Portents of armed horsemen fighting in the sky over Jerusalem troubled the city while Antiochus campaigned in Egypt, and a false report of the king's death emboldened the exiled Jason to storm the city and slaughter his own countrymen before he was driven out to die friendless in a foreign land. Taking the uproar for revolt, Antiochus stormed Jerusalem in fury, massacred thousands, and, guided by the traitor Menelaus, entered the holy places and stripped the temple of its treasures. His officer Apollonius fell upon the people on the Sabbath, adding butchery to plunder, while Judas Maccabeus withdrew with a few companions into the wilderness to keep himself undefiled. The chapter matters as the low point before deliverance, showing the sanctuary profaned and the faithful scattered, yet already pointing to the remnant from whom rescue would come.