CHAPTER 12
This is mostly just battles we already heard about in the
first book. There are some new details.
Apparently, some Gentiles tricked some Jews into coming into town on false
pretense, and then drowned 200 of them. Lovely.
Oh, but the slaughter goes both ways. Judas and his boys capture a town that was
very haughty toward the Jews. They
figured that their walls were high enough to save them. They hadn’t read the Book of Joshua, now had
they? Judas takes the city and,
“inflicted such an incredible slaughter” – that’s the Bible’s words:
“incredible slaughter” – that, “the adjacent pool, which was about a quarter of
a mile wide, seemed to be filled with blood that flowed into it.”
The moralism gets laid on a little thick sometimes, like
when the Bible tells us that an enemy was overcome by fear just because they
saw the first section of troops fighting for the Lord. Judas’s men kill 30,000 in that battle. A little later, they slaughter 25,000 in a
city that they capture.
This is plunging perilously close to Joshua territory in its
embrace of – and celebration of – genocide.
Actually, near the end of the battle, you get the single
corniest and hackneyed bit or moralism in this book and perhaps the entire
Bible. Judas has just fought a battle
and looks at his dead. Guess what he
discovers? All the dead have on them
amulets sacred to the idols of another God.
Well, that’s not allowed. No
wonder they died in battle – they deserved to.
Imagine that, all the amulet wearers died in battle but none of the
others did (as far as we know). Am I supposed to find this at all
believable? Well …. I don’t. This isn’t hard to believe. This is so corny it wouldn’t be accepted in
a Hollywood script. This would make the
guy who wrote “Armageddon” roll his eyes at how insipid it is.
CHAPTER 13
People fight. Stuff
happens. They generally go well for
Judas.
This is the part that sounded confusing in Maccabees I. Now that I’m reading it a second time, it’s
just annoying. Do they have to give us
one of the most convoluted periods in Jewish political history twice?
CHAPTER 14
We get a bad guy I can actually pay attention to for a
little bit. He’s Alcimus, a high priest
who supported the bad guys previously.
Well, he’s been driven from power and now wants payback. So he goes to the king to egg on an attack.
The king sends his general, Nicanor, to make the Jews pay. Nicanor ends up negotiating with Judas and signing a treaty. Well that’s no good. Alcimus eggs on the king even more, and he tells Nicanor to screw the negotiations. Nicanor isn’t happy – he’s given his word and all – but orders are orders.
There is one bit that I find unintentionally humorous: “But
Maccabeus, noticing that Nicanor was more harsh in his dealings with him, and
acting with unaccustomed rudeness when they met, concluded that this harshness
was not a good sign.” Yes, thank you
Maccabeus. Thank you for that wonderful
insight, Bible reader. If the guy
you’re negotiating with is suddenly harsh and rude, that’s probably a bad sign.
Apparently, Nicanor really gets into his character as the
general going back on his word. The
opening parts don’t make him seem so bad, but now he goes out of his way to be
a dick. He says he’ll destroy God’s
altar and build a shrine to Dionysus.
He kills a pro-Jewish man named Razis. (It’s unclear if he’s actually
Jewish. It sounds like he’s not born to
the tribe, but believes in it).
Actually, the story of Razis death is incredibly gory. He’s determined to die of his own hands
before they can arrest him. The Bible
calls it, “preferring to die nobly” so it’s an open endorsement of suicide in
this case. Well, he tries stabbing
himself, but in the rush of events he bungles it. Bleeding, he jumps out the window before the troops can get to
him. But he survives. He’s so annoyed, that he stands on a rock,
sticks his hands in his wounds (from where he stabbed himself, I guess), and ….
(wait for it) … rips out his own
entrails and flings them at people!
Holy crud. This
reads like the script to one of those Final Destination movies, where the point
is to be grossed out at the inventive ways people die.
CHAPTER 15
Nicanor is by now an utter dick – “a thrice-accused wretch”
he’s called. He’s also really cocky of
victory. Yeah, if this were a Hollywood
script, this would be a sign of bad character portrayal. He initially didn’t seem too bad. He initially was even concerned about how
strong Judah’s forces are. Now he’s
gone the opposite way – utter dick, and completely contemptuous.
I suppose you can reconcile that. He had some internal misgivings and doubts, but once committed to
a line of action – he had to commit. To
make a terrible analogy, at the outset of the Civil War, southern Illinois
Democratic politician Joshua Logan was an opponent of Republican policies and
very sympathetic to the South. But when
the Civil War began he had to make a decision on where he stood. He was politically silent for months, but
when he finally spoke up, he became a supporter of the war. He really threw himself into it, too. He became a general, raised troops, joined
the GOP, and became a staunch supporter of much he’d once opposed. I suppose Nicanor had to undergo a similar
change when he was told to tear up his treaty.
Maybe so, but the Bible writer should’ve at least done a
better job explaining it.
Anyhow, they fight.
Judas’s army wins big. Nicanor
dies. It’s just like what we saw in
Maccabees I.
But I will say this – the book ends in a legitimately
charming fashion. The end of Chapter 15
is a brief epilogue where the writer says hopefully you’ve enjoyed the
tale. If you haven’t, I apologize for
it, but it’s the best I can do. I’ve said all along, the Bible is best when
it’s at its most human, and you see the human behind the words peak out there. I don’t like his celebration of mass murder
earlier, but that was a charming end.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The two Maccabees books are less than the sum of their
parts. There is too much overlap and
twice telling of a tale.
That said, there is surprising lack of overlap as well. It isn’t nearly as much as I would’ve
guessed, given that the eras don’t fully overlap and this one has a different,
more religious, focus.
The religious morality gets laid on too thick at times. OK, I guess would should expect that in the
Bible, but it is laid on thick at times.
Also, it highlights the almost complete lack of it in Macabees I. Oh, there are clear good guys and bad guys
there, and the good/bad breaks along religious lines, but it’s all human action. There are plenty of divine actions here. You also get several martyrdom tales, which
I don’t think I’ve seen so far in the Old Testament.
I guess this is a more enjoyable book than the previous
one. Both are problematic, though.
Click here to begin the Book of Job.
Click here to begin the Book of Job.
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