37. Innocent people were murdered round the altar;the Holy Place was defiled by murderers.
38. The people of Jerusalem fled in fear,and the city became a colony of foreigners.Jerusalem was foreign to its own people,who had been forced to abandon the city.
39. Her Temple was as empty as a wilderness;her festivals were turned into days of mourning,her Sabbath joy into shame.Her honour became an object of ridicule.
40. Her shame was as great as her former glory,and her pride was turned into deepest mourning.
41-43. Antiochus now issued a decree that all nations in his empire should abandon their own customs and become one people. All the Gentiles and even many of the Israelites submitted to this decree. They adopted the official pagan religion, offered sacrifices to idols, and no longer observed the Sabbath.
44. The king also sent messengers with a decree to Jerusalem and all the towns of Judea, ordering the people to follow customs that were foreign to the country.
45. He ordered them not to offer burnt offerings, grain offerings, or wine offerings in the Temple, and commanded them to treat Sabbaths and festivals as ordinary work days.
46. They were even ordered to defile the Temple and the holy things in it.
47. They were commanded to build pagan altars, temples, and shrines, and to sacrifice pigs and other unclean animals there.
48. They were forbidden to circumcise their sons and were required to make themselves ritually unclean in every way they could,
49. so that they would forget the Law which the Lord had given through Moses and would disobey all its commands.
50. The penalty for disobeying the king's decree was death.