Key Verse Spotlight
2 Maccabees 13:8 - Meaning and Application
Understand how this verse speaks to what you're facing and how to apply it today
Translation: World English Bible — Catholic Edition
" for inasmuch as he had perpetrated many sins against the altar, whose fire and whose ashes were holy, he received his death in ashes. "
2 Maccabees 13:8
Verse in Context
Understanding the surrounding verses prevents misinterpretation:
6 Here one who is guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes is pushed down to destruction.
7 By such a fate it happened that the breaker of the law, Menelaus, died, without obtaining so much as a grave in the earth, and that justly;
8 for inasmuch as he had perpetrated many sins against the altar, whose fire and whose ashes were holy, he received his death in ashes.
9 Now the king, infuriated in spirit, was coming with intent to inflict on the Jews the very worst of the sufferings that had been done in his father’s time.
10 But when Judas heard of these things, he commanded the multitude to call upon the Lord day and night, if ever at any other time, so now to help those who were at the point of being deprived of the law, their country, and the holy temple,
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2 Maccabees 13:1
"In the one hundred forty-ninth year, news was brought to Judas and his company that Antiochus Eupator was coming with multitudes against Judea,"
2 Maccabees 13:2
"and with him Lysias his guardian and chancellor, each having a Greek force of one hundred ten thousand infantry, five thousand three hundred cavalry, twenty-two elephants, and three hundred chariots armed with scythes."
2 Maccabees 13:3
"And Menelaus also joined himself with them, and with great hypocrisy encouraged Antiochus, not for the saving of his country, but because he thought that he would be set over the government."
2 Maccabees 13:4
"But the King of kings stirred up the anger of Antiochus against the wicked wretch. When Lysias informed him that this man was the cause of all the evils, the king commanded to bring him to Beroea, and to put him to death in the way customary in that place."
2 Maccabees 13:5
"Now there is in that place a tower that is fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it had all around it a circular rim sloping steeply on every side into the ashes."
2 Maccabees 13:6
"Here one who is guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes is pushed down to destruction."
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