The Elephants

Judas made up his mind to destroy them, and he called all the people together to lay siege to the citadel. They gathered and surrounded it in the one hundred fiftieth year. He raised mounds to shoot from, and built war machines.

But some of the men hemmed in there got out, and some ungodly men of Israel joined them. Together they went to the king.

This was a new king. His father, King Antiochus, had died in the one hundred forty-ninth year. When Lysias learned of it, he made the king’s son Antiochus king. Lysias had raised him since he was a boy, and he named him Eupator.

“How long will you put off punishing them and avenging our relatives?” they said. “We were willing to serve your father, to live by his words, and to obey his commands.

“Because of that, the people of our own nation have besieged the citadel and turned against us. They have killed every one of us they could catch, and they have robbed us of what we inherited. And they haven’t attacked only us. They have attacked everyone along their borders too.

“Look, today they are camped against the citadel at Jerusalem to take it, and they have fortified the sanctuary and Bethsura. If you don’t stop them quickly, they will do even more than this, and you won’t be able to control them.”

When the king heard this, he was angry. He gathered all his friends, the commanders of his army, and the officers in charge of his horsemen. Bands of hired soldiers came to him from other kingdoms and from the islands of the sea.

His army came to a hundred thousand foot soldiers and twenty thousand horsemen, with thirty-two elephants trained for war.

2 Maccabees says that in the one hundred forty-ninth year, Judas and the men with him got news: Antiochus Eupator was coming against Judea with great crowds of soldiers. Lysias came with him. Lysias was the king’s guardian and his chancellor, his chief officer. Each man had a Greek force of a hundred and ten thousand foot soldiers, five thousand three hundred horsemen, twenty-two elephants, and three hundred chariots fitted with scythes, long curved blades.

But the King of kings stirred up Antiochus’s anger against that wicked man. When Lysias told the king that Menelaus was the cause of all the harm, the king ordered him taken to Beroea and put to death in the way it was done there.

In that place there is a tower full of ashes. It is fifty cubits high, about seventy-five feet. A rim runs all the way around it and slopes steeply down into the ashes on every side. Anyone guilty of a crime against holy things, or known for other crimes, is pushed down there to his death.

That was how Menelaus the lawbreaker died. He didn’t even get a grave in the ground, and rightly so. He had sinned many times against the altar, whose fire and whose ashes were holy, and so he died in ashes.

When Judas heard of it, he ordered the people to call on the Lord day and night, now more than ever. They were to ask him to help those who were about to lose the law, their country and the holy temple. The people had only just begun to recover, and they were to ask the Lord not to let them fall into the hands of those unholy Gentiles.

They all did it together. For three days without stopping they begged the merciful Lord, weeping, fasting and bowing down with their faces to the ground. Then Judas encouraged them and ordered them to join him.

He met privately with the elders and made up his mind. Before the king’s army could get into Judea and take control of the city, they would go out and settle the matter with God’s help. He left the decision to the Lord of the world, and he urged the men with him to fight nobly, even to the death, for their laws, temple, city, country and way of life. Then he camped near Modin.

He gave his men a watchword, a password for the battle: “Victory is God’s.” Then, with a chosen force of the bravest young men, he attacked the king’s tent by night. They killed as many as two thousand men of the king’s army, and brought down the leading elephant along with the man in the tower on its back.

In the end they filled the army with terror and alarm, and came away successful. It was all over just as the day was dawning, because the Lord’s protection helped Judas.

Judas marched away from the citadel and camped at Bethzacharias, near the king’s camp. The king got up early in the morning and marched his army at full speed along the road to Bethzacharias. His troops got ready for battle and blew their trumpets.

To get the elephants ready for the battle, they offered them the juice of grapes and mulberries.

They shared out the animals among the phalanxes, the army’s tight blocks of soldiers. Beside each elephant they put a thousand men. They wore coats of mail, armor made of linked metal rings, and brass helmets on their heads. Each elephant was also given five hundred chosen horsemen. These were already in place wherever the elephant was, and wherever it went, they went with it. They didn’t leave its side.

Each elephant carried a strong, covered wooden tower, strapped firmly in place with harnesses. Four brave men fought from each tower, and there was also the elephant’s driver from India.

The rest of the horsemen were placed on both sides, on the two wings of the army. There they struck terror into the enemy, and the phalanxes protected them.

As the sun caught the shields of gold and brass, the mountains lit up and blazed like flaming torches.

Part of the king’s army spread out over the high hills and part over the low ground, and they marched on firmly and in order. There was the noise of that great crowd, the tramp of its marching and the rattle of its weapons. Everyone who heard it trembled, because the army was very great and strong.

One of Judas’s brothers was Eleazar, who was called Avaran. He saw one of the animals armed with royal breastplates. It stood taller than all the other animals, and the king seemed to be on it.

He gave his life to rescue his people and to get himself a name that would last forever. He ran at him bravely, into the middle of the phalanx. He killed men to his right and to his left, and they drew back from him on either side.

He crept under the elephant, stabbed it from underneath, and killed it. The elephant fell to the ground on top of him, and he died there.

When Judas and his army saw how strong the kingdom was and how fiercely its army attacked, they turned away from them.

He made peace with the people of Bethsura, and the city was left, because they had no food there to hold out through a siege: it was a Sabbath year for the land, when the fields rested. The king took Bethsura and posted soldiers there to hold it.

2 Maccabees says the king had now found out how very bold the Jews were. After that he made cunning attacks on their positions, and on Bethsura, a strong fortress of the Jews. He advanced, was driven back, failed, and was defeated.

Judas sent the people inside what they needed. But Rhodocus, a man from the Jews’ own side, gave away secrets to the enemy. He was hunted down, arrested and locked up in prison.

The king came to an agreement with the people of Bethsura a second time. He gave them his hand and took theirs, and went away. Then he attacked Judas’s forces, and got the worst of it.

For many days the king camped against the sanctuary. He put up mounds to shoot from, war machines, machines for hurling fire and stones, weapons for throwing darts, and slings. The Jews built war machines of their own against his, and they fought for many days.

But there was no food in the sanctuary. It was the seventh year, the year of rest for the land. Also, people had fled to Judea for safety from among the Gentiles, and they had eaten up the rest of the stored food. Only a few people were left in the sanctuary. Hunger had been too much for them, and they had scattered, each man to his own place.

Lysias moved quickly and gave orders to leave. He said to the king, the commanders of the army and the soldiers, “We are getting weaker every day. Our food is running short, the place where we are camped is strong, and the business of the kingdom is weighing on us.

“So now let’s negotiate with these men. Let’s make peace with them and with their whole nation, and make a treaty with them so that they can live by their own laws, as they did before. They grew angry and did all these things because we did away with their laws.”

The speech pleased the king and the princes, his leading men. The king sent word offering peace to the people in the stronghold, and they accepted it. The king and the princes swore an oath to them, and on those terms the people came out of the stronghold.

Then the king went into Mount Zion and saw how strong the place was. He broke his oath and ordered the wall all around it pulled down.

Then he left in a hurry and went back to Antioch. There he found that Philip had taken over the city. He fought against him and took the city by force.

2 Maccabees says Philip had been left in Antioch as chancellor. The king heard that Philip had become reckless, and he was thrown into confusion. He offered the Jews peace, gave way to them, and swore to respect all their rights. He came to terms with them, offered a sacrifice, and honored the sanctuary and the place.

He showed kindness to Judas Maccabaeus and welcomed him graciously. He left Hegemonides as governor from Ptolemais as far as the Gerrenians, and went to Ptolemais. The men of Ptolemais were unhappy about the treaty, because they were bitterly angry with the Jews. They wanted to undo what had been agreed.

Lysias came forward to speak. He made the best defense he could, persuaded them, calmed them and won their goodwill, and then he left for Antioch. That was how the king’s attack and his going away turned out.