The Death of Antiochus

So he went there and tried to take the city and carry off its riches. He couldn’t, because the people of the city had found out what he planned. They rose up and fought him, and he fled. He went back to Babylon, deeply disappointed.

They had pulled down the abomination, the disgusting thing the king had built on top of the altar in Jerusalem. They had put high walls around the sanctuary again, as before, and around Bethsura, his city, too.

When the king heard this, he was stunned and deeply shaken. He lay down on his bed and fell sick with grief, because it had not gone the way he had planned.

He stayed in bed many days, because a great grief kept taking hold of him, and he saw that he was going to die.

“But now I remember the harm I did at Jerusalem. I took all the silver and gold vessels that were there, and I sent men out to destroy the people of Judah for no reason. I can see that this is why these troubles have come on me. Look, I am dying of great grief in a foreign land.”

Then he called for Philip, one of his friends, and put him in charge of his whole kingdom. He gave him his crown, his robe and his signet ring, so that Philip would guide the king’s son Antiochus and raise him to be king.

Then King Antiochus died there, in the one hundred forty-ninth year.

When Lysias learned that the king was dead, he made the king’s son Antiochus the new king. Lysias had brought him up from a young age, and he gave him the name Eupator.

While he was at Ecbatana, news reached him about what had happened to Nicanor and the forces of Timotheus.

Not long before, Judas Maccabaeus and his men had met the forces of Timotheus and Bacchides in battle and killed more than twenty thousand of them. And Nicanor had brought the thousand merchants to buy the Jews as slaves, but with the Lord’s help, the people he looked down on most had brought him down. He had stripped off his grand clothes and crossed the country alone, keeping away from everyone like an escaped slave. His army was destroyed.

Antiochus was overcome with anger. Other men had chased him off, but he planned to make the Jews suffer for it. So he ordered the man driving his chariot to keep going and not stop until the journey was done. Heaven’s judgment was already going with him. And he said, full of pride, “When I get to Jerusalem, I will make it one big graveyard of Jews.”

Even so, he did not stop being rude and proud at all. No, he grew prouder still, breathing fire in his fury against the Jews and giving orders to go faster. And then, as the chariot rushed along, he fell out of it. It was a bad fall, and every part of his body was in terrible pain.

Only a little while before, his pride had gone beyond anything human. He had thought the waves of the sea would do whatever he told them, and that he could weigh the heights of the mountains on scales. Now he was brought down to the ground and carried on a stretcher, and it showed everyone plainly that the power was God’s.

Worms came out of the wicked man’s body. His flesh fell away from him while he was still alive, in misery and pain. The smell of his decaying body made the whole army turn away from him in disgust.

A little while before, he had thought he could touch the stars of heaven. Now no one could bear to carry him, because the smell was more than anyone could stand.

So, broken in spirit, he began at last to let go of much of his pride. Under the whip of God’s punishment he began to understand, while his pain grew worse every moment.

When he himself could no longer stand his own smell, he said, “It is right to be under God’s rule, and no one who must die should think he is equal to God.”

As for the Jews, he had decided they did not even deserve to be buried. He had meant to throw them and their babies out to the animals, for the birds to feed on. Now he would make every one of them equal to the citizens of Athens.

He would decorate the holy sanctuary he had robbed before with the best gifts. He would give back all the sacred vessels many times over, and he would pay for the sacrifices out of his own income.

On top of all this, he said, he would even become a Jew, and go to every place where people lived, announcing the power of God.

But his sufferings did not let up at all, because God’s judgment had come on him, and it was just. He gave up all hope for himself and wrote the Jews a letter, a kind of humble plea.

He had not given up on himself, he wrote; he had great hope of getting over the sickness. But he had thought about his own father. When his father led an army into the upper country, he named who would rule after him. That way, if something unexpected happened, or bad news came, the people in the country would know who had been left in charge, and would not be troubled.

He had also seen how the princes along his borders and the neighbors of his kingdom were watching for their chance and waiting to see what would happen. So he had appointed his son Antiochus to be king. On his hurried trips to the upper provinces, he wrote, he had often left this son in the care of most of the Jews he was writing to, and spoken well of him. And he had written to his son as well.

He urged them and begged them to remember the good things that had been done for them, for all of them together and for each one. He asked each of them to keep the good will they now had toward him and his son. He was sure, he said, that his son would follow his plans with gentleness and kindness, and would treat them kindly, not harshly.

So the murderer and blasphemer suffered the worst of pains, just as he had made others suffer, and he died a most pitiful death in the mountains, in a foreign land.

Philip, his foster brother, who had been brought up with him, took the body home. Then he went away to Ptolemy Philometor in Egypt, because he was afraid of the dead king’s son.