CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT FROM
Alfred C. Barnes
The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029308503
THE
FOURTH BOOK
OF MACCABEES:
CONTAINING
REFLECTIONS ON RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE: LIKEWISE, AN ACCOUNT OF HELIODORUS’ ATTEMPT TO PLUNDER THE TEMPLE: AND THE HISTORY OF ELEAZAR AND THE SEVEN BRETHREN PERSECUTED EVEN TO DEATH FOR THEIR ADHERENCE TO RELIGION.
CHAPTER X
B.C. 167
The third and fourth brothers are put to death.
And when this one had undergone a memorable a death, the third was brought forward, being much intreated by many that he would taste the meats and save his life. But he, crying aloud, “Do ye not know that the same father begat and the same mother bare me, as those who just now have died; and that I was educated in the same opinions? I will not abjure the honorable tie of brotherhood. Wherefore, if ye have ready any species of punishment, apply it to my body for my mind, even if you wish it, you cannot reach.” But they, grievously disliking his freedom of speech, wrenched his hands and feet with dislocating engines; and straining him by the joints, pulled his limbs asunder. And they fractured his fingers, and his arms, and his legs, and his elbows c. And not being able to choke him by any means, dragging off d his skin together with the tips of his fingers, they flayed him entirely, and immediately brought him to the wheel. Round about which e, while he was dislocated, even to the backbone, he beheld the pieces of his
flesh flying about, and streams of blood flowing from his entrails. And, being at the point of death, he said, “We indeed, O abominable tyrant, suffer these things through our religious education and virtue towards God: but you, for your impiety and foul murders, shall endure interminable torments.”
And after that he had died in a manner worthy of his brethren, they dragged forward the fourth saying, “Do not you be mad with the same madness as your brethren: but obey the king, and save yourself.” But he said to them, ” You have no fire of so intense f a power against me, that I should quake with fear. No! by the blessed death of my brethren, and the eternal destruction which awaits the tyrant, and the praiseworthy life of the righteous, I will not renounce g our Honorable brotherhood. Devise new tortures, O tyrant! That even after these also you may learn that I am the brother of those men who have been tormented before me.” On hearing these words, the bloodthirsty, murderous, and most abominable Antiochus commanded to cut out his tongue. But he said, “Even though you take away my organ of speech, yet God heareth even the silent. Behold, my tongue is ready loosed before you; cut it off: for you shall not ” further be able to cut away our fixed Principal h as you do to our tongue. With pleasure, for God’s sake, we suffer amputation of our limbs. But you, God shall speedily visit with vengeance; since you cut out that tongue which ” was wont to hymn the strains of Divine praises.”
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