Parallel

4 Maccabees 11

World English Bible British Edition · Berean Standard Bible

11:1

When he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leapt forward, and said,

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11:2

“I don’t intend, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is on behalf of virtue.

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11:3

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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11:4

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

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11:5

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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11:6

But this is worthy of honours, not torments,

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11:9

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

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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 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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11:13

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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11:14

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

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11:15

I was born and reared to the same end. We are bound to die also on behalf of the same cause.

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11:16

So if you think it is proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then 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 this, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.

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11:19

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

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11:20

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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11:21

For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

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11:22

Armed with upright virtue, I also will depart with my kindred.

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11:23

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

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11:24

We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.

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11:25

For isn’t your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?

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11:26

Your fire is cold to us. Your racks 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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11:7

if you had been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.

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11:8

Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious towards God.”

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