1367 verses about Persecution

Conversation grew on, and the king sent for Hermon, and enquired of him, with fierce denunciations, why the Jews had been allowed to outlive that day.

The king, then, with a barbarity exceeding that of Phalaris, said, That they might thank his sleep of that day. Lose no time, and get ready the elephants against tomorrow, as you did before, for the destruction of these accursed Jews.

Nor did they employ the night in sleep, so much as in contriving cruel mockeries for those deemed miserable.

Once more, arm the elephants against the morrow for the extermination of the Jews.

O king, how long do you make trial of us, as of men bereft of reason? This is the third time that you have ordered their destruction. When the thing is to be done, you change your mind, and recall your instructions.

He would also invade Judea, and level its towns with fire and the sword; and destroy that temple which the heathen might not enter, and prevent sacrifices ever after being offered up there.

look upon the seed of Abraham, upon the children of the sanctified Jacob, your sanctified inheritance, O Father, now being wrongfully destroyed as strangers in a strange land.

And now, you who hate insolence; you who do abound in mercy; you who are the protector of all things; appear quickly to those of the race of Israel, who are insulted by abhorred, lawless gentiles.

You, who are All-powerful and Almighty, O Eternal One, behold! have mercy upon us who are being withdrawn from life, like traitors, by the unreasoning insolence of lawless men.

When the Jews saw this, they uttered a loud cry to heaven, so that the adjacent valleys resounded, and caused an irrepressible lamentation throughout the army.

Those who had marked them out as for death and for carrion, and had registered them with joy, howled aloud, and were clothed with shame, and had the fire of their rage ingloriously put out.

They requested the king to send them back to their homes.

Certain of our friends did of malice vehemently urge us to punish the Jews of our realm in a body, with the infliction of a monstrous punishment.

They pretended that our affairs would never be in a good state till this took place. Such, they said, was the hatred borne by the Jews to all other people.

They brought them fettered in grievous chains as slaves, nay, as traitors. Without enquiry or examination they endeavoured to annihilate them. They buckled themselves with a savage cruelty, worse than Scythian custom.

I sent to you my servants the prophets, whom you⌃ have taken and slain, and torn their bodies in pieces, whose blood I will require of your hands, says the Lord.

So he answered and said to me, It is the Son of God, whom they have confessed in the world. Then began I greatly to commend those who stood so stiffly for the name of the Lord.

And now, O Lord, why have you given this one people over to many, and have dishonored the one root above others, and have scattered your only one among many?

And they which did gainsay your promises have trodden them down that believed your covenants.

And now, O Lord, behold these nations, which are reputed as nothing, be lords over us, and devour us.

But we your people, whom you have called your firstborn, your only begotten, and your fervent lover, are given into their hands.

In the time that they lived therein they painfully served the Most High, and were in jeopardy every hour, that they might keep the law of the lawgiver perfectly.

Regard not the doings of those who deal wickedly, but of those who have kept your covenants in affliction.

Moreover they have trodden down his righteous,

our lute is brought low, our song is put to silence, our rejoicing is at an end; the light of our candlestick is put out, the ark of our covenant is plundered, our holy things are defiled, and the name that is called upon us is profaned; our freemen are despitefully treated, our priests are burned, our Levites are gone into captivity, our virgins are defiled, and our wives ravished; our righteous men carried away, our little ones betrayed, our young men are brought into bondage, and our strong men are become weak;

and, what is more than all, the seal of Sion—for she has now lost the seal of her honor, and is delivered into the hands of those who hate us.

But woe to them also that are left, for this cause; for they shall see great perils and many necessities, like as these dreams declare.

Yet is it better for one to be in peril and to come into these things, than to pass away as a cloud out of the world, and not to see the things that shall happen in the last days. And he answered to me, and said,

Behold, my people is led as a flock to the slaughter: I will not suffer them now to dwell in the land of Egypt:

Just as they do yet this day to my chosen, so will I do also, and recompense in their bosom. Thus says the Lord God:

And then shall the dragons have the upper hand, remembering their nature; and if they shall turn themselves, conspiring together in great power to persecute them,

if you had not always slain my chosen, exalting the stroke of your hands, and saying over their dead, when you were drunken,

Just as you shall do to my chosen, says the Lord, even so shall God do to you, and shall deliver you into mischief.

even so in those days there shall be three or four left by those who search their houses with the sword.

O my people, hear my word: make you ready to the battle, and in those evils be even as pilgrims upon the earth.

For, behold, the burning wrath of a great multitude is kindled over you, and they shall take away certain of you, and feed you with that which is slain to idols.

And those who consent to them shall be had in derision and in reproach, and be trodden under foot of them.

For there shall be in various places, and in the next cities, a great insurrection upon those that fear the Lord.

They shall be like mad men, sparing none, but spoiling and destroying those who still fear the Lord.

For they shall waste and take away their goods, and cast them out of their houses.

Then shall be manifest the trial of my elect; even as the gold that is tried in the fire.

but I shall prove it with the greatest force from the fortitude of Eleazar, and seven kindred, and their mother, who suffered death in defence of virtue.

For all these, contemning pains even to death, by this contempt, demonstrated that reasoning has command over the passions.

For they, winning admiration not only from men in general, but even from the persecutors, for their manliness and endurance, became the means of the destruction of the tyranny against their nation, having conquered the tyrant by their endurance, so that by them their country was purified.

For a certain man named Simon, who was in opposition to Onias, who once held the high priesthood for life, and was an honorable and good man, after that by slandering him in every way, he could not injure him with the people, went away as an exile, with the intention of betraying his country.

Whence coming to Apollonius, the military governor of Syria, and Phoenicia, and Cilicia, he said,

and getting authority about it, and quickly advancing into our country with the accursed Simon and a very heavy force,

But Appolonius went away with threats into the temple.

So that he not only erected a gymnasium on the very citadel of our country, but neglected the guardianship of the temple.

For being at war with Ptolemy in Egypt, he heard that on a report of his death being spread abroad, the inhabitants of Jerusalem had exceedingly rejoiced, and he quickly marched against them.

And having subdued them, he established a decree that if any of them lived according to the laws of his country he should die.

And when he could by no means destroy by his decrees the obedience to the law of the nation, but saw all his threats and punishments without effect,

for even women, because they continued to circumcise their children, were flung down a precipice along with them, knowing beforehand of the punishment.

When, therefore, his decrees were disregarded by the people, he himself compelled by means of tortures every one of this race, by tasting forbidden meats, to abjure the Jewish religion.

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,

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

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

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.

And Antiochus seeing him, said,

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.

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

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;

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

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:

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

Then, indeed, vehemently swayed with passion, he commanded to bring others of the adult Hebrews, and if they would eat of the unclean thing, to let them go when they had eaten; but if they objected, to torment them more grievously.