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From: 1 Maccabees 6:1-13
Death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes
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[1] King Antiochus was going through the upper provinces when he heard that
Blymais in Persia was a city famed for its wealth in silver and gold. [2] Its tem-
ple was very rich, containing golden shields, breastplates, and weapons left
there by Alexander, the son of Philip, the Macedonian king who first reigned
over the Greeks.
[3] So he came and tried to take the city and plunder it, but he could not, be-
cause his plan became known to the men of the city [4] and they withstood
him in battle. So he fled and in great grief departed from there to return to Ba-
bylon.
[5] Then some one came to him in Persia and reported that the armies which
had gone into the land of Judah had been routed; [6] that Lysias had gone first
with a strong force, but had turned and fled before the Jews; that the Jews had
grown strong from the arms, supplies, and abundant spoils which they had ta-
ken from the armies they had cut down; [7] that they had torn down the abo-
mination which he had erected upon the altar in Jerusalem; and that they had
surrounded the sanctuary with high walls as before, and also Beth-zur, his city.
[8] When the king heard this news, he was astounded and badly shaken. He
took to his bed and became sick from grief, because things had not turned out
for him as he had planned. [9] He lay there for many days, because deep grief
continually gripped him, and he concluded that he was dying. [10] So he called
all his friends and said to them, “Sleep departs from my eyes and I am down-
hearted with worry. [11] l said to myself, ‘To what distress I have come! And into
what a great flood I now am plunged! For I was kind and beloved in my power.’
[12] But now I remember the evils I did in Jerusalem. I seized all her vessels of
silver and gold; and I sent to destroy the inhabitants of Judah without good rea-
son. [13] I know that it is because of this that these evils have come upon me;
and behold, I am perishing of deep grief in a strange land.”
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Commentary:
6:1-17. According to 3:29-31, Antiochus embarked on his expedition to get
funds to counter the drain on the empire caused by the war against the Jews.
And now we are told that the king’s death was brought on by the reports on that
war. The information given here about the death of Antiochus agrees with that in
2 Maccabees 9:1-29 only in a very general way. First Maccabees says that Ely-
mais was a city, whereas it was a region in Persia (Elam) where the capital, Su-
sa, was located. The king dies as a result of depression caused by reports of the
Jewish victories, and he acknowledges that he has acted wrongly towards the
Jews; but, he does not go so far as to invoke the God of Israel (as 2 Maccabees
says he did). Second Maccabees, moreover, describes him as suffering a most
awful death (not the case here). However, both books make it clear that Antio-
chus realized that in persecuting the Jews and profaning their temple he was ta-
king on someone much more powerful than himself, and that that was why he
was punished by God. In Christian tradition (St Hippolytus, “In Danielem”, 4, 49;
St Jerome, “Commentaria in Danielem”, 11), Antiochus is depicted as the first
instance of the Antichrist who for a period seeks to take God’s place but is even-
tually overpowered by him.
The death of Antiochus, resulting from his frustration at not being able to eradi-
cate loyalty to and worship of the true God, symbolizes in some way the tragic
condition of those who go so far as to try to uproot God from their own lives or
that of society.
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.