XLIII.} THE ROMAN ALLIANCE, AND DEATH OF JUDAS. 111

So that matter pleased the Romans well.

Furthermore when Demetrius heard that Nicanor and his host were slain in battle, he sent Bachides and Alcimus into the land of Judea the second time, and with them the chief strength of his host:

Who went forth by the way that leadeth to Galgala, and pitched their tents before Masaloth, which is in Arbela, and after they had won it, they slew much people.

Also the first month of the hundred fifty and second year they encamped before Jerusalem:

From whence they removed, and went to Bera, with twenty thousand footmen and two thousand horsemen.

Now Judas had pitched his tents at Eleasa, and three thousand chosen men with him :

Who seeing the multitude of the other army to be so great were sore afraid; whereupon many conveyed themselves out of the host, insomuch as there abode of them no more but eight hundred men.

When Judas therefore saw that his host slipt away, and that the battle pressed upon him, he was sore troubled in mind, and much distressed, for that he had no time to gather them together.

Nevertheless unto them that remained he said, Let us arise and go up against our enemies, if peradventure we may be able to fight with them.

But they dehorted him, saying, We shall never be able: let us now rather save our lives, and hereafter we will return with our brethren, and fight against them: for we are but few.

Then Judas said, God forbid that I should do this thing, and flee away from them if our time be come, let us die manfully for our brethren, and let us not stain our honour.

:

With that the host of Bacchides removed out of their tents, and stood over against them, their horsemen being divided into two troops, and their slingers and archers going before the host, and they that marched in the foreward were all mighty men.

As for Bacchides, he was in the right wing: so the host drew near on the two parts, and sounded their trumpets.

They also of Judas' side, even they sounded their trumpets also, so that the earth shook at the noise of the armies, and the battle continued from morning till night.

Now when Judas perceived that Bacchides and the strength of his army were on the right side, he took with him all the hardy men,

Who discomfited the right wing, and pursued them unto the mount Azotus.

But when they of the left wing saw that they of the right wing were discomfited, they followed upon Judas and those that were with him hard at the heels from behind :

Whereupon there was a sore battle, insomuch as many were slain on both parts.

Judas also was killed, and the remnant fled.

Then Jonathan and Simon took Judas their brother, and buried him in the sepulchre of his fathers in Modin.

Moreover they bewailed him, and all Israel made great lamentation for him, and mourned many days, saying,

How is the valiant man fallen, that delivered Israel.!

COMMENT.-Direct aid from God was no longer vouchsafed to Judah, and without it, Maccabeus felt that his little country must be overwhelmed by the forces of the Syrian kings.

He heard an account of the Romans, true in all main particulars, except that he thought there was only one consul instead of two, chosen year by year to govern them. The real fact of their policy was that they desired to bring all nations under their power; but the manner in which they did this was by allying themselves with small weak states, which were oppressed by a larger one. Then undertaking the protection of the feeble, they went to war with the greater kingdom, conquered it gradually, and then as time went on, brought small and great alike under their dominion. But this was a slow process, and at first they seemed to be great deliverers, and thus it was that Judas thought of them, when he sent his embassy to seek their assistance.

It was just what the Romans wanted to give them a footing in the East; but before their aid could arrive, the apostate priest, Alcimus, had been sent with the Greek general, Bacchides, to invade the Holy Land.

Unhappily some of the zealous Jews disapproved of the Romar. alliance, and had fallen away from Judas; others were exhausted with fighting, and only eight hundred came together. With these he gave battle to the Syrians at Eleasa near Ashdod. But it was not the will of God that he should again be victorious. He perished in the battle, leaving behind him a name as high and pure as that of any patriot who ever fought with desperate odds for his country.

LESSON XLIV.

THE YOUNGER MACCABEES.

B.C. 160.

THE Books of the Maccabees do not close with the death of Judas, but as no such character again arose, it may be better to pass quickly on. Jonathan succeeded his brother Judas in the

government, and in the weak state of the Syrian kingdom, as well as by his alliance with the Romans and with the Egyptians, contrived to secure himself and prosper, fulfilling the hope held out by Zechariah (chap. ix.) :—

When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man.

And the LORD shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning and the Lord GOD shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the south.

The LORD of hosts shall defend them; and they shall devour, and subdue with sling stones; and they shall drink, and make a noise as through wine; and they shall be filled like bowls, and as the corners of the altar.

And the LORD their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people: for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon his land.

For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.

Another prophecy was claimed as in course of fulfilment in Egypt. Onias, the rightful High Priest, who had been set aside for the wretch Menelaus, had fled to Egypt, where there was already a large colony of Jews; and in the year B.C. 149 he obtained from the king, Ptolemy Philometer (Love Mother), permission to build a Temple there to the Lord Jehovah, at On, or Heliopolis, the city of the sun, whence Joseph's wife had come. There he placed an altar, a shewbread table, and all the other decorations of the Temple, save that he substituted one great lamp suspended from the ceiling for the seven-branched candlestick. Thither he invited the Jews to keep their three yearly festivals, and justified the change not only by showing that he was the true hereditary High Priest of the direct line of Aaron and Phinehas, but by appealing to the 19th chapter of Isaiah, where it is foretold

In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan,

And swear to the LORD of hosts; one shall be called, The city of

destruction.

In that day shall there be an altar to the LORD

In the midst of the land of Egypt,

And a pillar at the border thereof to the LORD.

And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt,

:

For they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors,
And he shall send them a saviour,

And a great one, and he shall deliver them.

And the LORD shall be known to Egypt,

And the Egyptians shall know the LORD in that day,

And shall do sacrifice and oblation; yea, they shall vow a vow unto

the LORD,

And perform it.

And the LORD shall smite Egypt: he shall smite and heal it":
And they shall return even to the LORD,

And he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them.

The city of destruction, as our translation has it, was properly, in the Hebrew, the city of the sun-Heliopolis. The Greek translation or Septuagint, already in existence, called it the city of Azedek, or righteousness, which suited him almost as well. At any rate, the Temple stood there for two hundred years, and turned the worship of most of the Egyptian Jews from Jerusalem.

Jonathan at the same time obtained permission from the Syrian kings to assume the title and power of High Priest, although he was only of the line of Asmon, and his brother Judas had shrunk from assuming the sacred office while forced to be a man of war. But Jonathan's career was successful, except that he never could expel the garrison from the fortress on Mount Zion, though he fortified all the rest of Jerusalem. While blockading the enemy there, he was attacked by a Syrian rebel named Tryphon, defeated, made prisoner, and put to death in Gilead in the year 144.

His brother, Simon Thassi, assumed the high priesthood and the government, burying Jonathan in the family sepulchre at Modin, a wonderful structure of white marble, with seven pyramids on it, which served as a land-mark to ships at sea. Simon at last succeeded in expelling the Syrian garrison from Mount Zion, and for eleven years ruled with good success, backed up by Roman power, until in 135 he and two of his sons were treacherously murdered at a feast at Jericho by a near kinsman; but they were avenged by John Hyrcanus, the remaining son, who speedily became the most powerful of all the Asmoneans.

LESSON XLV.

THE ASMONEAN KINGDOM.

B.C. 137.

JOHN HYRCANUS, the surviving son of Simon, was an able man, and in the weak state of the Syrians was able to make himself independent. He conquered the Samaritans, and destroyed the schismatical temple on Mount Gerizim, and he likewise subdued the Edomites, or, as their name was now Latinised, Idumeans; and as they were children of Abraham, he made them submit to circumcision and conform to the Mosaic law.

He assumed the title of King, so that there was now, as Zechariah had said, a priest upon the throne, though he was neither of the right line of Phinehas nor of David. However, he reigned in great prosperity, and there was a peace of more than twenty years, but it only afforded an opportunity for violent squabbles between the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees had overlaid the law with such a number of interpretations and petty rules that only the most learned Rabbis could understand them; and the Sadducees were becoming more and more sceptical, and desirous to conform themselves to philosophy. The two apocryphal books, Ecclesiasticus evidently written by a Sadducee, and Wisdom as plainly the work of a Pharisee, represent their doctrines at their highest pitch, and are both beautiful, wise, and in harmony with one another ; but the common mass of the two parties diverged very far from the calmness, wisdom, and unity of teachers like these.

Hyrcanus died in 104, and there were disgraceful dissensions between his sons. Aristobulus, the eldest, soon died, and the next in age had been murdered during his illness. Alexander Jannæus, the third brother, became king, but, being a Sadducee, was hated by the Pharisees, who were stirred up to pelt him with the citrons they carried in their hands at the Feast of the Tabernacles. He revenged the insult by a savage massacre, and increased in cruelty till his death, B.C. 79.

His wife Alexandra ruled till her death, B.C. 69, and her son