1. And not long after this the king sent forth an old man of Athens to compel the Jews to depart from the laws of their fathers, and not to live after the laws of God;
2. and also to pollute the sanctuary in Jerusalem, and to call it by the name of Jupiter Olympius, and to call the sanctuary in Gerizim by the name of Jupiter the Protector of strangers, even as they were that lived in the place.
3. But sore and utterly grievous was the visitation of this evil.
4. For the temple was filled with riot and revellings by the heathen, who dallied with harlots, and had to do with women within the sacred precincts, and moreover brought inside things that were not befitting;
5. and the place of sacrifice was filled with those abominable things which had been prohibited by the laws.
6. And a man could neither keep the Sabbath, nor observe the feasts of the fathers, nor so much as confess himself to be a Jew.
7. And on the day of the king’s birth every month they were led along with bitter constraint to eat of the sacrifices; and when the feast of Bacchus came, they were compelled to go in procession in honor of Bacchus, wearing wreaths of ivy.
8. And there wemt out a decree to the neighbouring Greek cities, by the suggestion of Ptolemy, that they should observe the same conduct against the Jews, and should make them eat of the sacrifices;
9. and that they should kill such as did not choose to go over to the Greek rites. So the present misery was for all to see:
10. for two women were brought up for having circumcised their children; and these, when they had led them publicly round about the city, with the babes hung from their breasts, they cast down headlong from the wall.
11. And others, that had run together into the caves near by to keep the seventh day secretly, being betrayed to Philip were all burned together, because they scrupled to defend themselves, from regard to the honor of that most solemn day.
12. I beseech therefore those that read this book, that they be not discouraged because of the calamities, but account that these punishments were not for the destruction, but for the chastening of our race.