Key Verse Spotlight
2 Maccabees 7:22 - 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
" “I don’t know how you came into my womb. It wasn’t I who gave you your spirit and your life. It wasn’t I who brought into order the first elements of each one of you. "
2 Maccabees 7:22
Verse in Context
Understanding the surrounding verses prevents misinterpretation:
20 But above all, the mother was marvelous and worthy of honorable memory; for when she watched seven sons perishing within the space of one day, she bore the sight with a good courage because of her hope in the Lord.
21 She exhorted each one of them in the language of their fathers, filled with a noble spirit and stirring up her woman’s thoughts with manly courage, saying to them,
22 “I don’t know how you came into my womb. It wasn’t I who gave you your spirit and your life. It wasn’t I who brought into order the first elements of each one of you.
23 Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the first origin of man and devised the first origin of all things, in mercy gives back to you again both your spirit and your life, as you now treat yourselves with contempt for his laws’ sake.”
24 But Antiochus, thinking himself to be despised, and suspecting the reproachful voice, while the youngest was yet alive didn’t only make his appeal to him by words, but also at the same time promised with oaths that he would enrich him and raise him to high honor if he would turn from the ways of his ancestors, and that he would take him for his friend and entrust him with public affairs.
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2 Maccabees 7:1
"It came to pass that seven brothers and their mother were at the king’s command taken and shamefully handled with scourges and cords, to compel them to taste of the abominable swine’s flesh."
2 Maccabees 7:2
"One of them made himself the spokesman and said, “What would you ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”"
2 Maccabees 7:3
"The king fell into a rage, and commanded that pans and caldrons be heated."
2 Maccabees 7:4
"When these were immediately heated, he gave orders to cut out the tongue of him who had been their spokesman, and to scalp him, and to cut off his extremities, with the rest of his brothers and his mother looking on."
2 Maccabees 7:5
"And when he was utterly maimed, the king gave orders to bring him to the fire, being yet alive, and to fry him in the pan. And as the smoke from the pan spread far, they and their mother also exhorted one another to die nobly, saying this:"
2 Maccabees 7:6
"“The Lord God sees, and in truth is entreated for us, as Moses declared in his song, which witnesses against the people to their faces, saying, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’”"
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