27. Stirred up by the villain’s slander, the king became enraged. He wrote to Nicanor, stating that he was displeased with the treaty, and ordering him to send Maccabeus at once as a prisoner to Antioch.
28. When this message reached Nicanor he was dismayed and troubled at the thought of annulling his agreement with a man who had done no wrong.
29. However, there was no way of opposing the king, so he watched for an opportunity to carry out this order by a stratagem.
30. But Maccabeus, noticing that Nicanor was more harsh in his dealings with him, and acting with unaccustomed rudeness when they met, concluded that this harshness was not a good sign. So he gathered together not a few of his men, and went into hiding from Nicanor.
31. When Nicanor realized that he had been cleverly outwitted by the man, he went to the great and holy temple, at a time when the priests were offering the customary sacrifices, and ordered them to surrender Judas.
32. As they declared under oath that they did not know where the man they sought was,
33. he stretched out his right arm toward the temple and swore this oath: “If you do not hand Judas over to me as prisoner, I will level this shrine of God to the ground; I will tear down the altar, and erect here a splendid temple to Dionysus.”
34. With these words he went away. The priests stretched out their hands toward heaven, calling upon the unfailing defender of our nation in these words:
35. “Lord of all, though you are in need of nothing, you were pleased to have a temple for your dwelling place among us.
36. Therefore, Holy One, Lord of all holiness, preserve forever undefiled this house, which has been so recently purified.”
37. A certain Razis, one of the elders of Jerusalem, was denounced to Nicanor as a patriot. A man highly regarded, he was called a father of the Jews because of his goodwill toward them.
38. In the days before the revolt, he had been convicted of being a Jew, and had risked body and soul in his ardent zeal for Judaism.
39. Nicanor, to show his disdain for the Jews, sent more than five hundred soldiers to arrest him.
40. He thought that by arresting that man he would deal the Jews a hard blow.
41. But when the troops, on the point of capturing the tower, were forcing the outer gate and calling for fire to set the door ablaze, Razis, now caught on all sides, turned his sword against himself,
42. preferring to die nobly rather than fall into the hands of vile men and suffer outrages unworthy of his noble birth.
43. In the excitement of the struggle he failed to strike exactly. So while the troops rushed in through the doors, he gallantly ran up to the top of the wall and courageously threw himself down into the crowd.