2 Maccabees — Chapter 9

Intraverat enim in eam

For he had entered Persepolis — or in Hebrew, Elam or Elymais, which Pererius believes to be Susan. Antiochus entered the province called Persepolis with his army and besieged its chief city, but was repulsed by the citizens who ran to the walls; and more — his forces suffered heavy losses. \"For the citizens pursued him as he withdrew, so that having lost many men he retreated in the manner of a fugitive to Babylon,\" as Josephus (XII, xii) says.

Et cum venisset circa Ecbatanam

Having come to Ecbatana, he received tidings of what had come to pass against Nicanor and Timothy. Ecbatana was the most celebrated city of Persia. He learned from messengers that Judas had overthrown, killed, and put to flight his commanders Nicanor and Timothy.

Se venturum Jerosolymam

He was going to make Jerusalem a common burying-place of the Jews. The Greek has κοιμητήριον (cemetery) — a place into which corpses are customarily heaped. Antiochus boasted he would so utterly destroy Jerusalem that the whole city would become a burial mound of Jewish corpses.

Deus Israel percussit eum

But the Lord God of Israel struck him with an incurable and invisible plague. For as soon as he had ended his speech, a dreadful pain in his bowels came upon him, and sharp torments of his inner parts. God struck him externally with the disease of pediculosis (phtiriasis) and internally with most severe pains in the bowels, melancholy, and cholera. St. Jerome (on Daniel 11) adds from Diodorus that he was \"driven into madness by certain phantasms and terrors.\" He was punished in his bowels most justly, since \"with new and various torments he had tortured the bowels of others\" — namely the seven Maccabean brothers in chapter 7. The bowels are the seat of compassion; Antiochus who had tortured others' bowels had his own racked in turn.

Praecipiens accelerari negotium

While he was pressing forward with fury to Jerusalem, it came to pass that he fell from his chariot as it was going fast, and the fall was so heavy that all the members of his body were much pained. Gorionides (III, xxi): \"As he was riding and his chariot passed by a certain elephant, and the elephant began to trumpet, the horses were terrified by the trumpeting, kicked and overturned the chariot, and Antiochus fell from the chariot; all his bones were broken, since he was a heavy and fat man.\"

Ita ut de corpore impii

So that worms swarmed out of his body; and while he was still living in anguish, his flesh fell away, and the filthiness of his smell was noisome to all the army. This disease is called by physicians \"phtiriasis\" — the disease of lice, in which worms well up from the body and gnaw and consume it with foul horror and intolerable itching. God has inflicted it supernaturally on proud blasphemers, sacrilegious persons, and persecutors of the faithful: on Herod Ascalonite (Josephus XVII, viii), on Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:23), on Maximian the Emperor (Eusebius VIII, xvii), on Julian the Apostate (Sozomen V, viii), on Huneric the Arian king of the Vandals (Victor of Utica, De persecut. Wandalica I–III), and — Lapide notes — on John Calvin, the heresiarch who blasphemed against God, Christ, and the Saints, as Bolsecus writes and Beza does not deny in his Life of Calvin, who adds: \"He was tormented with such various and manifold diseases that it is simply incredible: hemicrania, ulcerous haemorrhoids, quartan fever, gout, stone, and colic.\" Thus: \"God the avenger follows the proud from behind,\" as the tragedian sings and Holy Scripture often repeats.

Et cum nec ipse iam

When he himself could no longer bear his own smell, he spoke thus: It is just to be subject to God, and that a mortal man should not proudly equal himself to God. Tormented, the proud Antiochus came back to himself and acknowledged foolishly he had thought himself a god and wished to equate himself with the true God — man with God, mortal with immortal, weak with omnipotent, temporal with eternal. God struck him with pediculosis so he might learn to say with Job (17:14): \"I have said to rottenness: thou art my father; to worms: my mother and my sister.\" And with David (Psalm 21:7): \"I am a worm and no man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people.\" Thus God heard the prayer of the seventh Maccabean martyr (chapter 7:37): \"Thou mayst confess that he is God alone.\"

Orabat autem hic scelestus

But this wicked man prayed to the Lord, of whom he was not to obtain mercy. His confession, repentance, and prayer were extorted by torments, proceeding not from love but from servile fear. He prayed only to be liberated from the torments, not with the intention of truly serving God. His repentance resembles that of Pharaoh under the plagues of Moses (Exodus 10:16), of Saul (1 Samuel 15:24, 30), of Ahab (1 Kings 21:29), and of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:31). Even granting sincere repentance, Antiochus would not have obtained liberation from his torments, for God had already irrevocably decreed to punish him to death. Similarly, even if Esau repented he could not recover the blessing and birthright he had lost (Hebrews 12:17).

Aequales nunc Atheniensibus

He promised to make the Jews equal to the Athenians. The Greek says ἰσοπολίτευτον — that is, living freely under their own laws and institutions as the Athenians did. For Antiochus knew this was what the Jews most desired.

Super hoc et Judaeum se

He declared that he would become a Jew himself, and would go through every place of the earth and declare the power of God. Antiochus said this fictitiously and dissemblingly, because compelled by God's scourges; had God removed them, he would have returned to his former ways, according to the saying: \"The devil was ill, the devil a monk would be; the devil recovered, the devil a monk was he.\" The impious man wished to mock God, but was mocked by him.

Sed non cessantibus doloribus

But for all that, the pains never ceased: for the just judgment of God had come upon him. Therefore he despaired of his health, and wrote to the Jews the following letter of supplication. God by his just judgment had absolutely decreed to torment him to death for his sacrileges. Antiochus, despairing of relief and of recovering his health, wrote to the Jews to assure his son Eupator's succession, knowing that if he died, Demetrius (held hostage at Rome, with a legitimate claim to the throne) would immediately fly back to Asia. And indeed Demetrius did kill Eupator with Lysias and claimed the kingdom — so Antiochus's letter availed nothing, and both he and his son perished by God's just judgment, losing kingdom and life together. See the magnificent power of our God, who with a single pain in the bowels so prostrates the tumid and indomitable Antiochus — who thought himself ruler of land, sea, and sky — that he becomes a suppliant before the very Jews whom he had utterly despised.

Maximas agimus gratias

I give most hearty thanks to God, having my hope in heaven. The Greek reads: \"I give most hearty thanks to God for my hope in heaven, remembering also your honour with kind feeling, I who lie languishing.\"

Respiciens autem quod et pater

Considering also that my father at such times as he led an army declared to him who was to reign after him, that he might leave a successor. Just as my father Antiochus the Great — a most prudent king and very benevolent to you (Josephus XII, i) — when going away to foreign parts declared his heir, so I following my father's example declare my son Antiochus Eupator as heir, and beg you to contribute your assistance in cherishing and protecting him. Lapide notes the bitter irony: Antiochus the father who had persecuted the Jews beyond all endurance now begs them to protect his son.

Considerans potentes quosque

Considering that the neighbouring princes watch for opportunities to advance their own designs. He notes his own nephew Demetrius (Seleucus's elder son, rightfully due the kingdom), who was being held at Rome. Demetrius would indeed reclaim the throne.

Memores beneficiorum

Remembering your benefits both in public and private. Here the fiction and flattery of Antiochus is manifest: he magnificently lies in boasting of his benefits to the Jews, when he had exercised every kind of evil against them.

Peregre in montibus

Abroad, in the mountains — near Ecbatana, in the town of Tabes, as St. Jerome says (Commentary on Daniel 11). In the mountains of Persia and Media, the growing torment prevented Antiochus from reaching Babylon; he died there. This was the most dismal end of the impious, blasphemous, sacrilegious, atheistic, and god-contemning Antiochus Epiphanes, who was the express type and forerunner of Antichrist. Lapide rebukes Josephus who argues that Antiochus's punishment was excessive merely for attempting to plunder the temple of Artemis (Antiquities XIV, xvii): \"He who wished merely and did not accomplish a sacrilege seems not to deserve punishment.\" Lapide responds: virtue and vice consist in the will; external acts draw all their freedom from the internal act of will. Moreover, if Antiochus perished for wishing to plunder Diana's temple, far more did he perish for actually plundering the temple of the true God in Jerusalem and perpetrating there the countless atrocities narrated throughout these books.