Key Verse Spotlight
2 Maccabees 7:28 - 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 beg you, my child, to lift your eyes to the sky and the earth, and to see all things that are in it, and thus to recognize that God made them not of things that were, and that the race of men in this way comes into being. "
2 Maccabees 7:28
Verse in Context
Understanding the surrounding verses prevents misinterpretation:
26 When he had urged her with many words, she undertook to persuade her son.
27 But bending toward him, laughing the cruel tyrant to scorn, she spoke this in the language of her fathers: “My son, have pity upon me who carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you three years, and nourished and brought you up to this age, and sustained you.
28 I beg you, my child, to lift your eyes to the sky and the earth, and to see all things that are in it, and thus to recognize that God made them not of things that were, and that the race of men in this way comes into being.
29 Don’t be afraid of this butcher, but, proving yourself worthy of your brothers, accept your death, that in God’s mercy I may receive you again with your brothers.”
30 But before she had finished speaking, the young man said, “What are you all waiting for? I don’t obey the commandment of the king, but I listen to the commandment of the law that was given to our fathers through Moses.
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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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