Fourth Maccabees-Daughter

Daughter of Abraham
When the Hebrews would not renounce their obedience to G-d’s Law in the first century the king tried to torture them even more savagely. Under these orders of the tyrant seven brethren together with their aged mother where brought before him, all handsome, and modest, and well-born, and generally attractive, they refused to share in the Hellenic live and walk in a new way.
The instruments of torture were brought forward in order to persuade them by fear to break G-d’s Law. But when the guards had produced wheels, and joint-dislocators, and racks, and bone-crushers, and catapults, and cauldrons, and braziers, and thumb-screws, and iron claws, and wedges, and branding irons, but they hearing his persuasions, and seeing his dreadful engines, not only showed no fear but actually arrayed their philosophy in opposition to the tyrant, and by their right Reason did abase his tyranny. And all in one voice together, and as with one soul, said to him: “Why dost thou delay, O tyrant? We are ready to die rather than transgress the commandments of our fathers. For we esteem thy mercy, giving us our life in return for a breach of a Law, a thing harder to bear than death itself. If the old men of the Hebrews endured the tortures for righteousness’ sake until they died, more befittingly will we young men die despising the torments of the compulsion, over which our age teachers also triumphed. For we through this our evil entreatment and our endurance of it shall win the prize of virtue; but thou for our cruel murder shalt suffer at eh hands of divine justice sufficient torment by fire for ever!”
The scourgers brought forward the sons one by one starting with the eldest of them and stripped him of his garment and bound his hands and arms on either side with thongs. But when they had scourged him till they were weary, and gained nothing thereby, they cast him upon the wheel. And on it the noble youth was racked till his bones were out of joint, then they set hot coals upon him besides, and intensifying the torture strained him yet tighter on the wheel. And all the wheel was besmeared with his blood, and the heaped coals were quenched by the humours of his body dropping down, and the rent flesh ran round the axles of the machine. With his bodily frame already in dissolution this great-souled youth, like a true son of Abraham, groaned not at all.
The guards brought forth the second in age of the sons, and grappling him with sharp-clawed hands of iron they fastened him to the engines and the catapult. These panther-like beasts tore at his sinews with claws of iron, and rent away all the flesh from his cheeks, and tore off the skin from his head. The son called out; “For I am supported under pain by the joys that come through virtue, whereas thou art in torment whilst glorying in thy impiety; neither shall thou escape, O most abominable tyrant, the penalties of the divine wrath! And when he had bravely met his glorious death, the third son was being brought forward.
They dislocated his hands and his feet with their dislocating engines, and wrenched his limbs out of their sockets, and unstrung them; and they twisted round his fingers, and his arms, and his legs, and his elbow-joints. They stripped off his skin, taking the points of the fingers with it, and tore in Scythian fashion the scalp from his head, and straight-way brought him to the wheel. And on this they twisted his spine till he saw his own flesh hanging in strips and great gouts of blood pouring down from his entrails. And when this man had died worthily of his brothers, they brought up the fourth son. This man was also put to a death of agony with the tortures.
The fifth son sprang forward yelling out: “I shrink not, O tyrant, from demanding the torture for virtue’s sake. I come myself, slaying me thou mayest by yet more misdeeds increase the penalty thou owest to the justice of Heaven.” As he spoke the guars bound him and brought him before the catapult; and they tired him thereto on his knees, and fastening them there with iron clamps, they wrenched his loins over the rolling wedge so that he was completely curled back like a scorpion and every joint was disjointed. And when this man also was dead, the sixth was brought, a mere boy.
They took him to the wheel, and with care they stretched him out and dislocated the bones of his back and set fire under him. And they made sharp skewers red-hot, and ran them into his back, and piercing through his sides they burned away his entrails also. And when this one also died a blessed death, being cast into the cauldron, the seventh son, the youngest of them all, came forward.
Binding him, they sent for the boy’s mother, in order that in her sorrow for the lost of so many sons she might urge the survivor to obey and be saved. The son ask the guard to be loosen and they rejoiced at eh boy’s request, thinking he had come to his senses. He ran up to the red-hot brazier and spoke out: “Are thou not ashamed, being a man, O wretch with the heat of a wild beast, to take men of like feeling with thyself, made from the same elements, and tear out their tongues, and scourge and torture them in this manner? I am no renegade to the witness borne by my brethren, and I call upon the G-d of my fathers to be merciful unto my nation, and thee will He punish both in this present life and after that thou are dead.” And with that he cast himself into the red-hot brazier, and so gave up the ghost.
So the seven-towered right Reason of the youths defended the haven of righteousness and repulsed the tempestuousness of the passions, in conjunction with their piety it rendered their brotherly love more fervent. None of these seven youths turned coward, none shrank in the face of death, but all hastened to the death by torture as if running the road to immortality. For as the seven days of the creation of the world do enring religion, so did the youths choir-like enring their sevenfold companionship, and made the terror of the tortures of no account.
Now the mother of the seven youths endured the torments inflicted on each several one of her children. But consider how manifold are the yearnings of a mother’s heart, so that her feeling for her offspring becomes the centre of her whole world and was not moved from her purpose by her affection for her children. We stamp a marvelous likeness of our soul and of our shape on the tender nature of the child, and most of all through the mother’s sympathy with her children being deeper than the father’s. For women are softer of soul than men, and the more children they bear the more do they abound in love for them. She of the seven sons abounded in love beyond the most, seeing that, having in seven child-bearing felt maternal tenderness for the fruit of her womb, and having been constrained because of the many pangs in which she bore each to a close affection, she nevertheless through the fear of G-d rejected the present safety of her children. More than that, through the moral beauty and goodness of her sons and their obedience to the Law, her maternal love for them was made stronger. For they were just, and temperate, and brave and great-souled, and lovers of each other and of their mother in such manner that they obeyed her in the keeping of the Law even unto death.
The mother, seeing them one by one racked and burned, remained unshaken in soul for the Laws sake. She saw the flesh of her sons being consumed in the fire, and the extremities of their hands and feet scattered on the ground, and the flesh-covering, torn off from their hands right to their cheeks, strewn about like masks. She did not weep when she beheld the eyes of each amid the torments looking boldly on the same anguish, and saw in their quivering nostrils the signs of approaching death. She saw the flesh of one son being severed after the flesh of another, and hand after hand being cut off, and head after head being flayed, and corpse upon corpse, and the place crowded with spectators on account of the tortures of her children, and shed not a tear.
How many and how great were the tortures with which the mother was tormented while her sons were being tortured with torments of rack and fire! But Inspired Reason lent her heart a man’s strength under her passion of suffering and exalted her to make no account of the present yearnings of mother-love; she surrendered them through faith in G-d. As a true daughter of Abraham, called to mind His G-d fearing courage, to endure to the end. O woman, nobler to resist than men, and braver than warriors to endure! With the whole living world for her burden in the world-whelming Deluge, did withstand the mighty surges, so thou, the keeper of the Law, beaten upon every side by the waves of passions, and strained as with strong blasts by the tortures of thy sons, didst nobly weather the storms that assailed thee for the Laws sake. Now have not only men triumphed over their sufferings, but that a women also has despised the most despised the most dreadful tortures, as burned in her the instinct of motherhood at the sight of her seven sons being tortured, thou was not weak in spirit.
A holy and G-d-fearing mother that had a soul of adamant and brought forth the number of sons, for a second time, into immortal life, she was old and a women but did both defeat the tyrant by her endurance, and was found stronger than a man, in deeds as well as words. For when put in bonds with her sons, she spoke in the Hebrew tongue to them: “Remember that for the sake of G-d ye have come into the world, and have enjoyed life, and that therefore ye owe it to G-d to endure all pain for His sake. And ye also, having the same faith unto G-d, be not troubled; for it were against Reason that ye, knowing righteousness, should not withstand the pains. I was a pure maiden, no seducer corrupted me. I lived with my husband all the days of my youth; but when these my sons were grown up, their father died. Who, while he was yet with us, taught you the Law and the prophets, he is calling to your minds to stay faithful, even through you pass through the fire, the flames shall not hurt you”
With these words the mother to the seven encouraged every single one of her sons to die rather than transgress the ordinance of G-d; they themselves also knowing well that men dying for G-d live unto G-d. Some of the guards declared that when she also was about to be seized and put to death, she cast herself on the pyre in order that no man might touch her body.
O mother, that together with thy seven sons did break the tyrant’s force, and bring to nought his evil devices, and gave an example of the nobleness of faith. Thou were nobly set as a roof upon thy sons as pillars, and the earthquake of the torments shoot thee not at all. Rejoice therefore, pure-souled mother, having the hope of thy endurance certain at the hand of G-d. Would not the spectators have shuddered at the mother of seven sons suffering for righteousness; sake multitudinous tortures even unto death? All righteousness won the victory! And through them won the admiration of mankind, and the nation obtained peace and restoring the observance of the Law, for the tyrant failed utterly to constrain the people of Jerusalem to live like Gentiles and defile G-d’s Law.
O L-rd bring back the love of your Law and the faithfulness to it!