t and of the Lower Asia and reaching from the
river Euphrates, and committed to him a certain part of his forces and
of his elephants and charged him to bring up his son Antiochus with all
possible care until he came back; and that he should conquer Judea and
take its inhabitants for slaves and utterly destroy Jerusalem, and
abolish the whole nation; and when king Antiochus had given these things
in charge to Lysias, he went into Persia, and in the hundred and
forty-seventh year he passed over Euphrates and went to the superior
provinces.

Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and
Gorgias, very potent men among the King's friends, and delivered to them
forty thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them
against Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp
in the plain country. There came also to them auxiliaries out of Syria
and the country round about, as also many of the renegade Jews; and
besides these came some merchants to buy those that should be carried
captives--having bonds with them to bind those that should be made
prisoners--with that silver and gold which they were to pay for their
price; and when Judas saw their camp and how numerous their enemies
were, he persuaded his own soldiers to be of good courage, and exhorted
them to place their hopes of victory in God and to make supplication to
him, according to the custom of their country, clothed in sackcloth, and
to show what was their usual habit of supplication in the greatest
dangers, and thereby to prevail with God to grant them the victory over
their enemies. So he set them in their ancient order of battle used by
their forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other
officers, and dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those
that had newly gained possessions, that they might not fight in a
cowardly manner out of an inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy
those blessings.

When he had thus disposed his soldiers he encouraged them to fight by
the following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow-soldiers, no
other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and
contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully you may recover your
liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it
proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty
of worshipping God. Since, therefore, you are in such circumstances at
presen