4 Maccabees 6

¹When Eleazar had in this manner answered the exhortations of the tyrant, the spearbearers came up, and rudely dragged Eleazar to the instruments of torture. ²First, they stripped the old man, adorned as he was with the beauty of piety. ³Then tying back his arms and hands, they disdainfully flogged him. ⁴A herald opposite cried out, “Obey the commands of the king!”

⁵But the high-minded and truly noble Eleazar, as one tortured in a dream, ignored it. ⁶But raising his eyes on high to heaven, the old man’s flesh was stripped off by the scourges, and his blood streamed down, and his sides were pierced through. ⁷Falling on the ground from his body having no power to endure the pains, he still kept his reasoning upright and unbending. ⁸Then one of the harsh spearbearers rushed at him and began to kick him in the side to force him to get up again after he fell. ⁹But he endured the pains, despised the cruelty, and persevered through the indignities. ¹⁰Like a noble athlete, the old man, when struck, vanquished his torturers. ¹¹His face sweating, and he panting for breath, he was admired even by the torturers for his courage.

¹²Therefore, partly in pity for his old age, ¹³partly from the sympathy of acquaintance, and partly in admiration of his endurance, some of the attendants of the king said, ¹⁴“Why do you unreasonably destroy yourself, O Eleazar, with these miseries? ¹⁵We will bring you some meat cooked by yourself, and you can save yourself by pretending that you have eaten swine’s flesh.”

¹⁶Eleazar, as though the advice more painfully tortured him, cried out, ¹⁷“Let us who are children of Abraham not be so evil advised as to give way and make use of an unbecoming pretense. ¹⁸For it would be irrational, if having lived up to old age in all truth, and having scrupulously guarded our character for it, we would now turn back ¹⁹and ourselves become a pattern of impiety to the young, as being an example of eating pollution. ²⁰It would be disgraceful if we would live on some short time, and that scorned by all men for cowardice, ²¹and be condemned by the tyrant for cowardice by not contending to the death for our divine law. ²²Therefore you, O children of Abraham, die nobly for your religion. ²³You spearbearers of the tyrant, why do you linger?”

²⁴Beholding him so high-minded against misery, and not changing at their pity, they led him to the fire. ²⁵Then with their wickedly contrived instruments they burned him on the fire, and poured stinking fluids down into his nostrils.

²⁶He being at length burned down to the bones, and about to expire, raised his eyes Godward, and said, ²⁷“You know, O God, that when I might have been saved, I am slain for the sake of the law by tortures of fire. ²⁸Be merciful to your people, and be satisfied with the punishment of me on their account. ²⁹Let my blood be a purification for them, and take my life in exchange for theirs.” ³⁰Thus speaking, the holy man departed, noble in his torments, and even to the agonies of death resisted in his reasoning for the sake of the law. ³¹Confessedly, therefore, religious reasoning is master of the emotions. ³²For had the emotions been superior to reasoning, I would have given them the witness of this mastery. ³³But now, since reasoning conquered the emotions, we befittingly award it the authority of first place. ³⁴It is only fair that we should allow that the power belongs to reasoning, since it masters external miseries. ³⁵It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so. I prove that reasoning has not only mastered pains, but that it is also superior to the pleasures, and withstands them.