Parallel

4 Maccabees 11

Brenton's English Septuagint · Berean Standard Bible

11:1

And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,

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11:2

I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.

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11:3

But I have come of my own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes.

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11:4

O thou hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that thou thus revellest in our blood?

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11:5

Does it seem evil to thee that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?

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11:6

But this is worthy of honours, not of torments;

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11:9

As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapelt:

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11:10

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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11:11

With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,

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11:12

A great favour thou bestowest upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.

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11:13

He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,

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11:14

I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old;

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11:15

for having been born and reared unto the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.

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11:16

So that if thou think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean;—torment!

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11:17

As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.

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11:18

Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.

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11:19

And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.

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11:20

And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brothers have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.

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11:21

For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

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11:22

Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.

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11:23

I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

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11:24

We six youths have destroyed thy tyranny.

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11:25

For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, thy destruction?

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11:26

Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.

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11:27

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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