7
O seven childbirths all in vain, seven profitless pregnancies, fruitless nurturings and wretched nursings!
8
In vain, my sons, I endured many birth-pangs for you, and the more grievous anxieties of your upbringing.
9
Alas for my children, some unmarried, others married and without offspring. I shall not see your children or have the happiness of being called grandmother.
10
Alas, I who had so many and beautiful children am a widow and alone, with many sorrows.
11
Nor when I die, shall I have any of my sons to bury me."
12
Yet the sacred and God-fearing mother did not wail with such a lament for any of them, nor did she dissuade any of them from dying, nor did she grieve as they were dying,
13
but, as though having a mind like adamant and giving rebirth for immortality to the whole number of her sons, she implored them and urged them on to death for the sake of religion.
14
O mother, soldier of God in the cause of religion, elder and woman! By steadfastness you have conquered even a tyrant, and in word and deed you have proved more powerful than a man.
15
For when you and your sons were arrested together, you stood and watched Eleazar being tortured, and said to your sons in the Hebrew language,
16
"My sons, noble is the contest to which you are called to bear witness for the nation. Fight zealously for our ancestral law.
17
For it would be shameful if, while an aged man endures such agonies for the sake of religion, you young men were to be terrified by tortures.