ions of enemies, and set
guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura that it might serve
as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies.

When these things were over, the nations round about the Jews were very
uneasy at the revival of their power and rose up together and destroyed
many of them, as gaining advantage over them by laying snares for them
and making secret conspiracies against them. Judas made perpetual
expeditions against these men, and endeavored to restrain them from
those incursions and to prevent the mischiefs they did to the Jews. So
he fell upon the Idumeans, the posterity of Esau, at Acra-battene, and
slew a great many of them and took their spoils. He also shut up the
sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews; and he sat down about them,
and besieged them, and burned their towers and destroyed the men [that
were in them]. After this he went thence in haste against the Ammonites
who had a great and a numerous army, of which Timotheus was the
commander. And when he had subdued them he seized on the city of Jazer,
and took their wives and their children captives and burned the city and
then returned into Judea. But when the neighboring nations understood
that he was returned they got together in great numbers in the land of
Gilead and came against those Jews that were at their borders, who then
fled to the garrison of Dathema, and sent to Judas to inform him that
Timotheus was endeavoring to take the place whither they were fled. And
as these epistles were reading, there came other messengers out of
Galilee who informed him that the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre
and Sidon, and strangers of Galilee, were gotten together.

Accordingly Judas, upon considering what was fit to be done with
relation to the necessity both these cases required, gave order that
Simon his brother should take three thousand chosen men and go to the
assistance of the Jews in Galilee, while he and another of his brothers,
Jonathan, made haste into the land of Gilead with eight thousand
soldiers. And he left Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, to be
over the rest of the forces, and charged them to keep Judea very
carefully and to fight no battles with any persons whomsoever until his
return. Accordingly Simon went into Galilee and fought the enemy and put
them to flight, and pursued them to the very gates of Ptolemais, and
slew about three thousand of them, and took the spoils of those th