26
Then Judas marched against Carnaim and the temple of Atargatis, and slaughtered twenty-five thousand people.
27
After the rout and destruction of these, he marched also against Ephron, a fortified town where Lysias lived with multitudes of people of all nationalities. Stalwart young men took their stand before the walls and made a vigorous defense; and great stores of war engines and missiles were there.
28
But the Jews called upon the Sovereign who with power shatters the might of his enemies, and they got the town into their hands, and killed as many as twenty-five thousand of those who were in it.
29
Setting out from there, they hastened to Scythopolis, which is seventy-five miles from Jerusalem.
30
But when the Jews who lived there bore witness to the goodwill that the people of Scythopolis had shown them and their kind treatment of them in times of misfortune,
31
they thanked them and exhorted them to be well disposed to their race in the future also. Then they went up to Jerusalem, as the festival of weeks was close at hand.
32
After the festival called Pentecost, they hurried against Gorgias, the governor of Idumea,
33
who came out with three thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry.
34
When they joined battle, it happened that a few of the Jews fell.
35
But a certain Dositheus, one of Bacenor's men, who was on horseback and was a strong man, caught hold of Gorgias, and grasping his cloak was dragging him off by main strength, wishing to take the accursed man alive, when one of the Thracian cavalry bore down on him and cut off his arm; so Gorgias escaped and reached Marisa.
36
As Esdris and his men had been fighting for a long time and were weary, Judas called upon the Lord to show himself their ally and leader in the battle.