1819 verses about Idols

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;

But Antiochus, thinking himself to be despised, and suspecting the reproachful voice, while the youngest was yet alive did not only make his appeal to him by words, but also at the same time promised with oaths that he would enrich him and raise him to high estate, if he would turn from the customs of his fathers, and that he would take him for his Friend and intrust him with affairs.

setting before their eyes the outrage that had been lawlessly perpetrated upon the holy place, and the shameful handling of the city that had been turned to mockery, and further the overthrow of the mode of life received from their ancestors.

And as they kept the feast of victory in the city of their fathers, they burned those that had set the sacred gates on fire, and among them Callisthenes, who had fled into an outhouse; and so they received the meet reward of their impiety.

and they pulled down the altars that had been built in the marketplace by the aliens, and also the walls of sacred inclosures.

Now on the same day that the sanctuary was profaned by aliens, upon that very day did it come to pass that the cleansing of the sanctuary was made, even on the five and twentieth day of the same month, which is Chislev.

and to levy tribute on the temple, as on the other sacred places of the nations, and to put up the high priesthood to sale every year;

But under the garments of each one of the dead they found consecrated tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to have anything to do with; and it became clear to all that it was for this cause that they had fallen.

But one Alcimus, who had formerly been high priest, and had wilfully polluted himself in the times when there was no mingling with the Gentiles, considering that there was no deliverance for him in any way, nor any more access to the holy altar,

came to king Demetrius in about the hundred and one and fifties year, presenting to him a chaplet of gold and a palm, and beside these some of the festal olive boughs of the temple. And for that day he held his peace;

he stretched forth his right hand toward the sanctuary, and sware this oath: If you⌃ will not deliver up to me Judas as a prisoner, I will lay this temple of God even with the ground, and will break down the altar, and I will erect here a temple to Bacchus for all to see.

Five and twenty years old was 2 Chronicles 36:4, 5. Joakim when he began to reign in Judea and Jerusalem; and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Nabuchodonosor also took of the holy vessels of the Lord, and carried them away, and set them up in his own temple at Babylon.

So after a year Nabuchodonosor sent and caused him to be brought to Babylon with the holy vessels of the Lord;

and made Sedekias king of Judea and Jerusalem, when he was one and twenty years old; and he reigned eleven years:

Moreover the governors of the people and of the priests did many things wickedly, and passed all the pollutions of all nations, and defiled the temple of the Lord, which was sanctified in Jerusalem.

And they took all the holy vessels of the Lord, both great and small, with the vessels of the ark of the Lord, and the king’s treasures, and carried them away to Babylon.

King Cyrus also brought forth the holy vessels of the Lord, which Nabuchodonosor had carried away from Jerusalem, and had set up in his temple of idols.

And the holy vessels of gold and of silver, that Nabuchodonosor had carried away out of the house at Jerusalem, and had set up in his own temple, those Cyrus the king brought forth again out of the temple in Babylonia, and they were delivered to Zorobabel and to Sanabassarus the governor,

And the children of Israel that came out of the captivity did eat, even all those who had separated themselves from the abominations of the heathen of the land, and sought the Lord.

The nation of Israel, and the princes, and the priests and the Levites, have not put away from them the strange people of the land, nor the uncleannesses of the Gentiles, to wit, of the Canaanites, Hittites, Pherezites, Jebusites, and the Moabites, Egyptians, and Edomites.

For both they and their sons have married with their daughters, and the holy seed is mixed with the strange people of the land; and from the beginning of this matter the rulers and the nobles have been partakers of this iniquity.

That the land, which you⌃ enter into to possess as a heritage, is a land polluted with the pollutions of the strangers of the land, and they have filled it with their uncleanness.

and did give to us such a root: but we have turned back again to transgress your law, in mingling ourselves with the uncleanness of the heathen of the land.

Then Jechonias the son of Jeelus, one of the sons of Israel, called out, and said, O Esdras, we have sinned against the Lord God, we have married strange women of the heathen of the land, and now is all Israel aloft.

I went out to meet the Philistine, and he cursed me by his idols.

By doing this, and by making donations to their temples, he inspired his subjects with confidence.

And he put the question, Why, when he entered all the temples, none of the priests who were present forbad him?

We have trampled upon the holy house, as idolatrous houses are trampled upon.

That entrance to their own temple was to be refused to all those who would not sacrifice; that all the Jews were to be registered among the common people; that those who resisted were to be forcibly seized and put to death;

that those who were thus registered, were to be marked on their persons by the ivy-leaf symbol of Dionysus, and to be set apart with these limited rights.

So, having bestowed considerable sums of money upon the temples of the several cities, we proceeded even as far as Jerusalem; and went up to honor the temple of these wretched beings who never cease from their folly.