4 Maccabees 8:21-29

21 and let us seriously consider that if we disobey we are dead!

22 Also, divine justice will excuse us for fearing the king when we are under compulsion.

23 Why do we banish ourselves from this most pleasant life and deprive ourselves of this delightful world?

24 Let us not struggle against compulsion or take hollow pride in being put to the rack.

25 Not even the law itself would arbitrarily put us to death for fearing the instruments of torture.

26 Why does such contentiousness excite us and such a fatal stubbornness please us, when we can live in peace if we obey the king?"

27 But the youths, though about to be tortured, neither said any of these things nor even seriously considered them.

28 For they were contemptuous of the emotions and sovereign over agonies,

29 so that as soon as the tyrant had ceased counseling them to eat defiling food, all with one voice together, as from one mind, said:

Footnotes

• [a]. Or [fate]