The Hammer: A Story of the Maccabean Times

by Alfred John Church; Richmond Seeley

So speaking he turned away, and without deigning to salute the terrified priests, quitted the precincts of the Temple.

When he was gone the priests stood weeping and praying before the altar. “O Lord,” they said, “for the blasphemies wherewith Thine enemies blaspheme Thee, reward Thou them sevenfold into their bosom. Thou didst choose this house to be called by Thy name, and to be a house of prayer for Thy people. Avenge Thyself, therefore, of this man and his host, and cause them to fall by the sword.”

Nicanor had sent to Antioch for reinforcements, for he would not fail again for lack of strength or due preparation, and marching out of Jerusalem, he awaited their arrival at the western end of the Pass of Beth-horon. Judas, who, after his victory near Samaria, had followed his beaten enemy, took up his position at Adasa, an elevated position about four miles to the north of Jerusalem. He thus put himself between Nicanor and the Holy City. But he had only three thousand men to match against a force three times as numerous.

The fate of the Sanctuary of Israel now seemed [pg 344]to be trembling in the balance. If Nicanor was victorious its doom was sealed. He had vowed, with all the emphasis of an awful curse upon himself, that if he came again in peace he would utterly destroy it. Day after day the women and the old men left behind were continually in the Temple, which, perhaps, they might in a few days see destroyed before their eyes. And when at night the Temple gates were shut they sought their homes to fast and to renew in private their prayers for the deliverance of the Holy Place, and the victory of the armies of the Lord.

By a notable coincidence the anniversary of a great danger and a great deliverance was approaching. Within a few days the Feast of Purim would be celebrated. Would the time bring with it a fresh cause for thanksgiving, or a disaster so terrible that all the deliverances of the past would seem to be of no avail?

“Tell us, mother,” said little Daniel, one evening when they had returned from their daily visit to the Temple—“tell us about Mordecai and the wicked Haman.” He knew the story well, but, after the manner of children, liked it better the oftener he heard it.

So Ruth told the familiar tale again—how the wicked Haman, wroth that the honest Mordecai would not pay him reverence, slandered the whole nation to the King till he obtained a decree for their [pg 345]slaughter, how Mordecai went to Esther the Queen, a Jewess herself, and bade her save her people, though she risked her own life to do it, how the wicked Haman was hanged on the gallows which he had made for his enemy, and the Jews had license given them by the King to slay their adversaries in every city of the kingdom of Persia.

“And this Nicanor,” she went on, when she had finished her story—“this Nicanor is a new Haman. May the God against whom he has uttered his blasphemies cast him down and destroy him.”

Meanwhile the hour of battle was drawing near. Judas and his little army were bivouacking on the hills of Adasa. It was the 12th day of the month Adar—about equivalent to the beginning of March—and on that high ground the night air was cold and piercing. Seraiah, Azariah, and Micah were sitting by a camp-fire, and talking over the chances of the coming struggle.

It was the eve of the great Purim feast—the memorial which had been kept now for three hundred years of the great deliverance which God had wrought for His people by the hands of Mordecai and Esther. The thoughts of the comrades naturally turned to this memorable day.