Last days of Antiochus Epiphanes
1 King Antiochus was traveling through the upper provinces when he heard that Elymais, a city in Persia, was famous for its great quantities of silver and gold.
2
Its temple was very rich and contained gold shields, breastplates, and weapons that Alexander (the son of Philip, the first Macedonian king to rule over the Greeks) left there.
3
So he went and tried to take the city by force and plunder it. But he was unsuccessful because the city's inhabitants knew about his plan.
4
They resisted him in battle, and he fled. With great disappointment, he planned to return to Babylon.
5
While King Antiochus was in Persia, someone came to him and reported that the armies that had gone into the land of Judah had been thoroughly defeated.
6
Lysias, who had gone first with a strong force, had turned and run from the Jews. The Jews then grew stronger when they took weapons, supplies, and abundant spoils from the armies they defeated.
7
They had taken down the disgusting thing that he had set up on the altar in Jerusalem. Furthermore, they had surrounded the sanctuary and also his town Beth-zur with high walls like before.
8
When the king heard this news, he was stunned and badly shaken. He took to his bed, sick from grief. Things hadn't turned out for him as he had planned.
9
He lay there for many days because he was deeply depressed. He realized that he was dying.
10
He called his closest political advisors and said to them, "Sleep has left my eyes. I'm depressed from worrying.
11
I say to myself, What distress I've come to! What a great flood I've now been plunged into! Once I was kind and was loved in my power.
12
But now I recall the wrongs I did in Jerusalem. I seized all its silver and gold equipment. I ordered the destruction of the inhabitants of Judah without good reason.
13
I know it's because of all this that these misfortunes have come on me. I'm here, dying of bitter disappointment, in a foreign land."
14
Then he called for one of his advisors named Philip and made him ruler over all of his kingdom.
15
He gave him the crown, his robe, and the seal so that he might guide his son Antiochus and prepare him to be king.
16
Then King Antiochus died there in the year 149.
17
When Lysias found out that the king had died, he arranged for the king's son Antiochus, whom he had brought up from childhood, to rule. Lysias named him Eupator.