1
Now Maccabeus and his company, the Lord guiding them, recovered the temple and the city;
2
but the altars which the heathen had built in the open street, and also the chapels, they pulled down.
3
And, having cleansed the temple, they made another altar; and, striking stones, they took fire out of them, and offered a sacrifice after two years, and set forth incense and lights and showbread.
4
When that was done, they fell flat down and besought the Lord that they might come no more into such troubles; but if they sinned any more against Him, that He Himself would chasten them with mercy, and that they might not be delivered unto the blasphemous and barbarous nations.
5
Now upon the same day that the strangers profaned the temple, on the very same day it was cleansed again, even the five and twentieth day of the same month, which is Chislev.
6
And they kept the eight days with gladness, as in the Feast of the Tabernacles, remembering that not long before they had held the Feast of the Tabernacles, when they wandered in the mountains and dens like beasts.
7
Therefore they bore branches and fair boughs and palms also, and sang psalms unto Him that had given them good success in cleansing His place.
8
They ordained also by a common statute and decree that every year those days should be kept by the whole nation of the Jews.
9
And this was the end of Antiochus, called Epiphanes.
10
Now will we declare the acts of Antiochus Eupator, who was the son of this wicked man, gathering briefly the calamities of the wars.
11
So when he had come to the crown, he set one Lysias over the affairs of his realm, and appointed him chief governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia.