Commentaria in II Machabaeorum
10. AFTER HIM THE THIRD WAS MADE A MOCKING-STOCK, AND WHEN HE WAS REQUIRED HE QUICKLY PUT FORTH HIS TONGUE, AND COURAGEOUSLY STRETCHED OUT HIS HANDS,—that with the tongue, which had despised the king, they might be cut off and fried in the pan. St. Cyprian, On exhortation to martyrs, presses “he stretched out his hands,” and says: “He constantly stretched out his hands to be cut off; much happier by this kind of punishment, to whom it befell, with hands stretched out for punishment, to imitate the likeness of the Lord’s passion.”
11. AND SAID WITH CONFIDENCE: THESE I HAVE FROM HEAVEN, BUT FOR THE LAWS OF GOD I NOW DESPISE THEM, BECAUSE I HOPE TO RECEIVE THEM AGAIN FROM HIM.—Josephus adds, chapter 10: “But he, crying out, said: You do not know that I was begotten by the same father and born of the same mother as these dead, and that we were brought up in the same house? I shall not forswear so noble a kinship of brotherhood. Then they, taking the man’s freedom ill, disjoint his hands and feet with lacerating machines, and, the joints loosened, tear apart both fingers and arms, and break the legs and elbows. And as they could in no way kill him, they flay him, drawing off the skin with the tips of the fingers. Then they lead him straight to the wheel: stretched on which, as he was disjointed vertebra by vertebra, he saw his flesh torn, and drops of blood distilling from his entrails, and now about to die he said: We indeed, O most impure tyrant, suffer these things for the discipline of God and for virtue; but you for impiety and wicked slaughters shall bear immense torments.” Following Josephus, St. Ambrose, On Jacob and the Happy Life, chapter 11, says that this third, while he was tortured, said: “I shall not do your will, I shall not yield to your command. By that blessed passion of my brothers and noble life I shall not deny pious brotherhood. Apply what punishments you will, by which you press harder: by the harshness of the penalties you will gain this, that you receive greater testimonies of our brotherhood. So he ordered his tongue to be cut out. And he, crying out, said: You are conquered, Antiochus, who order the organ of the voice to be cut off. You have confessed that you cannot answer reason, and you prove that the scourges of our tongue are heavier than your lashes. For we do not fear your lashes, you cannot endure the scourges of our voice. But these are the scourges of piety, yours the scourges of perfidy. Yet even when cut out, it will, falling, scourge you more heavily with its own murmur. Do you think to escape, Antiochus, if you snatch away the voice? Even the silent God hears, and hears more. Behold I have opened my mouth, I have loosed my tongue, cut out the tongue; but you will not cut out constancy, you will not take away virtue, you will not blot out reason, you will not snatch away the testimony of truth, you will not snatch away the cry of the heart. If the tongue is cut off, the blood will cry out, and it will be said to you: The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me.” And a little after: “The wounds are more eloquent, even if the wounds are covered, even if the scar is hidden, faith is not hidden; yet do not applaud, that by taking away the tongue you snatch away the confession of praise. I have praised God enough in speech, now let us praise him by suffering.”
13. AND WHEN HE WAS ALSO DEAD, THEY TORMENTED THE FOURTH.
These latter suffered more than the former: first, because the king’s anger boiled more sharply against them on account of so many sharp reproaches of the former against the king. Second, because these were younger in age, and so weaker in strength and spirit. Third, because these, by compassion for their brothers so tortured, suffered by sympathy the same things as they. Fourth, because they saw they would soon suffer the same. So by the sharp torture of their brothers, and the long representation of their own torture, as well as the expectation, they were tormented more heavily. Whence St. Leo, Sermon on the birthday of the seven Maccabees: “The king’s impiety devised this, that he might promise himself victory, both over the first, whom he tortured without the example of endurance, and over the last, whom he tortured with another’s punishment; the palms of the martyrs were multiplied; and while each conquers in all, besides their own crowns, all gained sevenfold.” St. Ambrose adds, Book On Jacob: “And this one being slain, he ordered the fourth to be bound to a wheel, to be loosed in all his limbs by its whirling,” etc. perhaps because to torture is also to turn, with poets and orators? or rather because the beginning of the torments was to be stretched on the rack, or on the wheel, for the beating with clubs and sinews? so Salianus.
14. AND WHEN HE WAS NOW READY TO DIE, HE SPOKE THUS: IT IS BETTER (preferable), BEING PUT TO DEATH BY MEN, TO LOOK FOR HOPE (of the resurrection of life and eternal glory: for these seven brothers had this hope alive; and therefore, animated by it, they rebounded from the king and the torments, nay, mocked them: moreover they call hope the thing hoped for, namely life and eternal glory, by metonymy) FROM GOD, TO BE RAISED UP AGAIN BY HIM; FOR, AS TO THEE, THOU SHALT HAVE NO RESURRECTION UNTO LIFE,—but to Gehenna and an immortal death. Josephus adds, chapter 10, that he said: “You have not so burning a fire against me that I should grow soft”; and when Antiochus ordered his tongue to be cut out, he added: “Even if you take away the instrument of the voice, God hears even the silent; for you cut off the tongue, the singer of divine praises.” St. Ambrose, paraphrasing Josephus the paraphraser, and illustrating, Book On Jacob, chapter 11: “And this one being slain,” he says, “he ordered the fourth to be bound to a wheel, to be loosed in all his limbs by its whirling. But he, when he was tortured cruelly, said: You dissolve the members of the body, but you add grace to the passion, and do not snatch away the solace of death. For there is a voice of thunder in the wheel, because in the good and unoffended course of this life the heavenly oracle resounds, as it resounded in John and James, the sons of thunder. And so that which I have read, I now recognise more clearly, that the wheel runs within a wheel, and is not struck. For life, smooth without any offence, is turned in any passion, and within this also the wheel runs.”
15. AND WHEN THEY HAD BROUGHT THE FIFTH, THEY TORMENTED HIM—by torturing, as the former ones. Josephus adds [that they] draw him to the catapult, and he being bound to the catapult at the knees, his knees held by iron fetters, they bend his loins round a circular wedge, so that he was bent wholly around the wheel, like a scorpion, and disjointed. In this manner, when his breath was oppressed and his body racked, he said: “Excellent benefits indeed, O tyrant, though unwilling, you confer upon us, while you cause us to show our endurance for the law by pains so much the more noble.” St. Ambrose in the place cited says of this: “When the fifth was set before him, after he had been beaten, he commanded fires to be applied to him, put under, kindled. Blood flowed from his wounds, and the blood poured from the opened sores quenched the very balls of flame. But he was heard amid the crackling of the flames saying: Thanks to thee, Lord, that thou hast given us to say: We shall pass through fire. And as thy same Prophet says elsewhere: Thou hast tried us by fire, as silver is tried by fire. I shall stand before thee as gold purged by burning: and if there was any fault, the fire burned it up. And so this one also, transfigured from corruption to incorruption, breathed forth his life.” Moreover Gorionides says the fifth said: “Do not think in your heart that God has forsaken me, for out of his love for me he has led me to this glory. But you are impious, a blasphemer and raging, and therefore he, pursuing you with hatred, rouses you to do all this against us, as being himself ready to take vengeance on you and your seed, and will kindle his fury against you and your whole house.”
18. AFTER HIM THEY BROUGHT THE SIXTH, AND HE BEING READY TO DIE, SAID: BE NOT DECEIVED WITHOUT CAUSE: FOR WE SUFFER THESE THINGS FOR OURSELVES, HAVING SINNED AGAINST OUR GOD.—In this sixth shines greater humility, contrition and compunction for sins, not so much his own as those of the whole nation; yet in him there shone forth a greatness of mind equal to the rest. Whence St. Ambrose in the place cited illustrates his sayings by paraphrase: “This is the price of our offences, that sinning we are punished. And thanks to the Lord, that here double sins are exacted from us, that there consolation may be brought to us. And thanks also to thee, that thou art so hard and merciless, that by such sufferings of ours the Lord against whom we have sinned may become propitious to our nation. We also lighten the distress, while we delight in the sufferings of faith. And this one, torn by hard and bitter punishments, was added to his brothers.” Josephus adds, chapter 11, that the sixth, a younger one, said: “I am younger than my brothers in age, but equal in mind; for born and brought up for the same things, we ought to die for the same things likewise. Therefore, if it seems good to you to torture one abstaining from the eating of unclean things, torture. When he had said this they lead him to the wheel, and from it he is stretched member by member, and his members torn apart are set on fire; and sharp irons glowing with fire are applied to his back, and his sides are pierced, and his entrails burned. And he amid the torments: O sacred contest, he said, to which so many brothers, called to be exercised by pains for piety, we have not been conquered. For pious knowledge armed with virtue is unconquered, O tyrant. I too shall die with my brothers, and I shall add great furies to you myself also. O inventor of new torments, and truly enemy of the pious! six youths have abolished your tyranny. For that you could not move our reason from its purpose, nor compel it to the eating of unclean things, is not this your abolition? Cold to us is your fire, and your catapults effect no pain. For it is not the guards of a tyrant, but of the divine law that press about us: and therefore we have an unconquered reason.”