4 Maccabees 11 — ASVBT
11Verse 1And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,Verse 2I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.Verse 3But I have come of mine own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes.Verse 4O thou hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that thou thus revelest in our blood?Verse 5Doth it seem evil to thee that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?Verse 6But this is worthy of honors, not of torments;Verse 7hadst thou been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.Verse 8Behold, now, being alien from God, thou makest war against those who are religious toward God.Verse 9As he said this, the spear-bearers bound him, and drew him to the catapult:Verse 10to 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.Verse 11With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,Verse 12A great favor thou bestowest upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.Verse 13He 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,Verse 14I am indeed younger than my brethren, but in understanding I am as old;Verse 15for having been born and reared unto the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.Verse 16So that if thou think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean—torment!Verse 17As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.Verse 18Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.Verse 19And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.Verse 20And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brethren have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.Verse 21For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.Verse 22Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.Verse 23I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.Verse 24We six youths have destroyed thy tyranny.Verse 25For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, thy destruction?Verse 26Your fire is cold to us, your catapults are painless, and your violence harmless.Verse 27For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.