do we lose our limbs in behalf of God.

21 But God shall speedly find you, since you cut off the tongue, the instrument of divine melody.

4 Maccabees 11

1 And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,

2 I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.

3 But I have come of mine own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes.

4 O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood?

5 Does it seem evil to you that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?

6 But this is worthy of honors, not torments;

7 had you been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.

8 Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.

9 As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapelt:

10 to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion-fashion.

11 With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,

12 A great favor you bestow upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.

13 He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,

14 I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old;

15 for having been born and reared to the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.

16 So that if you⌃ think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!

17 As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.

18 Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.

19 And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.

20 And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brethren have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.

21 For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

22 Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.

23 I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

24 We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.

25 For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?

26 Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.

27 For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.

4 Maccabees 12

1 When he, too, had undergone blessed martyrdom, and died in the caldron into which he had been thrown, the seventh, the youngest of all, came forward:

2 whom the tyrant pitying, though he had been dreadfully reproached by his brethren,

3 seeing him already encompassed with chains, had him brought nearer, and endeavoured to counsel him, saying,

4 You see the end of the madness of your brethren: for they have died in torture through disobedience; and you, if disobedient, having been miserably tormented, will yourself perish prematurely.

5 But if you obey, you shall be my friend, and have a charge over the affairs of the kingdom.

6 And having thus exhorted him, he sent for the mother of the boy; that, by condoling with her for the loss of so many sons, he might incline her, through the hope of safety, to render the survivor obedient.

7 And he, after his mother had urged him on in the Hebrew tongue, (as we shall soon relate) says,

8 Release me that I may speak to the king and all his friends.

9 And they, rejoicing exceedingly at the promise of the youth, quickly let him go.

10 And he, running up to the pans, said,

11 Impious tyrant, and most blasphemous man, were you not ashamed, having received prosperity and a kingdom from God, to kill His servants, and to rack the doers of godliness?

12 Wherefore the divine vengeance is reserving you for eternal fire and torments, which shall cling to you for all time.

13 Were you not ashamed, man as you are, yet most savage, to cut out the tongues of men of like feeling and origin, and having thus abused to torture them?

14 But they, bravely dying, fulfilled their religion towards God.

15 But you shall groan according to your deserts for having slain without cause the champions of virtue.

16 Wherefore, he continued, I myself, being about to die,

17 will not forsake my brethren.

18 And I call upon the God of my fathers to be merciful to my race.

19 But you, both living and dead, he will punish.

20 Thus having prayed, he hurled himself into the pans; and so expired.

4 Maccabees 13

1 If then, the seven brethren despised troubles even to death, it is confessed on all sides that righteous reasoning is absolute master over the passions.

2 For just as if, had they as slaves to the passions, eaten of the unholy, we should have said that they had been conquered by the;

3 now it is not so: but by means of the reasoning which is praised by God, they mastered their passions.

4 And it is impossible to overlook the leadership of reflection: for it gained the victory over both passions and troubles.

5 How, then, can we avoid according to these men mastery of passion through right reasoning, since they drew not back from the pains of fire?

6 For just as by means of towers projecting in front of harbors men break the threatening waves, and thus assure a still course to vessels entering port,

7 so that seven-towered right-reasoning of the young men, securing the harbour of religion, conquered the intermperance of passions.

8 For having arranged a holy choir of piety, they encouraged one another, saying,

9 Brothers, may we die brotherly for the law. Let us imitate the three young men in Assyria who despised the equally afflicting furnace.

10 Let us not be cowards in the manifestation of piety.

11 And one said, Courage, brother; and another, Nobly endure.

12 And another, Remember of what stock you⌃ are; and by the hand of our father Isaac endured to be slain for the sake of piety.

13 And one and all, looking on each other serene and confident, said, Let us sacrifice with all our heart our souls to God who gave them, and employ our bodies for the keeping of the law.

14 Let us not fear him who thinks he kills;

15 for great is the trial of soul and danger of eternal torment laid up for those who transgress the commandment of God.

16 Let us arm ourselves, therefore, in the abnegation of the divine reasoning.

17 If we suffer thus, Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob will receive us, and all the fathers will commend us.

18 And as each one of the brethren was haled away, the rest exclaimed, Disgrace us not, O brother, nor falsify those who died before you.

19 Now you are not ignorant of the charm of brotherhood, which the Divine and all wise Providence has imparted through fathers to children, and has engendered through the mother’s womb.

20 In which these brothers having remained an equal time, and having been formed for the same period, and been increased by the same blood, and having been perfected through the same principle of life,

21 and having been brought forth at equal intervals, and having sucked milk from the same fountains, hence their brotherly souls are reared up lovingly together;

22 and increase the more powerfully by reason of this simultaneous rearing, and by daily intercourse, and by other education, and exercise in the law of God.

23 Brotherly love being thus sympathetically constituted, the seven brethren had a more sympathetic mutual harmony.

24 For being educated in the same law, and practising the same virtues, and reared up in a just course of life, they increased this harmony with each other.

25 For a like ardour for what is right and honorable increased their fellow-feeling towards each other.

26 For it acting along with religion, made their brotherly feeling more desirable to them.

27 And yet, although nature and intercourse and virtuous morals increased their brotherly love those who were left endured to behold their brethren, who were ill-used for their religion, tortured even to death.

4 Maccabees 14

1 And more that this, they even urged them on to this ill-treatment; so that they not only despised pains themselves, but they even got the better of their affections of brotherly love.

2 O reasonings more royal than a king, and freer than freemen!

3 Sacred and harmonious concert of the seven brethren as concerning piety!

4 None of the seven youths turned cowardly, or shrank back from death.

5 But all of them, as though running the road to immortality, hastened on to death through tortures.

6 For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed to death for religion’s sake, as through the immortal soul of religion.

7 O holy seven of harmonious brethren! for as the seven days of creation, about religion,

8 so the youths, circling around the number seven, annulled the fear of torments.

9 We now shudder at the recital of the affliction of those young men; but they not only saw, and not only heard the immediate execution of the threat, but undergoing it, persevered; and that through the pains of fire.

10 And what could be more painful? for the power of fire, being sharp and quick, speedily dissolved their bodies.

11 And think it not wonderful that reasoning bore rule over those men in their torments, when even a woman’s mind despised more manifold pains.

12 For the mother of those seven youths endured the rackings of each of her children.

13 And consider how comprehensive is the love of offspring, which draws every one to sympathy of affection,

14 where irrational animals possess a similar sympathy and love for their offspring with men.

15 The tame birds frequenting the roofs of our houses, defend their fledglings.

16 Others build their nests, and hatch their young, in the tops of mountains and in the precipices of valleys, and the holes and tops of trees, and keep off the intruder.

17 And if not able to do this, they fly circling round them in agony of affection, calling out in their own note, and save their offspring in whatever manner they are able.

18 But why should we point attention to the sympathy toward children shewn by irrational animals?

19 The very bees, at the season of honey-making, attack all who approach; and pierce with their sting, as with a sword, those who draw near their hive, and repel them even to death.

20 But sympathy with her children did not turn aside the mother of the young men, who had a spirit kindred with that of Abraham.

4 Maccabees 15

1 O reasoning of the sons, lord over the passions, and religion more desirable to a mother than progeny!

2 The mother, when two things were set before here, religion and the safety of her seven sons for a time, on the conditional promise of a tyrant,

3 rather elected the religion which according to God preserves to eternal life.

4 O in what way can I describe ethically the affections of parents toward their children, the resemblance of soul and of form engrafted into the small type of a child in a wonderful manner, especially through the greater sympathy of mothers with the feelings of those born of them!

5 for by how much mothers are by nature weak in disposition and prolific in offspring, by so much the fonder they are of children.

6 And of all mothers the mother of the seven was the fondest of children, who in seven childbirths had deeply engendered love toward them;

7 and through her many pains undergone in connection with each one, was compelled to feel sympathy with them;

8 yet, through fear of God, she neglected the temporary salvation of her children.

9 Not but that, on account of the excellent disposition to the law, her maternal affection toward them was increased.

10 For they were both just and temperate, and manly, and high-minded, and fond of their brethren, and so fond of their mother that even to death they obeyed her by observing the law.

11 And yet, though there were so many circumstances connected with love of children to draw on a mother to sympathy, in the case of none of them were the various tortures able to pervert her principle.

12 But she inclined each one separately and all together to death for religion.

13 O holy nature and parental feeling, and reward of bringing up children, and unconquerable maternal affection!

14 At the racking and roasting of each one of them, the observant mother was prevented by religion from changing.

15 She saw her children’s flesh dissolving around the fire; and their extremities quivering on the ground, and the flesh of their heads dropped forwards down to their beards, like masks.

16 O you mother, who was tried at this time with bitterer pangs than those of parturition!

17 O you only woman who have brought forth perfect holiness!

18 Your firstborn, expiring, turned you not; nor the second, looking miserable in his torments; nor the third, breathing out his soul.

19 Nor when you did behold the eyes of each of them looking sternly upon their tortures, and their nostrils foreboding death, did you weep!

20 When you did see children’s flesh heaped upon children’s flesh that had been torn off, heads decapitated upon heads, dead falling upon the dead, and a choir of children turned through torture into a burying ground, you lamented not.

21 Not so do siren melodies, or songs of swans, attract the hearers to listening, O voices of children calling upon your mother in the midst of torments!

22 With what and what manner of torments was the mother herself tortured, as her sons were undergoing the wheel and the fires!

23 But religious reasoning, having strengthened her courage in the midst of sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the time, parental love.

24 Although beholding the destruction of seven children, the noble mother, after one embrace, stripped offher feelingsthrough faith in God.

25 For just as in a council-room, beholding in her own soul vehement counselors, nature and parentage and love of her children, and the racking of her children,

26 she holding two votes, one for the death, the other for the preservation of her children,

27 did not lean to that which would have saved her children for the safety of a brief space.

28 But this daughter of Abraham remembered his holy fortitude.

29 O holy mother of a nation avenger of the law, and defender of religion, and prime bearer in the battle of the affections!

30 O you nobler in endurance than males, and more manly than men in perseverance!

31 For as the ark of Noah, bearing the world in the world-filling flood, bore up against the waves,

32 so you, the guardian of the law, when surrounded on every side by the flood of passions, and straitened by violent storms which were the torments of they children, did bear up nobly against the storms against religion.