Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is 1 Maccabees 9 about?

Demetrius sends Bacchides and Alcimus back with a great army, and Judas faces them at Elasa with only eight hundred men after most of his force has fled. Refusing to flee himself, Judas fights valiantly and is killed, and his brothers Jonathan and Simon bury him at Modein amid great mourning. In the apostasy and famine that follow, the faithful turn to Jonathan as leader; he avenges the murder of his brother John, contends with Bacchides, and, after Alcimus dies stricken while tearing down the temple wall, at last secures peace and settles at Michmash to judge the people. The chapter carries the revolt through the death of its great captain into the leadership of his brother, showing the cause preserved beyond any single man.

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 9
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 9

1 Maccabees Chapter 9
9
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What is 1 Maccabees 9 about?

Demetrius sends Bacchides and Alcimus back with a great army, and Judas faces them at Elasa with only eight hundred men after most of his force has fled. Refusing to flee himself, Judas fights valiantly and is killed, and his brothers Jonathan and Simon bury him at Modein amid great mourning. In the apostasy and famine that follow, the faithful turn to Jonathan as leader; he avenges the murder of his brother John, contends with Bacchides, and, after Alcimus dies stricken while tearing down the temple wall, at last secures peace and settles at Michmash to judge the people. The chapter carries the revolt through the death of its great captain into the leadership of his brother, showing the cause preserved beyond any single man.