Old Testament

New Testament

2 Maccabees 7:1-10 Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV)

1. And it happened also that seven brothers, united with their mother, were apprehended and compelled by the king to eat the flesh of swine against divine law, being tormented with scourges and whips.

2. But one of them, who was first, spoke in this way: "What would you ask, or what would you want to learn from us? We are ready to die, rather than to betray the laws that our fathers received from God."

3. And so the king, being angry, ordered frying pans and bronze caldrons to be heated. When these were presently heated,

4. he ordered the tongue of him who had spoken first to be cut off, and, once the skin of his head had been pulled off, likewise his hands and feet to be cut off at the top, while the rest of his brothers and his mother were watching.

5. And when now he had been made helpless in all parts, he commanded him to be moved to the fire, and, while still breathing, to be fried in the frying pan. As he was suffering long torments therein, the rest, united with the mother, exhorted one another to die with fortitude,

6. saying: "The Lord God will perceive the truth, and he will be consoled in us, in the way that Moses declared in the profession of the canticle: 'And in his servants, he will be consoled.' "

7. And so, when the first had died in this way, they led in the next one, so as to ridicule him. And when the skin of his head was pulled off with the hair, they asked him if he would eat, instead of being punished throughout the whole body in every limb.

8. But responding in the language of his fathers, he said, "I will not do it." Because of this, he also, in the next place, received the torments of the first.

9. And when he had reached his last breath, he spoke in this way: "You, indeed, O most wicked man, are destroying us in this present life. But the King of the world will raise us up, in eternal life at the resurrection, for we die on behalf of his laws."

10. After this one, the third was ridiculed, and when he was asked, he quickly offered up his tongue, and he resolutely extended his hands.

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