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"I understand you, gentlemen. He is dead, is he? Very well, then; bury him." Elias was carried about in triumph, like another Mattathias; but, far from accepting the proffered glory, he drooped under a profound melancholy.
So Mattathias got a great army about him, and overthrew their idol altars, and slew those that broke the laws, even all that he could get under his power; for many of them were dispersed among the nations round about them for fear of him.
Mattathias and his sons not only refused to sacrifice as Antiochus commanded, but, with his sons, attacked and slew an apostate Jewish worshipper and Apelles, the king's general, and a few of his soldiers. Then the priest and his five sons overthrew the idol altar, and fled into the desert, followed by many of their followers with their wives and children.
But Mattathias said he would not do it; and that if all the other nations would obey the commands of Antiochus, either out of fear, or to please him, yet would not he nor his sons leave the religious worship of their country. But as soon as he had ended his speech, there came one of the Jews into the midst of them, and sacrificed, as Antiochus had commanded.
Now this Mattathias lamented to his children the sad state of their affairs, and the ravage made in the city, and the plundering of the Temple, and the calamities the multitude were under; and he told them that it was better for them to die for the laws of their country than to live so ingloriously as they then did. II, as the modern rabbins vainly pretend, see Authent.
Before the sun had risen above the horizon on that day, Judas, son of Mattathias, of the noble family of the Asmoneans, started on his long homeward journey.
The fugitives, zealous for the Law, refused to defend themselves on the Sabbath day, and the result was that they all perished, with their wives and children. Their fate made such a powerful impression on Mattathias, that it was resolved henceforth to fight on the Sabbath day, if attacked.
Grieved at this waste of precious life, it was a relief to Hadassah to learn that such a sacrifice to a mistaken sense of duty would not be repeated; for when the tidings had reached Mattathias and his sons, they had bitterly mourned for their slaughtered countrymen, and had said one to another, "If we all do as our brethren have done, and fight not for our lives and laws, against the heathen, they will quickly root us out of the earth."
He also, together with two of his sons, was treacherously murdered by his son-in-law Ptolemy, who aspired to the exalted office of high-priest, leaving his son John Hyrcanus to reign in his stead, in the year 136 B.C. The rule of the Maccabees, the five sons of Mattathias, lasted thirty years. They were the founders of the Asmonean princes, who ruled both as kings and high-priests.
Mattathias is gone; Solomona and her children are all gone; Judas, with his gallant band, is like a lion at bay with the hunters closing in an ever-narrowing circle around him. Apollonius has been vanquished, Seron defeated by our hero; but now Nicanor and Giorgias, with the forces of Ptolemy, upwards of forty thousand men, are combining to crush him by their overwhelming numbers!
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