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VIRTUAL CHANUKAH
POSTED 11 DECEMBER, 2007
Teaching on 1 Maccabees 6:1-13
commentary by J.K. McKee
King Antiochus was going
through the upper provinces when he heard
that Elymais in Persia was a city famed for
its wealth in silver and gold. Its temple
was very rich, containing golden shields,
breastplates, and weapons left there by
Alexander, the son of Philip, the Macedonian
king who first reigned over the Greeks. So
he came and tried to take the city and
plunder it, but he could not, because his
plan became known to the men of the city and
they withstood him in battle. So he fled and
in great grief departed from there to return
to Babylon. Then some one came to him in
Persia and reported that the armies which
had gone into the land of Judah had been
routed; that Lysias had gone first with a
strong force, but had turned and fled before
the Jews; that the Jews had grown strong
from the arms, supplies, and abundant spoils
which they had taken from the armies they
had cut down; that they had torn down the
abomination which he had erected upon the
altar in Jerusalem; and that they had
surrounded the sanctuary with high walls as
before, and also Bethzur, his city. When the
king heard this news, he was astounded and
badly shaken. He took to his bed and became
sick from grief, because things had not
turned out for him as he had planned. He lay
there for many days, because deep grief
continually gripped him, and he concluded
that he was dying. So he called all his
friends and said to them, “Sleep departs
from my eyes and I am downhearted with
worry. I said to myself, ‘To what distress I
have come! And into what a great flood I now
am plunged! For I was kind and beloved in my
power.’ But now I remember the evils I did
in Jerusalem. I seized all her vessels of
silver and gold; and I sent to destroy the
inhabitants of Judah without good reason. I
know that it is because of this that these
evils have come upon me; and behold, I am
perishing of deep grief in a strange land”
(1 Maccabees 6:1-13).
1 Maccabees
6:1-13 is a descriptive selection of the story
that gives us some clues into the life of
Antiochus Ephiphanes. Whereas most of the story
of the Maccabees is focused on the Maccabees
themselves, their piety, and their devotion to
the God of Israel, we often do not consider the
role that the “villain” plays. Any good
narrative has a good villain, and in the end,
like all villains, evil is defeated by good. The
story of the Maccabees is no exception, as we
see Antiochus humbled in battle, and admitting
to his inner circle that he was wrong with what
he did to the Jews.
As we consider
what happens to Antiochus, let us remember that
the Lord is the One who orchestrated his defeat.
While not forgetting the victory that the
Maccabees had, that victory would not have been
possible without Antiochus being defeated.
1 King Antiochus was going
through the upper provinces when he heard that
Elymais in Persia was a city famed for its
wealth in silver and gold. 2 Its temple was very
rich, containing golden shields, breastplates,
and weapons left there by Alexander, the son of
Philip, the Macedonian king who first reigned
over the Greeks.
The story
about Antiochus’ downfall begins with him
continuing his military campaign. While Lysias
is conducting his proxy war against the Jews in
the Land of Israel, Antiochus himself is out on
the battlefield trying to subdue the Persians.
Antiochus was marching on the upper provinces of
Persia, and hears of a place called Elymais.
McEleney notes that “Elymais is not a
city but the country Elam, the area around Susa,
particularly north and east of that city.”[1]
It may have been that it was reported to
Antiochus that Elymais was a city. Regardless of
whether it was a city or a region, Antiochus is
enticed by the wealth that he and his army can
plunder. He also hears that there is a supply of
weapons that he can commandeer, having been left
by Alexander the Great.
The author of 1 Maccabees makes a
very important historical observation for us by
using the phraseology, “Philip’s son Alexander,
king of Macedon and the first to be king over
the Greeks” (REB). Many in the Messianic
community who study this period make the
automatic assumption that Alexander the Great
was a Greek. He was not. Even though Macedonia
spoke Greek as its language, Macedonia was not
Hellenized until the reign of Philip,
Alexander’s father. Alexander himself was
tutored by Aristotle, and as Macedonia was
Hellenized it became a military power to be
reckoned with, extending its rule over the Greek
city-states. Williams makes the observation,
“The repeated identification of Alexander as
Macedonian in those verses is striking, since
the terminology reveals an awareness of the
difference between Macedonians and Greeks.”[2]
Even though the Macedonians, especially by the
First Century, became just as Greek as the
Greeks, they were never considered “Greek” by
the Greeks themselves.
Alexander believed, just like
Antiochus, that Hellenization could be used for
him to conquer the world, and was only a means
to an end. Both Alexander and Antiochus share
the characteristics of being ambitious men who
want to be recognized as demagogues, and when
they think they are unstoppable, defeat comes to
them.
3 So he came and tried to take
the city and plunder it, but he could not,
because his plan became known to the men of the
city 4 and they withstood him in battle. So he
fled and in great grief departed from there to
return to Babylon.
V. 3 describes that “He therefore
went and attempted to take the city and pillage
it, but without success” (NJB). We are told that
“the citizens [were] forewarned” (NJB). We are
not told anything in the text as to how the
people of Elymais were told about Antiochus
marching on them, but we can probably safely
assume that with as large a force as his
standing about the country it would have been
hard to hide. The crucial thing to note is that
“They gave battle and put him to flight” (NEB).
Antiochus’ defeat by the people of Elymais may
have been aided by all of the weapons Alexander
had left them. In spite of his plans, Antiochus
is defeated “and he withdrew to Babylon in
bitter disappointment” (NEB).
5 Then some one came to him in
Persia and reported that the armies which had
gone into the land of Judah had been routed;6
that Lysias had gone first with a strong force,
but had turned and fled before the Jews; that
the Jews had grown strong from the arms,
supplies, and abundant spoils which they had
taken from the armies they had cut down;7 that
they had torn down the abomination which he had
erected upon the altar in Jerusalem; and that
they had surrounded the sanctuary with high
walls as before, and also Bethzur, his city.
As Antiochus is reeling from his
defeat at Elymais, “A messenger met him in
Persia with the news that the armies which had
invaded Judea were in full retreat” (NEB). Just
consider the scene that is taking place.
Antiochus “Epiphanes,” who considers himself to
be some kind of divine being, believes himself
unstoppable. He is just defeated by what he
thought would have been an easy victory. As he
retreats, he finds out that Lysias himself is in
retreat at the hands of a rag-tag Jewish
militia. Even worse for him, he finds out that
the Jews “were now stronger more than ever,
thanks to the arms, supplies and abundant spoils
acquired from the armies they had cut to pieces”
(NJB).
The one statement, however, that
cuts Antiochus to the quick, is that the Jewish
army had routed Antiochus’ elite forces out of
Jerusalem and they had cast his abominations out
of the Temple complex. Furthermore, the Jews had
“surrounded their temple with high walls as
before, and had even fortified Bethsura” (NEB),
a town that had been taken by the Seleucids and
completely made into their own. The center of
the Seleucid power base in Judea had been
demolished.
8 When the king heard this news,
he was astounded and badly shaken. He took to
his bed and became sick from grief, because
things had not turned out for him as he had
planned. 9 He lay there for many days, because
deep grief continually gripped him, and he
concluded that he was dying.
Reeling from his defeat,
Antiochus hears about Lysias’ defeat in Judea
and “was amazed and badly shaken” (NJB). As if
his own defeat at the hands of the Elymaisians
is not bad enough, another of his armies is
defeated. Who can know what thoughts were raging
through his mind? Did he think that his empire
was imploding? Did he think he was so invincible
that he could not be stopped? Regardless of what
Antiochus was thinking, “he took to his bed, ill
with grief at the miscarriage of his plans.
There he lay for many days, overcome again and
again by grief, and he realized that he was
dying” (REB).
We are told that Antiochus falls
ill and begins to die. 2 Maccabees 2:9-10
describes that he acquired a flesh-eating
disease:
“Because of his intolerable
stench no one was able to carry the man who a
little while before had thought that he could
touch the stars of heaven. Then it was that,
broken in spirit, he began to lose much of his
arrogance and to come to his senses under the
scourge of God, for he was tortured with pain
every moment.”
If all Antiochus did after being
defeated by the Elymaisians, and then hearing
about Lysias’ defeat in Judea, was take to his
bed, lying there because “deep disappointment
continually gripped him” (NRSV), then who knows
what kind of germs or parasites could easily
crept in and took him? Even today, if a person
falls into deep depression and shuts himself up
in a room, not going outside, not moving around,
and not bathing, that person can die from
skin-rotting illnesses. Imagine the great
Antiochus just sitting around, literally wasting
away in his own filth. Did he just eat and get
drunk, allowing himself to become bloated? Did
he not bathe, or did he acquire some kind of
cancer? These are questions that can
legitimately be asked if Antiochus did indeed
die from a flesh-eating disease, and it would
account for the nasty stench his soldiers would
have smelled.
The inevitable result of this is
that Antiochus is humbled beyond words. The man
who thought that he could indeed be all-powerful
and worshipped as a god is found to be nothing
more than a rotting hump of human misery. His
external condition revealed how bankrupt he was
internally, and even Antiochus knew he was going
to die.
10 So he called all his friends
and said to them, “Sleep departs from my eyes
and I am downhearted with worry. 11 I said to
myself, ‘To what distress I have come! And into
what a great flood I now am plunged! For I was
kind and beloved in my power.’ 12 But now I
remember the evils I did in Jerusalem. I seized
all her vessels of silver and gold; and I sent
to destroy the inhabitants of Judah without good
reason. 13 I know that it is because of this
that these evils have come upon me; and behold,
I am perishing of deep grief in a strange land.”
Vs. 10-11 depict
the sad state of Antiochus, and what he has
devolved into. The man who thought he could
conquer the world and be worshipped is now
saying to his most trusted advisors, a class of
people actually classified as “Friends” (cf.
2:18), “Sleep has deserted me; the weight of
care has broken my heart” (REB). Here, he is
forced to say that he can no longer sleep,
possibly due to the pain, and that his will to
live is no longer there. It would be interesting
to be able to medically diagnose Antiochus,
because the statement that his heart was broken
might have been literally true. Nevertheless,
Antiochus begins to reflect on what he has done,
and actually admits that he was indeed
over-zealous with what he did:
“I have been
wondering how I could have come to such a pitch
of distress, so great a flood as that which now
engulfs me—I who was so generous and well-loved
in my heyday” (NJB).
Here, Antiochus
attests to how well-liked he was among those
whom he tried to help. His armies brought order,
infrastructure, services, and a prestige to
areas that had none. Perhaps if those were all
the things Antiochus wanted to bring to the
ancient world, things would have been different.
Antiochus’ mistake, rather, was trying to make
all into one people, one culture, and one
religion. If he had let people continue in their
own cultures and religions, he may have been
more effective.
Antichus is forced
to tell his close advisors that the biggest
mistake that he made was sacking the Temple in
Jerusalem. Here, after all this time wallowing
in his own filth, a region that he though could
be easily subdued—one he never even goes to—is
the undoing of his empire. 2 Maccabees 9:12-17
records how he appeals to the Hebrew God to have
mercy upon him, and he even says that he will
become a Jew, and make the Jews as equal as the
Athenians in his kingdom:
“And when he could
not endure his own stench, he uttered these
words: ‘It is right to be subject to God, and no
mortal should think that he is equal to God.’
Then the abominable fellow made a vow to the
Lord, who would no longer have mercy on him,
stating that the holy city, which he was
hastening to level to the ground and to make a
cemetery, he was now declaring to be free; and
the Jews, whom he had not considered worth
burying but had planned to throw out with their
children to the beasts, for the birds to pick,
he would make, all of them, equal to citizens of
Athens; and the holy sanctuary, which he had
formerly plundered, he would adorn with the
finest offerings; and the holy vessels he would
give back, all of them, many times over; and the
expenses incurred for the sacrifices he would
provide from his own revenues; and in addition
to all this he also would become a Jew and would
visit every inhabited place to proclaim the
power of God.’”
We are told that
in spite of Antiochus’ pleas for mercy from the
Lord that “his sufferings did not in any way
abate, for the judgment of God had justly come
upon him, he gave up all hope for himself” (2
Maccabees 9:18). Physically, Antiochus’ ailments
did not go way, and spiritually we should wonder
if he was truly repentant. If even Antiochus was
truly repentant, did he go to the extent in his
sin where he could not be forgiven by God?
Antiochus Epiphanies at one time considered
himself to be above the God of Gods. He
threatened death upon those who did not follow
his decrees.
There are
individuals like Antiochus throughout history
for whom there can be no salvation. Judas
Iscariot was chosen by God in ages past to be
the one who betrayed Yeshua. Yeshua Himself
said, “woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is
betrayed! It would have been good for that man
if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). There
have always been evil men like Hitler or Stalin
or the coming antimessiah/antichrist, who may be
humbled before the Lord God, and even be forced
to acknowledge who He is as the Supreme Creator,
but nevertheless have no chance of redemption
because their sin is nothing less than betrayal
of God’s position.
Antiochus received
his punishment directly from God. To add insult
to injury, the author of 1 Maccabees records him
saying, “here I am, dying of bitter grief in a
foreign land.” 2 Maccabees 9:28 further
explains, “So the murderer and blasphemer,
having endured the more intense suffering, such
as he had inflicted on others, came to the end
of his life by a most pitiable fate, among the
mountains in a strange land.” Antiochus is given
the death of the defeated, far away from his
home, on a foreign battle field, wallowing in
his own depression. We are not told what happens
to his body, but if it was bad stench while he
was still alive, it is doubtful it would have
been transported back to Syria. Antiochus was
probably buried as soon as he was dead.[3]
While he dies away from home like Alexander the
Great, the legacy Antiochus leaves is not known
as being a great leader. Antiochus was
considered a fool, an idiot who challenged the
Hebrew God, and in the end was defeated by
himself. He is the classic example of what
happens to someone who comes against the people
of Israel, and is a warning to all who would
try.
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Bibliography
Knight, George A. F. “The First
Book of the Maccabees,” in The Interpreter’s
One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, pp
588-599.
McEleney, Neil J. “The First Book of the
Maccabees,” in The Oxford Study Bible, pp
1197-1232.
Williams, David S. “1 Maccabees,” in New
Interpreter’s Study Bible, pp 1551-1593.
NOTES
[1]
Neil J. McEleney, “The First Book of the
Maccabees,” in M. Jack Suggs, Katharine
Doob Sakenfeld, and James R. Mueller,
et. al., The Oxford Study Bible,
REB (New York: Oxford University Press,
1992), 1209.
[2]
David S. Williams, “1
Maccabees,” in Walter J. Harrelson, ed.,
et. al., New Interpreter’s Study
Bible, NRSV (Nashville: Abingdon,
2003),1567.
[3]
It is notable that many
death rituals of the Greeks (and also
the Romans) involved cremation. If
Antiochus’ body was a nasty pile of
unsanitary filth, it is likely that it
was cremated before interred.
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