1 Then Eleazar, an illustrious priest of
the country, who had attained to length
of days, and whose life had been adorned
with virtue, caused the elders who were
around him to cease to cry out to the holy
God, and prayed this:

2 “O king, mighty in power, most high,
Almighty God, who regulates the whole
creation with your tender mercy,

3 look at the seed of Abraham, at the
children of the sanctified Jacob, your
sanctified inheritance, O Father, now being
wrongfully destroyed as foreigners in a
foreign land.

4 You destroyed Pharaoh with his army
of chariots when that lord of this same
Egypt was uplifted with lawless daring
and loud-sounding tongue. Shedding the
beams of your mercy upon the race of
Israel, you overwhelmed him and his proud
army.

5 When Sennacherim, the grievous king
of the Assyrians, exulting in his countless
army, had subdued the whole land with
his spear and was lifting himself against
your holy city with boastings grievous to
be endured, you, O Lord, demolished him
and displayed your mightto many nations.

6 When the three friends in the land of
Babylon of their own will exposed their
lives to the fire rather than serve vain
things, you sent a moist coolness through
the fiery furnace, and brought the fire on
all their adversaries.

7 It was you who, when Daniel was
hurled, through slander and envy, as a
prey to lions down below, brought him
back again unharmed to light.

8 When Jonah was pining away in the
belly of the sea-born monster, you looked
at him, O Father, and recovered him to the
sight of his own.

9 Now, you who hate insolence, you who
abound in mercy, you who are the protector
of all things, appear quickly to those
of the race of Israel, who are insulted by
abhorred, lawless gentiles.

10 If our life during our exile has been
stained with iniquity, deliver us from the
hand of the enemy, and destroy us, O Lord,
by the death which you prefer.

11 Don’t let the vain-minded congratulate
vain idols at the destruction of your
beloved, saying, ‘Their god didn’t deliver them.’

12 You who are All-powerful and
Almighty, O Eternal One, behold! Have
mercy on us who are being withdrawn
from life, like traitors, by the
unreasoning insolence of lawless men.

13 Let the heathen cower before your
invincible might today, O glorious One, who
have all power to save the race of Jacob.

14 The whole band of infants and their
parents ask you with tears.

15 Let it be shown to all the nations that
you are with us, O Lord, and have not
turned your face away from us, but as you
said that you would not forget them even
in the land of their enemies, so fulfill this
saying, O Lord.”

16 Now, at the time that Eleazar had
ended his prayer, the king came along to
the hippodrome with the wild animals,
and with his tumultuous power.

17 When the Jews saw this, they uttered a
loud cry to heaven so that the adjacent
valleys resounded and caused an
irrepressible lamentation throughout the army.

18 Then the all-glorious, all-powerful,
and true God, displayed his holy countenance,
and opened the gates of heaven,
from which two angels, dreadful of form,
came down and were visible to all but the Jews.

19 They stood opposite, and fill edthe
enemies’ army with confusion and cowardice,
and bound them with immoveable shackles.

20 A cold shudder came over the person
of the king, and oblivion paralyzed the
vehemence of his spirit.

21 They turned back the animals on the
armed forces who followed them; and
the animals trampled them and destroyed
them.