Chapter 11

¹ And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,

4Mac 11:1

² I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue. ³ But I have come of my own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes. ⁴ O thou hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that thou thus revelest in our blood? ⁵ Does it seem evil to thee that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law? ⁶ But this is worthy of honors, not of torments; ⁷ hadst thou been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God. ⁸ Behold, now, being alien from God, thou makest war against those who are religious toward God.

4Mac 11:2-8

⁹ As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapult: ¹⁰ to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion fashion. ¹¹ With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said, ¹² A great favor thou bestowest upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.

4Mac 11:9-12

¹³ He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,

4Mac 11:13

¹⁴ I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old; ¹⁵ for having been born and reared unto the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause. ¹⁶ So that if thou think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean—torment!

4Mac 11:14-16

¹⁷ As he said this, they brought him to the wheel. ¹⁸ Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath. ¹⁹ And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.

4Mac 11:17-19

²⁰ And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brothers have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered. ²¹ For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered. ²² Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren. ²³ I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

4Mac 11:20-23

²⁴ We six youths have destroyed thy tyranny. ²⁵ For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, thy destruction? ²⁶ Your fire is cold to us, your catapults are painless, and your violence harmless. ²⁷ For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.

4Mac 11:24-27