The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Maccabees 15
1 O reasoning of the sons, lord over the
emotions, and religion more desirable to a
mother than children!
2 The mother, when two things were set
before her, religion and the safety of her
seven sons for a time, on the conditional
promise of a tyrant,
3 rather elected the religion which
according to God preserves to eternal life.
4 In what way can I describe ethically
the affections of parents toward their
children, the resemblance of soul and of form
impressed into the small type of a child in
a wonderful manner, especially through
the greater sympathy of mothers with the
feelings of those born of them!
5 For by how much mothers are by nature weak
in disposition and prolific in
offspring, by so much the fonder they are
of children.
6 Of all mothers, the mother of the seven
was the fondest of children, who in seven
childbirths had deeply engendered love
toward them.
7 Through her many pains undergone in
connection with each one, she was compelled
to feel sympathy with them;
8 yet, through fear of God, she neglected
the temporary salvation of her children.
9 Not only so, but on account of the
excellent disposition to the law, her maternal
affection toward them was increased.
10 For they were both just and temperate,
and courageous, high-minded, fond of
their kindred, and so fond of their mother
that even to death they obeyed her by observing the law.
11 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.
12 But she inclined each one separately
and all together to death for religion.
13 O holy nature and parental feeling,
and reward of bringing up children, and
unconquerable maternal affection!
14 At the racking and roasting of each
one of them, the observant mother was
prevented by religion from changing.
15 She saw her children’s flesh dissolving
around the fire, and their extremities
quivering on the ground, and the flesh
of their heads dropped forward down to
their beards, like masks.
16 O you mother, who was tried at this
time with bitterer pangs than those at
birth!
17 O you only woman who have produced
perfect holiness!
18 Your firstborn, expiring, didn’t turn
you, nor the second, looking miserable in
his torments, nor the third, breathing out
his soul.
19 You didn’t weep when you saw each of
their eyes looking sternly at their tortures,
and their nostrils foreboding death!
20 When you saw 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 didn’t lament.
21 Not so do siren melodies or songs of
swans attract the hearers to listening, O
voices of children calling on your mother
in the midst of torments!
22 With what and what manner of torments
was the mother herself tortured, as
her sons were undergoing the wheel and
the fires!
23 But religious reasoning, having
strengthened her courage in the midst of
sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the
time, parental love.
24 Although seeing the destruction of
seven children, the noble mother, after
one embrace, stripped off her feelings
through faith in God.
25 For just as in a council room, seeing in
her ownsoul vehement counselors, nature
and parentage and love of her children,
and the racking of her children,
26 she holding two votes, one for the
death, the other for the preservation of her
children,
27 didn’t lean to that which would have
saved her children for the safety of a brief
space.
28 But this daughter of Abraham
remembered his holy fortitude.
29 O holy mother of a nation, avenger of
the law, defender of religion, and prime
bearer in the battle of the affections!
30 O younobler inendurance thanmales,
and more courageous than men in perseverance!
31 For like Noah’s ship, bearing the world
in the world-filling flood, bore up against
the waves,
32 so you, the guardian of the law, when
surrounded on every side by the flood of
emotions, and assaulted by violent storms
which were the torments of your children,
bore up nobly against the storms against
religion.