4 Maccabees 5 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition 2021(NRSVUE)

4 Maccabees 5Antiochus’s Encounter with Eleazar

1The tyrant Antiochus, sitting in state with his counselors on a certain high place and with his armed soldiers standing around him,

2ordered the guards to seize each and every Hebrew and to compel them to eat pork and food sacrificed to idols.

3If any were not willing to eat defiling food, they were to be broken on the wheel and killed.

4 man, Eleazar by name, leader of the flock, was brought before the king. He was a man of priestly family, learned in the law, advanced in age, and known to many in the tyrant’s court because of his long career.

5When Antiochus saw him he said,

6“Before I begin to torture you, old man, I would advise you to save yourself by eating pork,

7 and it teaches us piety, so that with proper reverence we worship the only living God.

25“Therefore we do not eat defiling food, for since we believe that the law was established by God, we know that the Creator of the world in giving us the law has shown sympathy toward us in accordance with nature.

26 but he has forbidden us to eat meats that would be contrary to this.

27It would be tyrannical for you to compel us not only to transgress the law but also to eat in such a way that you may deride us for eating defiling foods, which are most hateful to us.

28But you shall have no such occasion to laugh at me,

29nor will I transgress the sacred oaths of my ancestors concerning the keeping of the law,

30not even if you gouge out my eyes and burn my entrails.

31I am not so old and cowardly as not to be young in reason on behalf of piety.

32Therefore get your torture wheels ready and fan the fire more vehemently!

33I do not so pity my old age as to overthrow the ancestral law by my own act.

34I will not play false to you, O law that trained me, nor will I renounce you, beloved self-control.

35I will not put you to shame, philosophical reason, nor will I reject you, honored priesthood and knowledge of the law.

36You, O king, shall not defile the honorable mouth of my old age nor my long life lived lawfully.

37Gen 15.15My ancestors will receive me as pure, as one who does not fear your violence even to death.

38You will tyrannize the ungodly, but you shall not dominate my reasonings on behalf of piety, either by words or through deeds.”