Key Verse Spotlight
2 Maccabees 6:18 - 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
" Eleazar, one of the principal scribes, a man already well advanced in years, and of a noble countenance, was compelled to open his mouth to eat swine’s flesh. "
2 Maccabees 6:18
Verse in Context
Understanding the surrounding verses prevents misinterpretation:
16 Therefore he never withdraws his mercy from us; but though he chastens with calamity, he doesn’t forsake his own people.
17 However let this that we have spoken suffice to remind you; but after a few words, we must come to the narrative.
18 Eleazar, one of the principal scribes, a man already well advanced in years, and of a noble countenance, was compelled to open his mouth to eat swine’s flesh.
19 But he, welcoming death with honor rather than life with defilement, advanced of his own accord to the instrument of torture, but first spat out the flesh,
20 as men ought to come who are resolute to repel such things as not even for the natural love of life is it lawful to taste.
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2 Maccabees 6:1
"Not long after this, the king sent out an old man of Athens to compel the Jews to depart from the laws of their fathers and not to live by the laws of God,"
2 Maccabees 6:2
"and also to pollute the sanctuary in Jerusalem and to call it by the name of Olympian Zeus, and to call the sanctuary in Gerizim by the name of Zeus the Protector of foreigners, even as the people who lived in that place did."
2 Maccabees 6:3
"The visitation of this evil was harsh and utterly grievous."
2 Maccabees 6:4
"For the temple was filled with debauchery and reveling by the heathen, who dallied with prostitutes, and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts, and moreover brought inside things that were not appropriate."
2 Maccabees 6:5
"The altar was filled with those abominable things which had been prohibited by the laws."
2 Maccabees 6:6
"A man could neither keep the Sabbath, nor observe the feasts of their ancestors, nor so much as confess himself to be a Jew."
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