1819 verses about Idols

Likewise also their gods of wood, and overlaid with gold and with silver, are like to a white thorn in an orchard, that every bird sits upon; as also to a dead body, that is cast forth into the dark.

And you⌃ shall know them to be no gods by the bright purple that rots upon them: And they themselves afterward shall be consumed, and shall be a reproach in the country.

Better therefore is the just man that has none idols: for he shall be far from reproach.

Now the Babylonians had an idol, called Bel, and there were spent upon him every day twelve great measures of fine flour, and forty sheep, and six firkins of wine.

And the king did honor to it, and went daily to worship it: but Daniel worshipped his own God. And the king said to him, Why do you not worship Bel?

And he said, Because I may not do honor to idols made with hands, but to the living God, who has created the heaven and the earth, and has sovereignty over all flesh.

Then said the king to him, Thinkest you not that Bel is a living god? or see you not how much he eats and drinks every day?

Then Daniel laughed, and said, O king, be not deceived: for this is but clay within, and brass without, and did never eat or drink anything.

So the king was angry, and called for his priests, and said to them, If you⌃ tell me not who this is that devours these expenses, you⌃ shall die.

But if you⌃ can show me that Bel devours them, then Daniel shall die: for he has spoken blasphemy against Bel. And Daniel said to the king, Let it be according to your word.

Now the priests of Bel were threescore and ten, beside their wives and children. And the king went with Daniel into the temple of Bel.

So Bel’s priests said, Behold, we will get us out: but you, O king, set on the meat, and mingle the wine and set it forth, and shut the door fast, and seal it with your own signet;

and when you come in the morning, if you find not that Bel has eaten up all, we will suffer death: or else Daniel, that speaks falsely against us.

And they little regarded it: for under the table they had made a privy entrance, whereby they entered in continually, and consumed those things.

And it came to pass, when they were gone forth, the king set the meat before Bel. Now Daniel had commanded his servants to bring ashes, and they strewed all the temple with them in the presence of the king alone: then they went out, and shut the door, and sealed it with the king’s signet, and so departed.

Now in the night came the priests with their wives and children, as they were wont to do, and did eat and drink up all.

And as soon as he had opened the door, the king looked upon the table, and cried with a loud voice, Great are you, O Bel, and with you is no deceit at all.

Then laughed Daniel, and held the king that he should not go in, and said, Behold now the pavement, and mark well whose footsteps are these.

and took the priests with their wives and children, who showed him the privy doors, where they came in, and consumed such things as were upon the table.

Therefore the king killed them, and delivered Bel into Daniel’s power, who overthrew him and his temple.

And in that same place there was a great dragon, which they of Babylon worshipped.

And the king said to Daniel, Wilt you also say that this is of brass? behold, he lives, and eats and drinks; you can not say that he is no living god: therefore worship him.

Then said Daniel, I will worship the Lord my God: for he is a living God.

Then Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof: this he put in the dragon’s mouth, so the dragon did eat and burst in sunder: and Daniel said, Behold, these are the gods you⌃ worship.

When they of Babylon heard that, they took great indignation, and conspired against the king, saying, The king is become a Jew, and he has pulled down Bel, and slain the dragon, and put the priests to the sword.

So they came to the king, and said, Deliver us Daniel, or else we will destroy you and your house.

Then cried the king with a loud voice, saying, Great are you, O Lord, you God of Daniel, and there is none other beside you.

And he drew him out, and cast those that were the cause of his destruction into the den: and they were devoured in a moment before his face.

And there came forth out of them a sinful root, Antiochus Epiphanes, son of Antiochus the king, who had been a hostage at Rome, and he reigned in the hundred and thirty and seventh year of the kingdom of the Greeks.

And certain of the people were forward herein and went to the king, and he gave them licence to do after the ordinances of the Gentiles.

And they built a place of exercise in Jerusalem according to the laws of the Gentiles;

and entered presumptuously into the sanctuary, and took the golden altar, and the candlestick of the light, and all that pertained thereto,

and the table of the show bread, and the cups to pour withal, and the bowls, and the golden censers, and the veil, and the crowns, and the adorning of gold which was on the face of the temple, and he scaled it all off.

And king Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom, that all should be one people,

and that each should forsake his own laws. And all the nations agreed according to the word of the king;

and many of Israel consented to his worship, and sacrificed to the idols, and profaned the Sabbath.

and should forbid whole burnt offerings and sacrifice and drink offerings in the sanctuary; and should profane the Sabbaths and feasts,

and pollute the sanctuary and those who were holy;

that they should build altars, and temples, and shrines for idols, and should sacrifice swine’s flesh and unclean beasts:

and that they should leave their sons uncircumcised, that they should make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and profanation;

According to all these words wrote he to his whole kingdom; and he appointed overseers over all the people, and he commanded the cities of Judah to sacrifice, city by city.

And on the fifteenth day of Chislev, in the hundred and forty and fifth year, they built an abomination of desolation upon the altar, and in the cities of Judah on every side they built idol altars.

And at the doors of the houses and in the streets they burned incense.

And on the five and twentieth day of the month they sacrificed upon the idol altar of God.

And he saw the blasphemies that were committed in Judah and in Jerusalem,

and, behold, our holy things and our beauty and our glory are laid waste, and the Gentiles have profaned them.

And the king’s officers, that were enforcing the apostasy, came into the city Modin to sacrifice.

now therefore come you first and do the commandment of the king, as all the nations have done, and the men of Judah, and those who remain in Jerusalem: and you and your house shall be in the number of the king’s Friends, and you and your sons shall be honored with silver and gold and many gifts.

And Mattathias answered and said with a loud voice, If all the nations that are in the house of the king’s dominion hearken to him, to fall away each one from the worship of his fathers, and have made choice to follow his commandments,

We will not hearken to the king’s words, to go aside from our worship, on the right hand, or on the left.

And when he had left speaking these words, there came a Jew in the sight of all to sacrifice on the altar which was at Modin, according to the king’s commandment.

And Mattathias saw it, and his zeal was kindled, and his reins trembled, and he showed forth his wrath according to judgement, and ran, and killed him upon the altar.

And the king’s officer, who compelled men to sacrifice, he killed at that time, and pulled down the altar.

And Mattathias and his friends went round about, and pulled down the altars;

And Jerusalem was without inhabitant as a wilderness, there was none of her offspring that went in or went out; and the sanctuary was trodden down, and the sons of strangers were in the citadel, the Gentiles lodged therein; and joy was taken away from Jacob, and the pipe and the harp ceased.

and laid open the book of the law, concerning which the Gentiles were wont to inquire, seeking the likenesses of their idols.

And your holy place is trodden down and profaned, and your priests are in heaviness and brought low.

And they saw the sanctuary laid desolate, and the altar profaned, and the gates burned up, and shrubs growing in the courts as in a forest or as on one of the mountains, and the priests’ chambers pulled down;

and they cleansed the holy place, and bare out the stones of defilement into an unclean place.

And they took counsel concerning the altar of burnt offerings, which had been profaned, what they should do with it:

and there came into their mind a good counsel, that they should pull it down, lest it should be a reproach to them, because the Gentiles had defiled it: and they pulled down the altar,

and laid up the stones in the mountain of the house in a convenient place, until there should come a prophet to give an answer concerning them.

At what time and on what day the Gentiles had profaned it, even on that day was it dedicated afresh, with songs and harps and lutes, and with cymbals.

And Judas turned toward Azotus, to the land of the Philistines, and pulled down their altars, and burned the carved images of their gods with fire, and took the plunder of their cities, and returned into the land of Judah.

and that the temple which was in it was rich exceedingly, and that therein were golden shields, and breastplates, and arms, which Alexander, son of Philip, the Macedonian king, who reigned first among the Greeks, left behind there.

and that they had pulled down the abomination which he had built upon the altar that was in Jerusalem; and that they had compassed about the sanctuary with high walls, as before, and Bethsura, his city.

And in the hundred and fifty and third year, in the second month, Alcimus commanded to pull down the wall of the inner court of the sanctuary; he pulled down also the works of the prophets;

And the horsemen were scattered in the plain, and they fled to Azotus, and entered into Beth-dagon, their idol’s temple, to save themselves.

And Jonathan burned Azotus, and the cities round about it, and took their spoils; and the temple of Dagon, and those who fled into it, he burned with fire.

But when he came near to Azotus, they showed him the temple of Dagon burned with fire, and Azotus and the suburbs thereof pulled down, and the bodies cast abroad, and those who had been burned, whom he burned in the war, for they had made heaps of them in his way.

And Ptolemy entered into Antioch, and put on himself the diadem of Asia; and he put two diadems upon his head, the diadem of Egypt and that of Asia.

And king Demetrius saw that the land was quiet before him, and that no resistance was made to him, and he sent away all his forces, each man to his own place, except the foreign forces, which he had raised from the isles of the Gentiles: and all the forces of his fathers hated him.

In the hundred and seventies year was the yoke of the heathen taken away from Israel.

And Simon was reconciled to them, and did not fight against them: and he put them out of the city, and cleansed the houses wherein the idols were, and so entered into it with singing and giving praise.

For when the prince was come there, and the army with him that seemed irresistible, they were cut to pieces in the temple of Nanaea by the treachery of Nanaea’s priests.

And when the priests of Nanaea’s temple had set the treasures forth, and he was come there with a small company within the wall of the precincts, they shut to the temple when Antiochus was come in:

and how that the prophet charged those who were carried away, having given them the law, that they should not forget the statutes of the Lord, neither be led astray in their minds, when they saw images of gold and silver, and the adornment thereof.

But when Seleucus was deceased, and Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, succeeded to the kingdom, Jason the brother of Onias supplanted his brother in the high priesthood,

and beside this, he undertook to assign a hundred and fifty more, if it might be allowed him through the king’s authority to set him up a Greek place of exercise and form a body of youths to be trained therein, and to register the inhabitants of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch.

And when the king had given assent, and he had gotten possession of the office, he forthwith brought over them of his own race to the Greek fashion.

And setting aside the royal ordinances of special favor to the Jews, granted by the means of John the father of Eupolemus, who went on the ambassage to the Romans for friendship and alliance, and seeking to overthrow the lawful modes of life, he brought in new customs forbidden by the law:

for he eagerly established a Greek place of exercise under the citadel itself; and caused the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek cap.

And thus there was an extreme of Greek fashions, and an advance of an alien religion, by reason of the exceeding profaneness of Jason, that ungodly man and no high priest;

so that the priests had no more any zeal for the services of the altar: but despising the sanctuary, and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to enjoy that which was unlawfully provided in the palaestra, after the summons of the discus;

making of no account the honors of their fathers, and thinking the glories of the Greeks best of all.

By reason whereof sore calamity beset them; and the men whose ways of living they earnestly followed, and to whom they desired to be made like in all things, these they had to be their enemies and to punish them.

Now when certain games that came every fifth year were kept at Tyre, and the king was present,

the vile Jason sent sacred envoys, as being Antiochians of Jerusalem, bearing three hundred drachmas of silver to the sacrifice of Hercules, which even the bearers thereof thought not right to use for any sacrifice, because it was not fit, but to expend on another charge.

And though in the purpose of the sender this money was for the sacrifice of Hercules, yet on account of present circumstances it went to the equipment of the galleys.

But not content with this he presumed to enter into the most holy temple of all the earth, having Menelaus for his guide (him that had proved himself a traitor both to the laws and to his country),

even taking the sacred vessels with his polluted hands, and dragging down with his profane hands the offerings that had been dedicated by other kings to the augmentation and glory and honor of the place.

and also to pollute the sanctuary in Jerusalem, and to call it by the name of Jupiter Olympius, and to call the sanctuary in Gerizim by the name of Jupiter the Protector of strangers, even as they were that lived in the place.

For the temple was filled with riot and revellings by the heathen, who dallied with harlots, and had to do with women within the sacred precincts, and moreover brought inside things that were not befitting;

and the place of sacrifice was filled with those abominable things which had been prohibited by the laws.

And a man could neither keep the Sabbath, nor observe the feasts of the fathers, nor so much as confess himself to be a Jew.

And on the day of the king’s birth every month they were led along with bitter constraint to eat of the sacrifices; and when the feast of Bacchus came, they were compelled to go in procession in honor of Bacchus, wearing wreaths of ivy.

And there wemt out a decree to the neighbouring Greek cities, by the suggestion of Ptolemy, that they should observe the same conduct against the Jews, and should make them eat of the sacrifices;

and that they should kill such as did not choose to go over to the Greek rites. So the present misery was for all to see:

But those who had the charge of that forbidden sacrificial feast took the man aside, for the acquaintance which of old times they had with him, and privately implored him to bring flesh of his own providing, such as was befitting for him to use, and to make as if he did eat of the flesh from the sacrifice, as had been commanded by the king;

For it becomes not our years to dissemble, said he, that through this many of the young should suppose that Eleazar, the man of fourscore years and ten, had gone over to an alien religion;