Fourth Book Of Maccabees
1926 anthology, complete selected publisher reading text
Rutherford H. Platt
22 ‘I was a pure maiden, and I strayed not from my father’s house, and I kept guard over the rib that was builded into Eve.
23 No seducer of the desert, no deceiver in the field, corrupted me; nor did the false, beguiling Serpent sully the purity of my maidenhood; I lived with my husband all the days of my youth; but when these my sons were grown up, their father died.
24 Happy was he; for he lived a life blessed with children, and he never knew the pain of their loss.
25 Who, while he was yet with us, taught you the Law and the prophets. He read to us of Abel who was slain by Cain, and of Isaac who was offered as a burnt-offering, and of Joseph in the prison.
26 And he spake to us of Phineas, the zealous priest, and he taught you the song of Ananias, Azarias, and Mishael in the fire.
27 And he glorified also Daniel in the den of lions, and blessed him; and he called to your minds the saying of Isaiah,
28 “Yea even though thou pass through the fire, the flame shall not hurt thee.”
29 He sang to us the words of David the psalmist, “Many are the afflictions of the just.”
30 He quoted to us the proverb of Solomon, “He is a tree of life to all them that do his will.”
31 He confirmed the words of Ezekiel, “Shall these dry bones live?” For he forgat not the song that Moses taught, which teaches, “I will slay and I will make alive. This is your life and the blessedness of your days.”‘
32 Ah, cruel was the day, and yet not cruel, when the cruel tyrant of the Greeks set the fire blazing for his barbarous braziers, and with his passions boiling brought to the catapult and back again to his tortures the seven sons of the daughter of Abraham, and blinded the eyeballs of their eyes, and cut out their tongues, and slew them with many kinds of torment.
33 For which cause the judgement of God pursued, and shall pursue, the accursed wretch.
34 But the sons of Abraham, with their victorious mother, are gathered together unto the place of their ancestors, having received pure and immortal souls from God, to whom be glory for ever and ever.