Commentaria in I Machabaeorum
1. AND THE KING OF EGYPT (Ptolemy Philometor) GATHERED TOGETHER A GREAT ARMY (very great and numerous), LIKE THE SAND THAT LIETH UPON THE SEA SHORE,—to wrest Syria from Alexander his son-in-law, and add it to his own kingdom, namely Egypt. See here how inhuman and cruel is ambition to reign, which spares not even a son-in-law.
2. WITH PEACEABLE WORDS,—as if about to visit his son-in-law Alexander, and to confirm him in his kingdom, and to defend him with so great an army of his against Demetrius and other enemies.
3. HE LEFT SOLDIERS FOR A GARRISON,—that is, a military guard, by which he would subject each city to himself and take them from Alexander his son-in-law.
10. FOR HE HATH SOUGHT TO KILL ME,—Philometor put this forward as a pretext for his perfidy, feigning that his son-in-law Alexander plotted the death of his father-in-law by assassins or poisons. But the true cause of hatred and war was that he wished to wrest the kingdom of Syria from Alexander and add it to his own Egypt: whence he set on his head the diadem of both kingdoms, ver. 13. Wherefore, although he himself, ver. 9, promised the kingdom to Demetrius, the rival of Alexander, yet he did not really intend to confer it on him, but only to use him as a minister and prefect, or viceroy. Josephus, however, asserts that Alexander really laid snares for Philometor. “After, he says, he arrived at Ptolemais, Ptolemy was all but unexpectedly overwhelmed, assailed by the snares of Alexander, through his friend Ammonius. These being discovered, he wrote to Alexander, demanding Ammonius for the punishment which he said he deserved for the snares laid for him. When he was not given up, he understood that Alexander himself was the author of them; and began to pursue him with great hatred. But the Antiochenes Alexander had already made hostile to him, on account of the same Ammonius, by whom they had been afflicted with very many hardships. Yet Ammonius did not escape punishment, being shamefully slain like a woman, while in a woman’s dress he sought hiding places, as we said in another commentary.”
Let credit for these things rest with Josephus, who often dissents from Holy Scripture, as he does here, when he tries to clear Philometor of the ambition for the kingdom of Syria which Scripture attributes to him, because Philometor was a friend and patron of the Jews.
disgrace Philometor put upon Alexander his son-in-law, snatching his daughter from him as wife, and handing her to the enemy Demetrius, and at the same time despoiling him of his kingdom,
17. AND ZABDIEL THE ARABIAN (king or dynast of Arabia) TOOK OFF THE HEAD OF ALEXANDER, AND SENT IT TO PTOLEMEE—Philometor, to win his favour, lest he should wrest Arabia from him as he had wrested Syria from Alexander. For he already saw him increased with a new kingdom and furnished with great forces threatening him, and that he could not resist him.
18. AND KING PTOLEMEE DIED THE THIRD DAY.—See here the swift vengeance of the Deity on the perfidious Philometor. He sought the kingdom of his son-in-law, invaded, occupied it; but he held it only three days from the death of Alexander, at once stripped of life as well as kingdom and all goods by God the just judge and avenger. For it was just that Philometor, invading the kingdom of the Syrians, which was another’s, should lose his own kingdom of Egypt, and he who rejoiced over the head of his enemy Alexander cut off, should make his own enemies glad at his own destruction. Josephus adds that Philometor died of the wounds which he had received in the late conflict with Alexander, in about the 39th year of his reign, which was the year 167 of the kingdom of the Greeks. Hear him book XIII, chap. iv: “It happened that the horse of Ptolemy, frightened by the trumpeting of an elephant, threw him, and the enemies, attacking him as he lay prostrate and inflicting wounds on his head, brought him into extreme danger, had he not been rescued by the intervention of his guards. Yet for four whole days, his senses benumbed, he could neither speak nor understand those who spoke. But Zabelus, dynast of the Arabs, cut off Alexander’s head and sent it to Ptolemy, who on the fifth day, at last recovering from his wounds and coming to himself, fed his mind and eyes with the most pleasing report, and at the same time with the sight of the head and death of Alexander. And not long after, sated with the joy received from the destruction of his enemy, he too ended his life.”
And Livy: “Ptolemy, he says, gravely wounded in the head, expired during the treatment, while the physicians were trying to bore the bones.”
Moreover, Philometor being dead, his soldiers who had been placed by him IN THE STRONG HOLDS (that is, the citadels and cities of Syria) WERE DESTROYED (and slain) BY THEM THAT WERE WITHIN THE CAMP,—that is, by the soldiers whom Demetrius had in his camp, who therefore, Alexander his cousin and rival having been slain, and the invader Philometor also dead, entered peacefully into the kingdom of Syria and possessed it all in quiet, in the year 167 of the reign of the Greeks.
Finally Genebrardus, book II of the Chronology: Philometor, that is, lover of his mother, he says, was so called by antiphrasis, because he himself had killed his mother, as his grandfather was called Philopator, that is, lover of his father, by antiphrasis, because he had killed his father Ptolemy Evergetes. Appian, Justin and others commonly write this of Philopator, but of Philometor none of the ancients relates such a thing; indeed Pausanias in the Attics asserts that the mother of Philometor was killed by his brother Alexander, whom he himself had raised to the kingdom, Philometor being excluded.
20. IN THOSE DAYS JONATHAN GATHERED TOGETHER THEM THAT WERE IN JUDA TO TAKE THE CASTLE THAT WAS IN JERUSALEM;—for it was still held by Syrian soldiers placed in it long before by Antiochus. For although Demetrius had promised to hand over the citadel of Sion to Jonathan, if he would make a treaty with him, yet he did not perform this promise of his, because Jonathan had preferred Alexander to Demetrius, and had made a treaty with him. Jonathan therefore, seeing Demetrius entangled in war against Alexander, using this occasion besieged the citadel of Sion.
…lest King Demetrius should receive Jonathan ill, because he had not obeyed his order about raising the siege of the citadel of Sion; but Jonathan, trusting in God, dispelled this danger by the great gifts which he brought the king: for by these he won his favour, so that he was made by him Prince of courtiers and princes …TO MAKE JUDEA (free from the Syrian and foreign soldier, from tribute and from every other burden) AND THE THREE TOPARCHIES, (that is, prefectures, or as Josephus calls them satrapies, which are named ver. 34) again free, because they were added and subject to Judea, promising the king, if he assented,) THREE HUNDRED TALENTS.
29. AND THE KING CONSENTED,—enticed by so great a price.
31. A COPY OF THE LETTER WHICH WE HAVE WRITTEN TO LASTHENES OUR PARENT.—This Lasthenes was that Cnidian or Cretan host to whom Demetrius the elder, about to engage with Alexander Balas, commended this younger Demetrius his son, as I said from Justin chap. x. Wherefore, the elder Demetrius being slain in battle, this Lasthenes led Demetrius his son back from Crete with an army into Syria, and restored to him his father’s kingdom, as Josephus testifies, book XIII, chap. vii, and others. Wherefore Demetrius honoured Lasthenes in the place of a parent, and made him his vicar, and set him over Syria and the other provinces. To him therefore King Demetrius here writes, that he make Judea free from tributes and burdens, which Jonathan asked, and a copy of his letters …that Lasthenes demand that the king’s benefit be put into execution. Aptly was he called “Lasthenes,” in Greek Laasthenes, that is, strength of stone, says Pagninus, or rather Laosthenes, and by contraction Lasthenes: for Laosthenes in Greek is the same as Demosthenes, that is, strength and fortitude of the people. For such should a Prince be as this Lasthenes was, who by his fortitude restored to Demetrius the kingdom of Syria, and to the Syrians their king.
32. KING DEMETRIUS TO LASTHENES.—This is the copy of Demetrius’s letter to Lasthenes.