at
were slain and those Jews whom they had made captives, with their
baggage, and then returned home.

Now as for Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan, they passed over
the river Jordan, and when they had gone three days' journey they
lighted upon the Nabateans, who came to meet them peaceably and who told
them how the affairs of those in the land of Galilee stood and how many
of them were in distress and driven into garrisons and into the cities
of Galilee, and exhorted him to make haste to go against the foreigners,
and to endeavor to save his own countrymen out of their hands. To this
exhortation Judas hearkened and returned into the wilderness, and in the
first place fell upon the inhabitants of Bosor, and took the city, and
beat the inhabitants, and destroyed all the males, and all that were
able to fight, and burned the city. Nor did he stop even when night came
on, but he journeyed in it to the garrison where the Jews happened to be
then shut up, and where Timotheus lay round the place with his army; and
Judas came upon the city in the morning, and when he found that the
enemy were making an assault upon the walls, and that some of them
brought ladders on which they might get upon those walls, and that
others brought engines [to batter them], he bid the trumpeter to sound
his trumpet, and he encouraged his soldiers cheerfully to undergo
dangers for the sake of their brethren and kindred; he also parted his
army into three bodies and fell upon the backs of their enemies. But
when Timotheus' men perceived that it was Maccabaeus that was upon them,
of both whose courage and good success in war they had formerly had
sufficient experience, they were put to flight; but Judas followed them
with his army and slew about eight thousand of them. He then turned
aside to a city of the foreigners called Malle, and took it, and slew
all the males and burned the city itself. He then removed from thence,
and overthrew Casphom and Bosor, and many other cities of the land of
Gilead.

But not long after this Timotheus prepared a great army, and took many
others as auxiliaries, and induced some of the Arabians by the promise
of rewards to go with him in this expedition, and came with his army
beyond the brook over against the city Raphon; and he encouraged his
soldiers, if it came to a battle with the Jews, to fight courageously,
and to hinder their passing over the brook; for he said to them
beforehand that "if they come over