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4 Maccabees 11
4 Maccabees 11
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1
When he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,
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“I don’t intend, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is on behalf of virtue.
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But I have come of my own accord, that by my death you may owe heavenly vengeance and punishment for more crimes.
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O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood?
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Does it seem evil to you that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?
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But this is worthy of honors, not torments,
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if you had been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.
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Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.”
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As he said this, the spearbearers bound him and drew him to the rack,
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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.
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With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,
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“A great favor you bestow upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.”
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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,
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“I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old;
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for having been born and reared to the same end. We are bound to die also on behalf of the same cause.
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So that if you think it is proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!”
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As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.
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Extended upon this, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.
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Having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.
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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.
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For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.
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Armed with upright virtue, I also will depart with my kindred.
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I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O inventor of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.
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We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.
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For isn’t your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?
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Your fire is cold to us. Your racks are painless, and your violence harmless.
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For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders. Through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.”
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