Key Verse Spotlight
2 Maccabees 4:14 - 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
" so that the priests had no more any zeal for the services of the altar; but despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to enjoy that which was unlawfully provided in the wrestling arena, after the summons to the discus-throwing. "
2 Maccabees 4:14
Verse in Context
Understanding the surrounding verses prevents misinterpretation:
12 For he eagerly established a gymnasium under the citadel itself, and caused the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat.
13 Thus there was an extreme of hellenization, and an advance of a foreign religion, by reason of the exceeding profaneness of Jason, who was an ungodly man and not a high priest;
14 so that the priests had no more any zeal for the services of the altar; but despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to enjoy that which was unlawfully provided in the wrestling arena, after the summons to the discus-throwing.
15 They despised the honors of their fathers, and valued the prestige of the Greeks best of all.
16 For this reason, severe calamity overtook them. The men whose ways of living they earnestly followed, and to whom they desired to be made like in all things, these became their enemies and punished them.
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2 Maccabees 4:1
"The previously mentioned Simon, who had given information about the money against his country, slandered Onias, saying that it was he who had incited Heliodorus and had been the real cause of these evils."
2 Maccabees 4:2
"He dared to call him a conspirator against the state who was actually the benefactor of the city, the guardian of his fellow countrymen, and a zealot for the laws."
2 Maccabees 4:3
"When his hatred grew so great that even murders were perpetrated through one of Simon’s approved agents,"
2 Maccabees 4:4
"Onias, seeing the danger of the contention, and that Apollonius the son of Menestheus, the governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, was increasing Simon’s malice,"
2 Maccabees 4:5
"appealed to the king, not to be an accuser of his fellow citizens, but looking to the good of all the people, both public and private;"
2 Maccabees 4:6
"for he saw that without the king’s involvement it was impossible for the state to obtain peace any more, and that Simon would not cease from his madness."
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