Septuagint (Greek Old Testament)

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.

For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.

I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

We six youths have destroyed thy tyranny.

For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, thy destruction?

Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.

For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.

When he, too, had undergone blessed martyrdom, and died in the caldron into which he had been thrown, the seventh, the youngest of all, came forward:

whom the tyrant pitying, though he had been dreadfully reproached by his brethren,

seeing him already encompassed with chains, had him brought nearer, and endeavoured to counsel him, saying,

Thou seest the end of the madness of thy brethren: for they have died in torture through disobedience; and you, if disobedient, having been miserably tormented, will yourself perish prematurely.

But if you obey, you shall be my friend, and have a charge over the affairs of the kingdom.

And having thus exhorted him, he sent for the mother of the boy; that, by condoling with her for the loss of so many sons, he might incline her, through the hope of safety, to render the survivor obedient.

And he, after his mother had urged him on in the Hebrew tongue, (as we shall soon relate) says,

Release me, that I may speak to the king and all his friends.

And they, rejoicing exceedingly at the promise of the youth, quickly let him go.

And he, running up to the pans, said,

Impious tyrant, and most blasphemous man, wert thou not ashamed, having received prosperity and a kingdom from God, to slay His servants, and to rack the doers of godliness?

Wherefore the divine vengeance is reserving thee for eternal fire and torments, which shall cling to thee for all time.

Wert thou not ashamed, man as thou art, yet most savage, to cut out the tongues of men of like feeling and origin, and having thus abused to torture them?

But they, bravely dying, fulfilled their religion towards God.

But thou shalt groan according to thy deserts for having slain without cause the champions of virtue.

Wherefore, he continued, I myself, being about to die,

will not forsake the testimony of my brethren.

And I call upon the God of my fathers to be merciful to my race.

But thee, both living and dead, he will punish.

Thus having prayed, he hurled himself into the pans; and so expired.

If then, the seven brethren despised troubles even unto death, it is confessed on all sides that righteous reasoning is absolute master over the passions.

For just as if, had they as slaves to the passions eaten of the unholy, we should have said that they had been conquered by them;

now it is not so: but by means of the reasoning which is praised by God, they mastered their passions.

And it is impossible to overlook the leadership of reflection: for it gained the victory over both passions and troubles.

How, then, can we avoid according to these men mastery of passion through right reasoning, since they drew not back from the pains of fire?

For just as by means of towers projecting in front of harbours men break the threatening waves, and thus assure a still course to vessels entering port,

so that seven-towered right-reasoning of the young men, securing the harbour of religion, conquered the intemperance of passions.

For having arranged a holy choir of piety, they encouraged one another, saying,

Brothers, may we die brotherly for the law. Let us imitate the three young men in Assyria who despised the equally afflicting furnace.

Let us not be cowards in the manifestation of piety.

And one said, Courage, brother; and another, Nobly endure.

And another, Remember of what stock ye are; and by the hand of what father Isaac endured to be slain for the sake of piety.

And one and all, looking on each other serene and confident, said, Let us sacrifice with all our heart our souls to God who gave them, and employ our bodies for the keeping of the law.

Let us not fear him who thinketh he killeth;

for great is the trial of soul and danger of eternal torment laid up for those who transgress the commandment of God.

Let us arm ourselves, therefore, in the abnegation of the divine reasoning.

If we suffer thus, Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob will receive us, and all the fathers will commend us.

And as each one of the brethren was haled away, the rest exclaimed, Disgrace us not, O brother, nor falsify those who have died before you.

Now you are not ignorant of the charm of brotherhood, which the Divine and all-wise Providence has imparted through fathers to children, and has engendered through the mother's womb.

In which these brothers having remained an equal time, and having been formed for the same period, and been increased by the same blood, and having been perfected through the same principle of life,

and having been brought forth at equal intervals, and having sucked milk from the same fountains, hence their brotherly souls are reared up lovingly together;

and increase the more powerfully by reason of this simultaneous rearing, and by daily intercourse, and by other education, and exercise in the law of God.

Brotherly love being thus sympathetically constituted, the seven brethren had a more sympathetic mutual harmony.

For being educated in the same law, and practising the same virtues, and reared up in a just course of life, they increased this harmony with each other.

For a like ardour for what is right and honourable increased their fellow-feeling towards each other.

For it acting along with religion, made their brotherly feeling more desirable to them.

And yet, although nature and intercourse and virtuous morals increased their brotherly love, those who were left endured to behold their brethren, who were ill-used for their religion, tortured even unto death.

And more than this, they even urged them on to this ill-treatment; so that they not only despised pains themselves, but they even got the better of their affections of brotherly love.

O reasonings more royal than a king, and freer than freemen!

Sacred and harmonious concert of the seven brethren as concerning piety!

None of the seven youths turned cowardly, or shrank back from death.

But all of them, as though running the road to immortality, hastened on to death through tortures.

For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed unto death for religion's sake, as through the immortal soul of religion.

O holy seven of harmonious brethren! for as the seven days of creation, about religion,

so the youths, circling around the number seven, annulled the fear of torments.

We now shudder at the recital of the affliction of those young men; but they not only beheld, and not only heard the immediate execution of the threat, but undergoing it, persevered; and that through the pains of fire.

And what could be more painful? for the power of fire, being sharp and quick, speedily dissolved their bodies.

And think it not wonderful that reasoning bore rule over those men in their torments, when even a woman's mind despised more manifold pains.

For the mother of those seven youths endured the rackings of each of her children.

And consider how comprehensive is the love of offspring, which draws every one to sympathy of affection,

where irrational animals possess a similar sympathy and love for their offspring with men.

The tame birds frequenting the roofs of our houses, defend their fledglings.

Others build their nests, and hatch their young, in the tops of mountains and in the precipices of valleys, and the holes and tops of trees, and keep off the intruder.

And if not able to do this, they fly circling round them in agony of affection, calling out in their own note, and save their offspring in whatever manner they are able.

But why should we point attention to the sympathy toward children shewn by irrational animals?

The very bees, at the season of honey-making, attack all who approach; and pierce with their sting, as with a sword, those who draw near their hive, and repel them even unto death.

But sympathy with her children did not turn aside the mother of the young men, who had a spirit kindred with that of Abraham.

O reasoning of the sons, lord over the passions, and religion more desirable to a mother than progeny!

The mother, when two things were set before her, religion and the safety of her seven sons for a time, on the conditional promise of a tyrant,

rather elected the religion which according to God preserves to eternal life.

O in what way can I describe ethically the affections of parents toward their children, the resemblance of soul and of form engrafted into the small type of a child in a wonderful manner, especially through the greater sympathy of mothers with the feelings of those born of them!

for by how much mothers are by nature weak in disposition and prolific in offspring, by so much the fonder they are of children.

And of all mothers the mother of the seven was the fondest of children, who in seven childbirths had deeply engendered love toward them;

and through her many pains undergone in connection with each one, was compelled to feel sympathy with them;

yet, through fear of God, she neglected the temporary salvation of her children.

Not but that, on account of the excellent disposition of her sons, and their obedience to the law, her maternal affection toward them was increased.

For they were both just and temperate, and manly, and high-minded, and fond of their brethren, and so fond of their mother that even unto death they obeyed her by observing the law.

And yet, though there were so many circumstances connected with love of children to draw on a mother to sympathy, in the case of none of them were the various tortures able to pervert her principle.

But she inclined each one separately and all together to death for religion.

O holy nature and parental feeling, and reward of bringing up children, and unconquerable maternal affection!

At the racking and roasting of each one of them, the observant mother was prevented by religion from changing.

She beheld her children's flesh dissolving around the fire; and their extremities quivering on the ground, and the flesh of their heads dropped forwards down to their beards, like masks.

O thou mother, who wast tried at this time with bitterer pangs than those of parturition!

O thou only woman who hast brought forth perfect holiness!

Thy first-born, expiring, turned thee not; nor the second, looking miserable in his torments; nor the third, breathing out his soul.

Nor when thou didst behold the eyes of each of them looking sternly upon their tortures, and their nostrils foreboding death, didst thou weep!

When thou didst see children's flesh heaped upon children's flesh that had been torn off, hands upon hands cut off, heads decapitated upon heads, dead falling upon the dead, and a choir of children turned through torture into a burying-ground, thou lamentedst not.

Not so do siren melodies, or songs of swans, attract the hearers to listening, O voices of children calling upon your mother in the midst of torments!

With what and what manner of torments was the mother herself tortured, as her sons were undergoing the wheel and the fires!

But religious reasoning, having strengthened her courage in the midst of sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the time, parental love.

Although beholding the destruction of seven children, the noble mother, after one embrace, stripped off [her feelings] through faith in God.

For just as in a council-room, beholding in her own soul vehement counsellors, nature and parentage and love of her children, and the racking of her children,