3 Maccabees 4:13-21

13 ordered in his rage that these men be dealt with in precisely the same fashion as the others, not omitting any detail of their punishment.
14 The entire race was to be registered individually, not for the hard labor that has been briefly mentioned before, but to be tortured with the outrages that he had ordered, and at the end to be destroyed in the space of a single day.
15 The registration of these people was therefore conducted with bitter haste and zealous intentness from the rising of the sun till its setting, and though uncompleted it stopped after forty days.
16 The king was greatly and continually filled with joy, organizing feasts in honor of all his idols, with a mind alienated from truth and with a profane mouth, praising speechless things that are not able even to communicate or to come to one's help, and uttering improper words against the supreme God.
17 But after the previously mentioned interval of time the scribes declared to the king that they were no longer able to take the census of the Jews because of their innumerable multitude,
18 although most of them were still in the country, some still residing in their homes, and some at the place; the task was impossible for all the generals in Egypt.
19 After he had threatened them severely, charging that they had been bribed to contrive a means of escape, he was clearly convinced about the matter
20 when they said and proved that both the paper and the pens they used for writing had already given out.
21 But this was an act of the invincible providence of him who was aiding the Jews from heaven.
Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.