Between the Testaments · c. 165 BC
Chapter 10
The Sanctuary Made Clean
1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees are in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles; most Protestant Bibles leave them out or print them apart as the Apocrypha.
There was exceedingly great gladness among the people, and the reproach of the Gentiles was turned away.
For parents
This chapter tells how the temple was cleansed and dedicated again, and has little that is hard. It recalls that Lysias’s army had been beaten (1 Maccabees 4:34–35), and Judas sets men to fight those in the citadel while the work is done (1 Maccabees 4:41). It tells of no deaths.
The army of had been beaten at . Lysias had gone back to gather hired soldiers, so that he could come into again with an even greater army. But and his brothers said, “Look, our enemies are defeated. Let’s go up to cleanse the holy place and dedicate it again.”
The whole army gathered, and they went up to . 2 Maccabees says that the Lord led them, and that Judas Maccabaeus and the men with him took back the temple and the city.
They saw that the was in ruins. The altar had been made unholy and the gates burned. Shrubs were growing in the courtyards as they would in a forest or on a mountain, and the priests’ rooms had been pulled down.
They tore their clothes and mourned loudly, and they put ashes on their heads. They bowed with their faces to the ground, blew the trumpets used for signals, and cried out toward heaven.
Then Judas told some men to fight those who were in the until he had cleansed the holy place.
He chose who were blameless and devoted to the law. They cleansed the holy place and carried the stones out to an unclean place.
2 Maccabees says they pulled down the altars the foreigners had built in the marketplace, and the fenced-off sacred grounds as well.
Then there was the altar of , which had been made unholy. They talked over what to do with it. A good plan came to them: they would pull it down, so that it would not bring shame on them. The had made it unclean.
So they pulled down the altar. They put its stones away on the temple hill, in a convenient place, until a prophet would come and say what should be done with them.
They took whole stones, uncut, as the law says, and built a new altar like the one before.
They built up the holy place and the inside of the Lord’s house, and they made the courtyards holy.
They made new holy vessels, and they brought the , the altar of and the table into the temple.
They burned incense on the altar. They lit the lamps on the lampstand, and the lamps gave light in the temple.
They set the loaves of the on the table and put up the curtains, and they finished all their work.
They got up early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, the month , in the one hundred forty-eighth year. They offered sacrifices, as the law says, on the new altar they had made for burnt offerings.
2 Maccabees says they struck to start a fire, and that they offered sacrifices again after two years without them.
The altar was dedicated with songs, harps, lutes and cymbals, at the same time of year and on the same day that the Gentiles had made it unholy.
2 Maccabees says the sanctuary was cleansed on the very day foreigners had made it unholy: the twenty-fifth day of the same month, Chislev.
All the people bowed with their faces to the ground. They worshiped and gave praise toward heaven, which had given them success.
2 Maccabees says that when they had done these things, they threw themselves down on the ground and begged the Lord never to let them fall into such troubles again. If they ever did sin, they asked him to correct them himself, patiently, and not to hand them over to cruel Gentiles who insult God.
For eight days they celebrated the of the altar. They offered burnt offerings with gladness, and a sacrifice for their rescue and for praise.
They decorated the front of the temple with crowns of gold and small shields. They dedicated the gates and the priests’ rooms, and made doors for them.
The people were overjoyed, and the shame the Gentiles had put on them was taken away.
2 Maccabees says they celebrated the eight days with gladness, the way the was kept. They remembered that not long before, during the Feast of Tabernacles, they had been wandering in the mountains and in the caves like wild animals. So they carried rods wrapped in leaves, beautiful branches and palm fronds. They sang hymns of thanks to the one who had made the cleansing of his own place a success.
Judas, his brothers and the whole congregation of Israel made it a rule that the days of the dedication of the altar should be kept every year at their proper time. The celebration was to last eight days, from the twenty-fifth day of the month Chislev, and be kept with gladness and joy.
2 Maccabees says they made it a public law and decree for the whole nation of the Jews to keep these days every year.
At that time they surrounded Mount Zion with high walls and strong towers, in case the Gentiles came and trampled them down, as they had done before.
Judas put soldiers there to guard it. They fortified Bethsura too, to hold it, so that the people would have a stronghold near .