How many sons did mattathias have

He gave vent to righteous anger; he ran and killed him on the altar. Come out and do what the king commands, and you will live. And all Israel mourned for him with great lamentation. Like a giant he put on his breastplate; he bound on his armour of war and waged battles, protecting the camp by his sword. Many were wounded and fell, and the rest fled. And we are faint, for we have eaten nothing today. The Policy of Antiochus 27 When King Antiochus heard these reports, he was greatly angered; and he sent and gathered all the forces of his kingdom, a very strong army.

And when a certain Jew was about to obey the command, Mattathias, who was filled with holy wrath, killed the offender and destroyed the altar, while his sons cut down the king's officer. Thereupon Mattathias called out: "Whoever is zealous for the Law, and maintaineth the covenant, let him follow me. Others, who had hidden themselves before, joined them.

When Mattathias learned that the pious oneswould rather be cut down by the king's soldiers than defend themselves on the Sabbath he commanded them to fight, when necessary, on that day. This practise, says Josephus, was continued in later days. It is evident from this that Mattathias had authority in religious matters also. From his hiding-place he scoured the neighboring districts of Judea, drove out small bands of the king's troops, punished the renegade Jews, destroyed the heathen temples and altars, and brought children, who through fear had not been circumcised, into the covenant of Abraham.

Josephus, whose account otherwise agrees with that of I Maccabees, differs from it in stating that Mattathias reigned one year and then became ill. Also in "B. According to both authorities, Mattathias before his death urged his sons and the people to continue steadfast in the defense of their ancestral religion. Of his sons he designated Simon as counselor and Judah as general. He died in of the Seleucid era B. According to his calculations, though the Seleucid army was indeed two or three time larger than the Jewish militia, at certain points Judah commanded as many as 22, trained men,—hardly the gritty band of brothers found in the picture books.

The story of Maccabean leadership begins with the revolt recounted in the Hanukkah story but continues well into Jewish history. However, his good fortune did not last all that long. Significantly, he was killed in battle when ambushed by Seleucid forces and then abandoned by the majority of his men. Judah was succeeded by Jonathan, and then subsequently Simon, as the leader of the Hasmoneans and their supporters.

It was Simon who managed to establish a royal Hasmonean dynasty beginning with his son John Hyrcanus in BCE, his descendants maintaining political and religious control over Judea until it fell under Roman jurisdiction. A civil war between two Hasmonean princes at that time resulted in the Roman authorities selecting Herod the Great to be their royal proxy in 37 BCE, bringing a century of Maccabean rule to a close.