Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
There the orphan could claim the hospitality of her aged relative Rachel, should she be living yet, or the protection of the Asmonean brothers, who, being her next of kin, were, according to Jewish customs, the maiden's natural guardians. But Zarah shrank from taking this difficult step.
All the blood of Phineas boiled in the veins of his descendant; was the Lord of Hosts to be thus openly insulted, His judgments thus impiously defied! Forward sprang the old Asmonean, as if once more endowed with youth, one moment his dagger glittered in the sunlight, the next moment the apostate groaned out his soul upon the altar of Bacchus!
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.
Let the Asmonean fall into my hands, and he shall taste what it is to endure a living death!" Maccabeus, on his part, had led his forces to Mizpeh, where they had encamped. Here a day of solemn humiliation was appointed by the Asmonean chief; he and his warriors fasted, put on sackcloth, and united in prayer to the God of Hosts.
And although they, at one time, threw off their yoke, and had kings of the Asmonean and Herodean families, yet was there no king among them of the seed of David, neither had they the Shechinah, nor the Urim and Thummim, all which is a manifestation that it was not a perfect redemption, but only a visitation, with which God was pleased to visit them; so that they were allowed to build a temple to the Lord, by the permission of Cyrus, and according to the measure given by him.
Weary indeed and footsore was the Asmonean, but still he bravely pressed forward, till at length he heard the welcome sound of the waves of the Mediterranean lashing the coast near which stood Modin, about an English mile from the town of Joppa.
Profiting by a sanguinary competition for the throne of Syria, he consented to employ his power in favour of Alexander Balas, on condition that, in return for so seasonable an aid; he should be allowed to assume the pontifical robe as ruler of Judea. Hence the origin of the Asmonean princes, who, uniting civil with spiritual authority, governed Palestine more than a hundred years.
But such scruples would here be out of place. The teaching of the Jews from the Asmonean epoch down to the second century was principally oral. We must not judge of this state of intelligence by the habits of an age of much writing. The Vedas, and the ancient Arabian poems, have been preserved for ages from memory, and yet these compositions present a very distinct and delicate form.
In the unsettled state of the Holy Land, where its brave sons had to maintain a kind of guerrilla warfare against the powerful enemy who held its strongholds and ruled in its capital where communication between places not far remote from each other was difficult and dangerous, and a written letter was a thing almost unknown the Asmonean brothers had been in ignorance of many events which have occupied a large space in these pages.
He would speak with kindling enthusiasm of the princely man who had taken him in his arms and carried him on his shoulders who had been as tender to a sick child, as he had afterwards been terrible to Israel's foes. The sun had just sunk when the foot of the Asmonean trod the green valley of Sharon.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking