Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is 1 Maccabees 6 about?

Word of the defeats and of the temple's restoration reaches Antiochus Epiphanes in Persia, where he falls sick with grief and dies, leaving the throne to his young son Antiochus V under the regent Lysias. As Judas besieges the citadel in Jerusalem, the boy-king and Lysias march up with a vast army and war elephants; at Beth-zechariah, Eleazar, another son of Mattathias, stabs a great elephant he takes to bear the king and is crushed beneath it as it falls. The Jews withdraw and the sanctuary is besieged, but news that Philip is marching to seize power forces Lysias to make terms and grant the Jews their laws, though the king then breaks his oath and tears down the wall of Mount Zion. Deliverance mingled with loss, the chapter shows the fragility of every truce made with the Seleucids.

Historical backdrop

Alexander's empire had shattered into the kingdoms of his generals, and Judea lay under the Seleucids who ruled the East from Antioch. When Antiochus the Fourth outlawed the Law, forced Greek ways on Jerusalem, and raised an altar to Zeus on the altar of the LORD, a priest's family in the hills rose in revolt. The war that followed pitted farmers and their sons against the Seleucid phalanx and its armored war elephants, and it ended with the temple cleansed and rededicated, a rising Jewish state, and envoys sent to a distant new power named Rome. This is the world between the Testaments, the fight that set the stage on which the Gospels open.

The Church Fathers on 1 Maccabees 6
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

1 Maccabees 6

1 Maccabees Chapter 6
6
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What is 1 Maccabees 6 about?

Word of the defeats and of the temple's restoration reaches Antiochus Epiphanes in Persia, where he falls sick with grief and dies, leaving the throne to his young son Antiochus V under the regent Lysias. As Judas besieges the citadel in Jerusalem, the boy-king and Lysias march up with a vast army and war elephants; at Beth-zechariah, Eleazar, another son of Mattathias, stabs a great elephant he takes to bear the king and is crushed beneath it as it falls. The Jews withdraw and the sanctuary is besieged, but news that Philip is marching to seize power forces Lysias to make terms and grant the Jews their laws, though the king then breaks his oath and tears down the wall of Mount Zion. Deliverance mingled with loss, the chapter shows the fragility of every truce made with the Seleucids.