5
For there is a tower in that place, fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it has a rim running around it which on all sides inclines precipitously into the ashes.
6
There they all push to destruction any man guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes.
7
By such a fate it came about that Menelaus the lawbreaker died, without even burial in the earth.
8
And this was eminently just; because he had committed many sins against the altar whose fire and ashes were holy, he met his death in ashes.
9
The king with barbarous arrogance was coming to show the Jews things far worse than those that had been done in his father's time.
10
But when Judas heard of this, he ordered the people to call upon the Lord day and night, now if ever to help those who were on the point of being deprived of the law and their country and the holy temple,
11
and not to let the people who had just begun to revive fall into the hands of the blasphemous Gentiles.
12
When they had all joined in the same petition and had besought the merciful Lord with weeping and fasting and lying prostrate for three days without ceasing, Judas exhorted them and ordered them to stand ready.
13
After consulting privately with the elders, he determined to march out and decide the matter by the help of God before the king's army could enter Judea and get possession of the city.
14
So, committing the decision to the Creator of the world and exhorting his men to fight nobly to the death for the laws, temple, city, country, and commonwealth, he pitched his camp near Modein.
15
He gave his men the watchword, "God's victory," and with a picked force of the bravest young men, he attacked the king's pavilion at night and slew as many as two thousand men in the camp. He stabbed the leading elephant and its rider.