15. that he may not take vengeance on us afterward, when we be come to the height of our sins.
16. Wherefore he never withdraws his mercy from us; but though he chasteneth with calamity, yet does he not forsake his own people.
17. Howbeit let this that we have spoken suffice to put you in remembrance; but after these few words we must come to the narrative.
18. Eleazar, one of the principal scribes, a man already well stricken in years, and of a noble countenance, was compelled to open his mouth to eat swine’s flesh.
19. But he, welcoming death with renown rather than life with pollution, advanced of his own accord to the instrument of torture, but first spat forth the flesh,
20. coming forward as men ought to come that are resolute to repel such things as not even for the natural love of life is it lawful to taste.
21. But they that had the charge of that forbidden sacrificial feast took the man aside, for the acquaintance which of old times they had with him, and privately implored him to bring flesh of his own providing, such as was befitting for him to use, and to make as if he did eat of the flesh from the sacrifice, as had been commanded by the king;
22. that by so doing he might be delivered from death, and for his ancient friendship with them might be treated kindly.
23. But he, having formed a high resolve, and one that became his years, and the dignity of old age, and the gray hairs which he had reached with honor, and his excellent education from a child, or rather that became the holy laws of God’s ordaining, declared his mind accordingly, bidding them quickly send him to Hades.
24. For it becomes not our years to dissemble, said he, that through this many of the young should suppose that Eleazar, the man of fourscore years and ten, had gone over to an alien religion;
25. and so they, by reason of my dissimulation, and for the sake of this brief and momentary life, should be led astray because of me, and thus I get to myself a pollution and a stain of mine old age.
26. For even if for the present time I shall remove from me the punishment of men, yet shall I not escape the hands of the Almighty, either living or dead.
27. Wherefore, by manfully parting with my life now, I will show myself worthy of mine old age,
28. and leave behind a noble ensample to the young to die willingly and nobly a glorious death for the reverend and holy laws. And when he had said these words, he went straightway to the instrument of torture.
29. And when they changed the good will they bare him a little before into ill will, because these words of his were, as they thought, sheer madness,