37. They said, “Let us all die in innocence; heaven and earth are our witnesses that you destroy us unjustly.”
38. So the officers and soldiers attacked them on the sabbath, and they died with their wives, their children and their animals, to the number of a thousand persons.
39. When Mattathias and his friends heard of it, they mourned deeply for them.
40. They said to one another, “If we all do as our kindred have done, and do not fight against the Gentiles for our lives and our laws, they will soon destroy us from the earth.”
41. So on that day they came to this decision: “Let us fight against anyone who attacks us on the sabbath, so that we may not all die as our kindred died in their secret refuges.”
42. Then they were joined by a group of Hasideans, mighty warriors of Israel, all of them devoted to the law.
43. And all those who were fleeing from the persecutions joined them and supported them.
44. They gathered an army and struck down sinners in their wrath and the lawless in their anger, and the survivors fled to the Gentiles for safety.
45. Mattathias and his friends went about and tore down the pagan altars;
46. they also forcibly circumcised any uncircumcised boys whom they found in the territory of Israel.