horon are visible, the "agony was intense. The intrepid chief with his small band saw the huge and variegated host approach, the furious elephants snorting in the centre, the cavalry hovering on the wings. It was, if ever, a time and place to invoke the Divine aid which supports the few against the many. It was not only the spot where Joshua had defeated the kings of Canaan, but where tradition fixed the more1 recent deliverance from Sennacherib. With these thoughts (and in this both the earlier and later narratives substantially agree) Judas raised his hands to heaven, and called on the All-seeing, Wonder-working God. "Thou, "O Lord, sentedst thine angel in the reign of Hezekiah "and didst destroy from the camp of Sennacherib an "hundred and fourscore and five thousand. Now, O "Ruler of the Heavens, send a good angel before us "and strike terror and trembling, and with Thy mighty "arm may they be struck down, who have come with. "blasphemy against Thy Holy Temple!" The army of Nicanor came on with trumpets sounding in accord with their triumphal heathen2 The army war-songs. of Judas advanced (the expression reminds us of the Ironsides) "fighting with their hands and praying with 'their hearts." The rout was complete. The neighboring villages and the surrounding hills were roused by the Roland-like horn of the Maccabees to intercept the passes and cut off the fugitives. There was a later tradition still, that when Judas encountered his former friend in the battle he called out "Take care of thyself, Nicanor it is to thee that "I come!" But in the earlier version it was Death of not by the hand of Judas that Nicanor was

3

1 See Lightfoot, ii. 18.

? 2 Macc. xv. 25 (maidvwv).

4

B. C. 161.

Nicanor.

8 Josephus, Ant.. xii. 10, 5

4 5 Macc. v. 16.

slain; he fell in the first onset of the battle, and it was only after its close that his corpse was found, recognizea by his splendid armor. Wild was the exultation, loud the shout, with which in their own Hebrew tongue the Jewish army blessed their Divine Deliverer. Then (it is no unfitting conclusion) laden with spoil they came in triumph to Jerusalem. Amongst the spoils the most conspicuous were the head of Nicanor, and his right hand and arm from the shoulder downwards, which they had severed from the body as it lay on the battlefield. The Priests assembled before the altar to receive them. The head and hand (like Hasdrubal's in Hannibal's camp) were held up before the Greek garrison in the fortress. The head was fastened to the fortress itself. The hand, which had been so proudly stretched forth in defiance against the Temple, was nailed to the main eastern entrance of the inner court, known long after as the Gate Beautiful, but also as "the Gate "of Nicanor" from this terrible reminiscence. The tongue with which the insults were spoken was cut into small pieces and thrown for the birds to devour. It was a savage revenge-so savage, and, in the sacred precincts, approaching so nearly to a profanation, that neither Josephus nor the earlier historian venture to mention it; but told in such detail and so confirmed by long tradition, and (alas!) by analogous usage in so many a Christian country, that there seems no reason to doubt it. One further honor was to be bestowed on the victory. It was a day already auspicious, the 13th

1 Another explanation, but probably of a later date, was given, that Nicanor, an Alexandrian Greek, had brought the gate from Alexandria; that it was thrown over in a storm to lighten the ship; that a sea-mon

ster swallowed it and threw it out on the shore at Joppa, where he found it on his arrival (see the various Rab binical quotations collected by Herz feld, ii. 345).

of the month Adar- the eve of the Feast of Purim — or, as the historian calls it, the eve of "Mordecai's Day;" and the anniversary itself was to be hereafter1 called "Nicanor's Day."

Eleasa and

Judas.

This was the crowning success of Judas. A wider sphere seemed opening before him, a new and Battle of powerful ally was on the point of joining his Death of cause, when he was suddenly cut off. The B.C. 161. Syrian army under Bacchides advanced down the Jordan valley to avenge the defeat of Nicanor. From a cause which the historian does not explain, but which incidental illustrations will enable us presently to indicate with fatal precision, Judas found a difficulty in mustering his forces. A veil, as it were, is drawn over his last effort. Even the place is uncertain. We can not be sure whether he encountered the enemy in his old haunts in the valleys branching into the hills from his native village, or whether he had been decoyed away into the far north by the sources of Jordan, or by the caverned rocks which overhang the Lake of Gennesareth. In the latest traditions he is represented as advancing to the fight with the lion-like port of his earlier days, and brandishing his sword, whether that which he had won from Apollonius, or that which he had received from the Prophet in the vision at Beth-horon. The famous trumpet sounded for the last time. From morning till night the conflict lasted One wing of the Syrian army fled before the charge;

3

1 Herzfeld, ii. 345. See Lecture feld, ii. 346) (see Lecture L.); and XLV. in that case Eleasa might be Laish near Dan. But, on the other hand, it seems improbable that he should have ventured so far from Judæa. 8 5 Macc. v. 17, 3.

21 Macc. ix. 2. Galgala is Galilee in Josephus, Ant., xii. 11. Arbela also points to the fortress above the take of Gennesareth, Masaloth possibly to its well-known caves (Herz

but the other pursued the pursuers, and between the two the gallant champion was caught. His watchword before the battle was cherished as his latest utterance. When he saw the odds against which he had to fight. "God forbid that I should do this thing and flee away "from them; if our time be come, let us die manfully "for our brethren, and let us not leave behind a stain upon our honor." His dead body was found by the two worthiest of his brothers; they laid him in the ancestral sepulchre at Modin, and a dirge went up from the whole nation for him, like that of David over Saul and Jonathan: "How is the valiant man fallen, the "deliverer of Israel!"

With the death of Judas ends the first stage of the struggle for independence. Hardly any charHis career. acter of the later days of Judaism so strikes the imagination as the hero who, of all military chiefs, accomplished the largest ends with the scantiest means, who from the brink of extermination raised his nation to a higher level of freedom than they had enjoyed since the fall of the Monarchy. "He had "been ever the chief defender of his countrymen "both in body and mind; he had maintained his early "love for his people unbroken to the end." No conflict in their history has been more frequently recorded. Even David's story is told but twice; the story of the Maccabean struggle is repeated at intervals of successive generations in no less than four separate versions. And around the struggle revolves the mysterious book which still exercises the critic, which still stirs the conscience, which filled the whole imagination of the coming centuries of the Jewish people. When some good men regard it as a disparagement of the

1 1 Macc. ix. 18-20.

2 2 Macc. xv. 30.

Book of Daniel that it should have been evoked by the Maccabæan conflict, it is because they have not adequately conceived the grandeur of that crisis, nor recognized the fact that, when the final agony of the nation approached, two centuries later, there was no period which so naturally supplied the imagery for its hopes and fears as that which was covered by the blows and counterblows between Antiochus the Brilliant Madman and Judas the Hammer of the Heathen. If in the visions of Daniel the anticipations of the deliverance are thought worthy of being announced by the Archangel Gabriel,' if the hero who shall accomplish the deliverance is summoned to receive his reward by myriads of ministering spirits, not the less in the poetic accounts of the second book of Maccabees does the valiant ruler with his little band appear surrounded by angelic champions. Sometimes, when he is marching out of Jerusalem, on a sudden there starts up a horseman clothed in white, who heads the little band, brandishing his shield and spear2 of gold. Sometimes in the thick of the fray five splendid horsemen start as if from the sky, rattling their golden bridles, as if the celestial guardians of the five gallant brothers. One gallops before, and on each side of Maccabæus ride, two and two, the other four, protecting him with shield, and spear, and sword, and darting lightnings at their enemies.

Such apparitions - the vision of St. Nicholas, who was supposed in 1854 to have caught in the air the British bombs at the holy fortress of Solowetzky; the counterparts of the Twin Gods at the battle of the

1 Dan. vii. 14; ix. 27 (Speaker's Commentary, vol. iv. 336).

22 Macc. xi. 7.

8 διαπρεπείς, πανοπλία. 2 Μacc. x 29, 30 (Grimm).

Preface to Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.