O Israelites, children born of the seed of Abraham, obey this Law, and be righteous in all ways, recognizing that Inspired Reason is lord over the passions, and over pains, not only from within, but from without ourselves; by which means those men, delivering up their bodies to the torture for righteousness' sake, not only won the admiration of mankind, but were deemed worthy of a divine inheritance.
2And through them the nation obtained peace and restoring the observance of the Law in our country hath captured the city from the enemy.
3And vengeance hath pursued the tyrant Antiochus upon earth, and in death he suffers punishment.
4For when he failed utterly to constrain the people of Jerusalem to live like Gentiles and abandon the customs of our fathers, he thereupon left Jerusalem and marched away against the Persians.
5Now these are the words that the mother of the seven sons, the righteous woman, spake to her children:
6'I was a pure maiden, and I strayed not from my father's house, and I kept guard over the rib that was builded into Eve.
7No seducer of the desert, no deceiver in the field, corrupted me; nor did the false, beguiling Serpent sully the purity of my maidenhood; I lived with my husband all the days of my youth; but when these my sons were grown up, their father died.
8Happy was he; for he lived a life blessed with children, and he never knew the pain of their loss.
9Who, while he was yet with us, taught you the Law and the prophets. He read to us of Abel who was slain by Cain, and of Isaac who was offered as a burnt-offering, and of Joseph in the prison.
10And he spake to us of Phineas, the zealous priest, and he taught you the song of Ananias, Azarias, and Mishael in the fire.
11And he glorified also Daniel in the den of lions, and blessed him; and he called to your minds the saying of Isaiah,
12"Yea even though thou pass through the fire, the flame shall not hurt thee."
13He sang to us the words of David the psalmist, "Many are the afflictions of the just."
14He quoted to us the proverb of Solomon, "He is a tree of life to all them that do his will."
15He confirmed the words of Ezekiel, "Shall these dry bones live?" For he forgat not the song that Moses taught, which teaches, "I will slay and I will make alive. This is your life and the blessedness of your days."'
16Ah, cruel was the day, and yet not cruel, when the cruel tyrant of the Greeks set the fire blazing for his barbarous braziers, and with his passions boiling brought to the catapult and back again to his tortures the seven sons of the daughter of Abraham, and blinded the eyeballs of their eyes, and cut out their tongues, and slew them with many kinds of torment.
17For which cause the judgement of God pursued, and shall pursue, the accursed wretch.
18But the sons of Abraham, with their victorious mother, are gathered together unto the place of their ancestors, having received pure and immortal souls from God, to whom be glory for ever and ever.