The Fourth Book of the Maccabees

11. fejezet

Fejezetek:

… 9 10 11 12 13 … ⇤ ← 11 → ⇥

1. vers

When he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,

2. vers

“I don’t intend, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is on behalf of virtue.

3. vers

But I have come of my own accord, that by my death you may owe heavenly vengeance and punishment for more crimes.

4. vers

O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood?

5. vers

Does it seem evil to you that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?

6. vers

But this is worthy of honors, not torments,

7. vers

if you had been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.

8. vers

Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.”

9. vers

As he said this, the spearbearers bound him and drew him to the rack,

10. vers

to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion-fashion.

11. vers

With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,

12. vers

“A great favor you bestow upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.”

13. vers

He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out. On the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,

14. vers

“I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old;

15. vers

for having been born and reared to the same end. We are bound to die also on behalf of the same cause.

16. vers

So that if you think it is proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!”

17. vers

As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.

18. vers

Extended upon this, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.

19. vers

Having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.

20. vers

He, while tormented, said, “O good and holy contest, in which for the sake of religion, we kindred have been called to the arena of pain, and have not been conquered.

21. vers

For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

22. vers

Armed with upright virtue, I also will depart with my kindred.

23. vers

I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O inventor of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

24. vers

We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.

25. vers

For isn’t your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?

26. vers

Your fire is cold to us. Your racks are painless, and your violence harmless.