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The book at a glance
1 Maccabees tells the history of some forty years, from the accession of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 175 BC to the death of Simon in 134 BC. Antiochus outlaws the Law of Moses and profanes the temple; the priest Mattathias and his sons, Judas called Maccabeus, Jonathan and Simon, lead the resistance, retake Jerusalem, purify the temple and win Judea's independence. The author is unknown, a devout Jew who wrote in Hebrew around 100 BC; the book survives in Greek. It is sober history, careful with dates, and it is one of the deuterocanonical books, received in the Church's canon and confirmed by the Council of Trent.
1 Maccabees is history, not prediction. Its prophetic weight is that it records the fulfillment of Daniel's visions in the time of Antiochus, and that Jesus and the Church read those events as a type of things still to come: the profanation of the holy place, the faithful who refuse, and the cleansing of the temple. It also keeps alive a promise: a prophet who has not yet come. Each card below names which.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1:10, 54 | Antiochus and the desolating abomination | Fulfilled Mystery |
| 1:62–63; 2:15–28 | The faithful who refuse | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 4:36–59 | The rededication of the temple | Fulfilled |
| 4:46; 14:41 | Until a prophet comes | Fulfilled |
The passages
“On the fifteenth day of the month Kislev, in the year one hundred and forty-five, the king erected the desolating abomination upon the altar of burnt offerings” (1:54)
- Reading
- “There sprang from these a sinful offshoot, Antiochus Epiphanes, son of King Antiochus, once a hostage at Rome” (1:10). He plunders the temple, then writes “to his whole kingdom that all should be one people” (1:41), forbids sacrifice, the sabbath and circumcision, and in December 167 BC sets a pagan altar on the altar of the LORD; “in the surrounding cities of Judah they built pagan altars” (1:54). The year 145 is counted in the Seleucid era.
- Fulfilled
- Here is the event Daniel had seen: “Armed forces shall rise at his command and defile the sanctuary stronghold, abolishing the daily sacrifice and setting up the desolating abomination” (Daniel 11:31). 1 Maccabees uses Daniel's own phrase. See Prophecy in Daniel.
- Why mystery
- Jesus speaks of the same abomination as still to come: “When you see the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place (let the reader understand)” (Matthew 24:15). Antiochus's act did not exhaust Daniel's words; Jesus applied them to the profanation and destruction of the temple fulfilled in AD 70. Many Fathers, among them St. Jerome in his Commentary on Daniel, saw in Antiochus a type of the final Antichrist, and Paul's man of lawlessness who seats himself “in the temple of God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4) has his features. How that last profanation will look, the Church has not settled. See Matthew 24:15–28 and Newman on the Antichrist.
“We will not obey the words of the king by departing from our religion in the slightest degree.” (2:22)
- Reading
- “But many in Israel were determined and resolved in their hearts not to eat anything unclean; they preferred to die rather than to be defiled with food or to profane the holy covenant” (1:62–63). At Modein the king's officers urge the priest Mattathias to sacrifice first. He answers that although all the Gentiles in the king's realm obey him, “yet I and my sons and my kindred will keep to the covenant of our ancestors” (2:20), and he calls out: “Let everyone who is zealous for the law and who stands by the covenant follow me!” (2:27). Some who fled to the desert are attacked on the sabbath and will not fight: “Let us all die in innocence” (2:37). Dying, Mattathias tells his sons to remember the faithful of every age, so that “none who hope in Heaven shall fail in strength” (2:61).
- Fulfilled
- Daniel had foretold it: in those days “those who remain loyal to their God shall take strong action” (Daniel 11:32). The Letter to the Hebrews counts the faithful of these years among the cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 11:35–38).
- Unfolding
- The scene repeats wherever believers are told to burn the incense. Revelation shows the same choice under the beast, which forces all to receive its mark (Revelation 13:16–17), and the same victory, for the dragon makes war on “the rest of her offspring” (12:17), who conquer him by the blood of the Lamb. The Maccabees resisted with the sword; the martyrs of the Church resist with witness, and Christ's victory is won by the Cross. See Revelation 12.
“Now that our enemies have been crushed, let us go up to purify the sanctuary and rededicate it.” (4:36)
- Reading
- Judas's men find the sanctuary desolate and the altar profaned. They choose blameless priests, tear down the defiled altar, build a new one of uncut stones, and three years after the profanation, on the twenty-fifth of Kislev in 164 BC, they offer sacrifice again. “For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar and joyfully offered burnt offerings” (4:56). “There was great joy among the people now that the disgrace brought by the Gentiles was removed” (4:58). Then Judas and all Israel “decreed that every year for eight days” the days of the dedication should be celebrated with joy (4:59). This is the feast Jews call Hanukkah. The story of the oil that burned for eight days comes from the later Jewish tradition of the Talmud, not from Scripture.
- Fulfilled
- Jesus went up for this feast: “The feast of the Dedication was then taking place in Jerusalem. It was winter. And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon” (John 10:22–23). There, at the feast of the consecrated altar, he calls himself “the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world” (10:36). The temple purified by Judas was a figure of the true temple, “the temple of his body” (John 2:21). See The Temple of His Body.
“until the coming of a prophet who could determine what to do with them.” (4:46)
- Reading
- The priests do not know what to do with the stones of the profaned altar, so they store them on the temple mountain and wait. Years later the people make Simon leader and high priest “until a trustworthy prophet arises” (14:41). The book knows that prophecy has fallen silent (9:27), and it does not presume to speak for God. It waits.
- Fulfilled
- Moses had promised: “A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kindred; that is the one to whom you shall listen” (Deuteronomy 18:15). The question of 1 Maccabees is still being asked when John the Baptist appears: “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No” (John 1:21). After the feeding of the five thousand the people say, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world” (John 6:14). The waiting of the Maccabees ends in Christ. See Prophecy in Deuteronomy.
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: Alexander the Great and the division of his kingdom (1:1–9; compare
Daniel 8:5–8, 21–22), Mattathias's roll call of the faithful from Abraham to Daniel (2:51–60), the death of Antiochus (6:1–16; compare
Daniel 11:45), the silence of prophecy (9:27), and Simon's reign of peace, when “Every one sat under his vine and fig tree” (14:12; compare
Micah 4:4).
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