Commentaria in I Machabaeorum
53. JOSEPH IN THE TIME OF HIS DISTRESS (which he suffered in prison) KEPT THE COMMANDMENT, the fifth (sixth) of the Decalogue: “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” because he would not lie with his mistress who solicited him; AND (therefore) HE WAS MADE LORD OF EGYPT.—Splendidly St. Cyprian, in the treatise On Mortality: “Let adversities be to you not stumbling-blocks, he says, but battles; nor let them weaken or break the faith of a Christian, but rather show his virtue in the struggle, since every injury of present evils is to be despised, in confidence of future goods. Unless the fight has gone before, there cannot be victory; when there has been victory in the engagement of the fight, then the crown also is given to the victors. The pilot is known in the storm, the soldier is proved in the battle line.” And lower down: “Adversities do not call us away from the truth of virtue and faith, but strengthen us in sorrow. How great a sublimity it is to stand upright amid the ruins of the human race!” etc.
54. PHINEES OUR FATHER (Hence it is plain that Mattathias and the Maccabees were sprung from the tribe of Levi and from the Pontiff Phinees, and therefore, the others failing, the Pontificate belonged to them by right of succession) BY BEING FERVENT IN THE ZEAL OF GOD, (by slaying the Prince sacrificing to Beelphegor), RECEIVED THE COVENANT, (that is, the promise and pact of God) OF AN EVERLASTING PRIESTHOOD,—namely that the Pontificate would last in his descendants until the end of the Synagogue and Judaism, namely until Christ. See what is said on Num. 25.
55. JESUS (Josue, the successor of Moses), WHILST HE FULFILLED THE WORD, (that is, the command, by which God through Moses ordered him to survey Chanaan, Num. 14; to overcome Amalec, Exod. 17; after Moses to take up the care of the people, Josue 1), WAS MADE RULER IN ISRAEL—succeeding Moses in the leadership of the people. 56. CALEB, FOR BEARING WITNESS BEFORE THE CONGREGATION (against his fellow spies, who said that Chanaan, because of its giant inhabitants and fortified cities, was unconquerable, that it could be conquered with God’s help, and would in fact be conquered by the Hebrews, as God had promised), RECEIVED AN INHERITANCE,—a peculiar one in Hebron, Num. 14 and Josue 14, 12. See the praises of Josue and Caleb, Ecclus. 46.
57. DAVID BY HIS MERCY, (that is, by the merit of his mercy, by which he was pious and merciful both to others and to Saul who persecuted him, being unwilling to hurt him when he had him in his hand), OBTAINED THE THRONE OF AN EVERLASTING KINGDOM,—that he might obtain the royal throne, and transmit it to his descendants, to last for them as long as the kingdom of Israel and Juda should last, namely until the Babylonian captivity. For “everlasting” here signifies not absolute perpetuity, but relative and limited, namely perpetual duration through the whole state and kingdom of Juda; so that as long as this lasted, so long the kingdom of David would last in it.
58. ELIAS, WHILE HE IS FULL OF ZEAL FOR THE LAW, (by slaying all the prophets and priests of Baal, and opposing himself to Achab, Jezabel and the Baalites, 3 Kings 18) WAS TAKEN UP INTO HEAVEN,—carried thither in a fiery chariot,
59. ANANIAS, AZARIAS AND MISAEL BY BELIEVING in the true God, and offering themselves to the flames for this faith, believing that God could rescue them from them, WERE SAVED OUT OF THE FLAME.—Daniel 3.
60. DANIEL IN HIS INNOCENCY, that is, integrity, candour, constancy in adoring the one God, persisting, by his merit, WAS DELIVERED OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE LIONS.—Daniel 6.
62. AND FEAR NOT THE WORDS OF A SINFUL MAN (the threats of the impious Antiochus), FOR HIS GLORY IS DUNG and stench, since a little after by the vengeance of God all his glory is turned into ignominy, all his fame into infamy, as it is plain happened to Antiochus, book 2, chap. 9.
64. YOU THEREFORE, MY SONS, TAKE COURAGE, AND BEHAVE MANFULLY IN THE LAW (defending and fighting for it), FOR BY IT YOU SHALL BE GLORIOUS,—both by fighting and conquering; and by dying gloriously for it, as all died for it, namely Judas, Jonathan and Simon. For what is more glorious than to fight and die for the law, for country, for God? Mattathias encourages his sons to the sharp contests that threatened them from the adversary Antiochus, and therefore sets before them the examples of the ancients, that they may imitate them, and gain a like glory; for nothing so encourages in hard affairs as the examples of our forefathers.
Whence Ovid, book 4 of the Tristia, Elegy 3:
And fill sad matter with your virtues; glory goes by a steep and arduous road.
Who would have known Hector, had Troy been fortunate? The public way of virtue is through ills.
Your art, Tiphys, lies idle, if there be no wave upon the sea; if men were well, your art, Phoebus, lies idle.
Virtue, which lies hidden and idles among good things, unknown to affairs, appears and is proved by evils.
Use the times, by whose gift you are now borne up, and a broad field lies open for your praises.
65. AND BEHOLD YOUR BROTHER SIMON, I KNOW THAT HE IS A MAN OF COUNSEL, GIVE EAR TO HIM ALWAYS, AND HE SHALL BE A FATHER TO YOU,—that he may direct you by his counsels, as a father directs his sons. Again, that he may govern my house and family as a father. Hence Josippus, son of Gorion, and Annius of Viterbo think that Simon was the firstborn of Mattathias. But Josephus, the lesser Seder-Olam, and the Hebrews hold that Judas was the firstborn; whence he also succeeded his father in the Leadership and Pontificate; that John was the second-born; that Jonathan was the third-born; and that Simon was the fourth.
66. AND JUDAS MACHABEUS, WHO IS VALIANT AND STRONG FROM HIS YOUTH, LET HIM BE THE LEADER OF YOUR ARMY.—Hence it is plain that Judas, not only in the old age of his father, when he raised the standard against Antiochus a little before his death, but also in his youth, performed glorious deeds of war, relying on God’s help, and therefore inscribed on his standards: Machabi, that is mi camocha baelim Jehova, that is: “Who is like to thee among the strong (gods), O Lord?” and thence was surnamed Machabeus. For so his dying father here calls him, and therefore appoints him leader of the war. See what is said in the Preface.
70. AND HE DIED IN THE YEAR 146.—Namely in the same year in which he opposed himself to Antiochus and entered upon the Leadership with the Pontificate. Some think that he died of a wound received in battle; for since a little before he had slain the Jew, and the prefect of Antiochus, and had stirred up all the Jews by going round, and gathered them into a camp against Antiochus, and done many similar things, which require great strength of body as well as of mind, he does not seem to have been able to fail so quickly in strength from old age and die, but to have received a wound from continual battles, and thence died, or certainly to have died exhausted by assiduous labours and excessive fatigue. All agree that Mattathias was a priest, but Josephus, Eusebius and Sigonius deny that he was Pontiff; but the Hebrews and Chaldees, Cantic. 6, 6, assert that he was Pontiff, and Serarius proves it by many arguments. Certainly in the Pontificate, as well as in the Leadership, Judas succeeded his father, then Jonathan, finally Simon, and thence Simon’s sons down to Herod and Christ. Moreover the renowned hero Mattathias died in the year 146 of the Greeks, which was the 158th from the death of Alexander the Great, and the 164th before the birth of Christ.
AND WAS BURIED IN THE SEPULCHRES OF HIS FATHERS IN MODIN.—This sepulchre Simon his son afterwards magnificently adorned, as is plain from chap. 13, 27; and St. Jerome confesses that it still existed in his time.
WITH GREAT MOURNING.—“Great mourning is to be understood not in the swooning of the mourners, but in the pomp of the funeral and the throng of the obsequies,” says St. Jerome, epist. 25 to Paula.