1367 verses about Persecution

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.

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

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

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.

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

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,

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

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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

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

We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.

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

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

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

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:

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

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

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.

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

And he, running up to the pans, said,

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?

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?

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

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

Let us not be cowards in the manifestation of piety.

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.

Let us not fear him who thinks he kills;

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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,

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Although beholding the destruction of seven children, the noble mother, after one embrace, stripped off her feelings through faith in God.

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

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.

If, then, even a woman, and that an aged one, and the mother of seven children, endured to see her children’s torments even to death, confessedly religious reasoning is master even of the passions.

I have proved, then, that not only men have obtained the mastery of their passions, but also that a woman despised the greatest torments.

And not so fierce were the lions round Daniel, nor the furnace of Misael burning with most vehement fires as that natural love of children burned within her, when she saw her seven sons tortured.

Nor, should I die, shall I have a son to bury me. But with such a lament as this the holy and God-fearing mother bewailed none of them.

But as one possessed with an adamantine mind, and as one bringing forth again her full number of sons to immortality, she rather with supplication exhorted them to death in behalf of religion.

O woman, soldier of God for religion, you, aged and a female, have conquered through endurance even a tyrant; and though but weak, have been found more powerful in deeds and words.

For when you were seized along with your children, you stood looking upon Eleazar in torments, and said to your sons in the Hebrew tongue,

O sons, noble is the contest; to which you being called as a witness for the nation, strive zealously for the laws of your country.

For it were disgraceful that this old man should endure pains for the sake of righteousness, and that you who are younger should be afraid of the tortures.

And the righteous Daniel was cast to the lions; and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, were slung out into a furnace of fire; yet they endured through God.

For it is unreasonable that they who know religion should not stand up against troubles.

With these arguments, the mother of seven, exhorting each of her sons, over-persuaded them from transgressing the commandment of God.

And some of the spearbearers said, that when she herself was about to be seized for the purpose of being put to death, she threw herself upon the pile, rather than they should touch her person.

O you mother, who together with seven children did destroy the violence of the tyrant, and render void his wicked intentions, and exhibit the nobleness of faith!

For you, as an house bravely built upon the pillar of your children, did bear without swaying, the shock of tortures.

And, were it lawful for us to paint as on a tablet the religion of your story, the spectators would not shudder at beholding the mother of seven children enduring for the sake of religion various tortures even to death.

Here an aged priest, and an aged woman, and seven sons, are buried through the violence of a tyrant, who wished to destroy the polity of the Hebrews.

These also avenged their nation, looking to God, and enduring torments to death.

For it was truly a divine contest which was carried through by them.

Eleazar was the first to contend: and the mother of the seven children entered the contest; and the kindred contended.

The tyrant was the opposite; and the world and living men were the spectators.

The tyrant himself, and all their council, admired their endurance;