3 Maccabees - Overview

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A king admires the Jerusalem temple and decides its holiness must give way to his rank. When he is stopped, his wounded pride falls upon the Jews of Egypt. 3 Maccabees follows that danger from sanctuary to prison, from repeated delays to a rescue the captives cannot see being prepared. Its question is how a people remains faithful when power demands its worship. Its answer begins in prayer and ends by blessing the Redeemer of Israel.

Historical and Scriptural Context

A companion, not a sequel

Judas Maccabeus and the Hasmonean revolt do not appear in this book. Its story is set earlier, in the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator, opening with the battle at Raphia and moving to Jerusalem and Egypt. The title joins it to 1 and 2 Maccabees through shared concerns: foreign rule, the holiness of worship, pressure to abandon God’s law, and fidelity under persecution. Its distinctive account gives the threatened community no army with which to achieve rescue.

The anonymous author writes in accomplished Greek and is commonly associated with the Alexandrian Jewish diaspora. The date and historical basis of the story remain debated. The Society for Old Testament Study places its composition between the late first century BC and AD 70 and describes substantial difficulties in confirming its events from other records. The narrative is deliberately shaped to form the memory of a worshiping community. Its literary art and theological purpose deserve close attention without pretending that every detail has independent historical confirmation.¹

Two prayers and two pillars

Simon prays at the Jerusalem sanctuary in chapter 2. He remembers the giants and the flood, Sodom, Pharaoh and the sea, then God’s choice of Jerusalem and His promise to hear prayer there. Eleazar prays in Egypt in chapter 6. He recalls Pharaoh, Sennacherib, the Three Holy Youths, Daniel, and Jonah. Their prayers share the same trust, but their examples must not be collapsed into one list. Simon defends the holy place through remembered judgment and promise; Eleazar pleads for a people whose present danger gathers together Egypt, beasts, exile, and threatened death.

The book also frames its account with two inscriptions. Ptolemy erects a pillar to publish stigma against the Jews (3 Maccabees 2:27). The delivered people later inscribe days of sacred joy upon a pillar and dedicate a place of prayer (3 Maccabees 7:20). The king’s attempt to define them by shame is answered by their own lasting witness to mercy. Holy memory becomes a refusal to let persecution have the final word about a people.

Canon and Orthodox reception

3 Maccabees is preserved in Codex Alexandrinus and received in the Greek Orthodox Old Testament tradition, while absent from Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. That pattern cautions against treating every ancient Greek biblical manuscript as if it had the same contents. Wider Orthodox reception and present Coptic canonical practice must also be distinguished.¹

The Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles lists 1 and 2 Maccabees among the deuterocanonical books, but does not list 3 Maccabees. A Southern Diocese answer likewise says that 3 and 4 Maccabees are not included in the Coptic canon. These are witnesses to Coptic reception; the book’s presence in a wider Orthodox Bible is not a reason to silently extend their lists.²

St Athanasius supplies a further Alexandrian witness. In Festal Letter 39, written in AD 367, neither his canonical Old Testament list in section 4 nor his list of other books appointed for instruction in section 7 names a book of Maccabees. His two lists must be reported as they stand. They do not coincide at every point with the present Coptic list, which includes 1 and 2 Maccabees. An ancient list, current ecclesial reception, and a book’s spiritual usefulness are related questions, not interchangeable claims.³

St Augustine, in City of God 18.36, says that the Church holds the books of the Maccabees canonical because of the sufferings of martyrs who contended for God’s law before Christ’s coming. His account concerns the Maccabean history and martyrs associated with 1 and 2 Maccabees; it does not establish the standing of 3 Maccabees. It does show why Christians treasured this memory: fidelity under persecution was received as instruction for the Church, not as distant chronicle.⁴

The seven chapter studies

1. 3 Maccabees 1 - Ptolemy, Jerusalem, and the Holy Place.
2. 3 Maccabees 2 - Simon’s Prayer and God’s Defense of the Temple.
3. 3 Maccabees 3 - Diaspora Faithfulness under Suspicion.
4. 3 Maccabees 4 - Gathering, Humiliation, and Hidden Providence.
5. 3 Maccabees 5 - Rage Delayed by Providence.
6. 3 Maccabees 6 - Eleazar’s Prayer and Angelic Deliverance.
7. 3 Maccabees 7 - Thanksgiving, Judgment, and Sacred Memory.

Geographical Significance

Raphia situates the opening in the borderlands contested by Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid kingdom. Jerusalem then becomes the first theological center. The sanctuary belongs to God, and royal victory cannot buy entry to it. The crisis begins when admiration becomes a demand to possess what is holy.

Alexandria and the wider Egyptian diaspora form the second center. These Jews are far from Jerusalem but remain within God’s hearing. The king’s attempt to violate the sanctuary becomes an attempt to erase a people’s holy identity. The God who guards the temple also hears families in a place of captivity.

Alexandria is also a city associated with the Septuagint and, later, the see of St Mark. For a Coptic reader, the book’s Egyptian setting is therefore close to home: the city of Greek-speaking Jewish Scripture later becomes a center of Christian witness. This is a connection of place, not evidence that the community in this narrative can be traced as an unbroken group into the Church.⁵

The hippodrome concentrates their vulnerability: crowds, armed guards, royal orders, and prepared elephants surround the bound community. After the rescue, that same place becomes a feast. The transformation does not make the earlier terror unreal. It lets the community remember that God’s mercy met them there.

Ptolemais, called Rose-bearing in Brenton, marks the return journey and another celebration. The story ends with people going to their own homes and receiving their own goods. Redemption is remembered in ordinary places, not only at the dramatic center of the miracle.

The Characters 👥

• Ptolemy IV Philopator: The king whose military victory encourages a claim to unlimited access. He is struck down, returns to rage, is restrained repeatedly, and finally issues a protective decree. His blame-shifting remains visible even when he acknowledges God’s power.
• Arsinoe: Ptolemy’s sister, who encourages the troops at the opening battle.
• Dositheus: Jewish by birth and later a renegade from the ancestral law, he saves Ptolemy from assassination. His brief appearance prevents a simplistic account in which every member of a people responds to power in the same way.
• Simon: The high priest who kneels and intercedes before the sanctuary in chapter 2.
• The people of Jerusalem: Priests, elders, women, children, and the gathered city answer the threatened violation with lament and prayer. The elders turn armed uproar back toward supplication.
• The Jews of Egypt: Loyal subjects whose worship sets limits on assimilation. Their families suffer public humiliation, confinement, and the prospect of death.
• The accusers and hostile crowds: They turn faithful distinction into a charge of disloyalty and learn to enjoy the victims’ fear. Some non-Jewish onlookers, however, grieve the injustice; the book does not authorize contempt for all Gentiles.
• Hermon: The officer charged with preparing the elephants. His precise obedience reveals the danger of making one’s office a substitute for moral judgment.
• Eleazar: The aged, virtuous priest who prays in Egypt in chapter 6. He is distinct from the Eleazar martyred under Antiochus in 2 and 4 Maccabees.
• The two angels: God’s messengers of rescue in chapter 6, seen by the persecutors but not by the Jewish captives.
• God, the Redeemer of Israel: The true center of the story. He hears prayer, limits arrogant rule, remembers His people, gives deliverance, and receives their blessing.

Light from the Word

The holy place cannot be seized (3 Maccabees 1)

¹¹ And when they told him that this was not permissible, none of the nation, no, nor even the priests in general, but only the supreme high priest of all, and he only once in a year, being allowed to go in, he would by no means give way. ¹² Then they read the law to him; but he persisted in obtruding himself, exclaiming, that he ought to be allowed: and saying, Be it that they were deprived of this honour, I ought not to be. ²³ Calling out to arms, and to die bravely in defence of the law of their fathers, they created a great uproar in the place, and were with difficulty brought back by the aged and the elders to the station of prayer which they had occupied before.

The king’s words reveal the problem: “I ought to be allowed.” He measures access by personal importance, while the priests explain an order of worship received from God. Their refusal is not a competition for status. The sanctuary cannot become a reward for military success or a royal experience to consume.

The city’s distress is bodily and public. Women leave their chambers, priests fall down, and the multitude cries. Some citizens want armed resistance; the elders restore them to prayer. Their action refuses both surrender of the holy and the assumption that violence is the only serious response. Prayer is the gathered people’s appeal beyond the king’s authority.

The Christian reader encounters a question still close at hand: do we receive holy gifts with obedience, or assume that position, familiarity, or service gives us ownership? Reverence begins where entitlement ends. Christ fulfills the temple in His Body, and the holiness of the people indwelt by His Spirit deepens rather than cancels that lesson.

Simon prays, and restraint does not produce repentance (3 Maccabees 2)

² O Lord, Lord, King of the heavens, and Ruler of the whole creation, Holy among the holy, sole Governor, Almighty, give ear to us who are oppressed by a wicked and profane one, who exulteth in his confidence and strength. ²⁰ Let thy mercies quickly go before us. Grant us peace, that the cast down and broken hearted may praise thee with their mouth. ²⁴ When in course of time he had come to himself, this severe check caused no repentance within him, but he departed with bitter threatenings.

Simon begins with God as King and Creator, placing Ptolemy’s confident strength beneath a higher rule. His remembered judgments are joined to a plea for mercy: let the brokenhearted praise God in peace. The prayer seeks protection for the sanctuary and restoration of worship, not the exaltation of an injured people over everyone else.

God stops Ptolemy, but the king refuses repentance. A severe check can interrupt an act without healing the will that intended it. The warning belongs close to the reader. Being exposed, prevented, or spared does not itself make us humble. We can leave a deserved rebuke carrying fresh resentment rather than a changed heart.

In Egypt, that resentment becomes pressure on Jewish identity. The king offers privilege through participation in Dionysian rites. Inclusion is made conditional upon religious surrender. The distinction is vital: civic friendship is good, but no ruler can purchase worship by calling apostasy a benefit. The chapter also records divided responses within the Jewish community, preparing the severe reckoning at the book’s end.

Loyal subjects and distinct worshipers (3 Maccabees 3)

³ Now, while the Jews always maintained a feeling of unswerving loyalty towards the kings, ⁴ yet, as they worshipped God, and observed his law, they made certain distinctions, and avoided certain things. Hence some persons held them in odium; ²¹ Accordingly, bearing no ill-will against their kinsmen [at Jerusalem], but rather remembering our connection with them, and the numerous matters with sincere heart from a remote period entrusted to them, we wished to venture a total alteration of their state, by bestowing upon them the rights of citizens of Alexandria, and to admit them to the everlasting rites of our solemnities.

The two brief statements in verses 3-4 belong together. The Jews are loyal to the kings, and they observe God’s law. Their distinction is not proof of hostility. The charge arises because some observers cannot tolerate loyalties that public power does not own.

Ptolemy’s letter turns citizenship and participation in civic solemnities into evidence of his own generosity. The refusal is then redescribed as malice. This is the terrible change from offer to accusation: the condition of acceptance is surrender, and conscience becomes a public offense when it will not comply.

The chapter calls for discernment without paranoia. Ordinary neighbors are not a hidden army of persecutors, and the text itself recognizes humane responses among outsiders. Yet love of a country does not require worship of its idols. A faithful community can serve, work, seek peace, and still say no when acceptance is offered at the price of disobedience to God.

Suffering has names, bodies, and households (3 Maccabees 4)

⁶ Girls who had entered the bridal chamber quite lately, to enjoy the partnership of marriage, exchanged pleasure for misery; and with dust scattered upon their myrrh-anointed heads, were hurried along unveiled, and, in the midst of outlandish insults, set up with one accord a lamentable cry in lieu of the marriage hymn. ⁸ The husbands of these, in the prime of their youthful vigour, instead of crowns wore halters round their necks; instead of feasting and youthful jollity, spent the rest of their nuptial days in wailings, and saw only the grave at hand. ²¹ Now this was the active interference of the unconquerable Providence which assisted the Jews from heaven.

The displaced brides and their husbands make the violence impossible to treat as a statistic. The marriage hymn becomes lament; crowns are replaced by halters. Aged people are hurried beyond their strength, and households are stripped of ordinary security. The narrator gives suffering human detail before reporting the rescue.

The spectacle also touches some enemies with compassion. Common humanity has not disappeared outside the covenant community. That detail blocks contempt for Gentiles and asks where the reader will stand when a hated group is mistreated.

Then pens and paper fail. The narrator names this administrative collapse as Providence assisting the Jews from heaven. Divine care begins before angels appear. The machinery of destruction cannot complete its own paperwork. This is no reason to laugh away the victims’ pain; it is a reason to see that even an apparently total system remains dependent on small things it cannot finally command.

The king sleeps, and the people keep praying (3 Maccabees 5)

¹¹ He, however, who has sent his good creature sleep from all time, by night or by day thus gratifying whom he wills, diffused a portion thereof [now] upon the king. ²⁸ But this was the working of that Almighty God who had made him forget all his purpose. ⁵⁰ Nevertheless, when they reflected upon the succour before granted them from heaven, they prostrated themselves with one accord; removed even the sucking children from the breast, and ⁵¹ sent up an exceeding great cry, entreating the Lord of all power to reveal himself, and have mercy upon those who now lay at the gates of Hades.

The repetition is the chapter’s lesson. Sleep delays one appointed execution; forgetfulness interrupts another. The king wakes to renewed rage, then speaks in defense of the very people he had ordered killed, then returns to violence. Divine restraint is real, but his contradictions are not yet repentance.

Sleep is called a good creature of God. The king weaponizes wine, incense, elephants, and public expectation; God uses a gentle gift to arrest his plan. In Esther 6:1 the Lord removes a king’s sleep and sets a rescue in motion. Here He gives sleep. The instrument changes, but the mercy belongs to the same Lord.

At the end the families still believe death has arrived. They kiss, cling to one another, and hold their infants. Their grief does not disprove faith. Remembering previous help, they turn their fear into one great cry. The chapter refuses the false demand that trust must look untroubled. Prayer can be faithful while the body trembles.

Memory becomes prayer, rescue becomes thanksgiving (3 Maccabees 6)

⁴ Thou destroyedst Pharaoh, with his host of chariots, when that lord of this same Egypt was uplifted with lawless hardihood and loud-sounding tongue. Shedding the beams of thy mercy upon the race of Israel, thou didst overwhelm him with his proud army. ⁶ When the three friends in the land of Babylon of their own will exposed their lives to the fire rather than serve vain things, thou didst send a dewy coolness through the fiery furnace, and bring the fire upon all their adversaries. ¹⁸ Then the all-glorious, all-powerful, and true God, displayed his holy countenance, and opened the gates of heaven, from which two angels, dreadful of form, came down, and were visible to all but the Jews. ³¹ Then they who were before despised and nigh unto Hades, yea, rather advanced into it, partook of the cup of salvation, instead of a grievous and lamentable death. Full of exultation, they parted out the place intended for their fall and burial into banqueting booths.

Eleazar gathers the present crisis into the saving acts of God. Pharaoh’s chariots answer royal arrogance in Egypt. Sennacherib recalls the defense of Jerusalem. The Three Holy Youths, Daniel, and Jonah show that fire, beasts, slander, and the deep are not beyond divine mercy. The prayer’s logic is specific: the Lord has already encountered the forms of danger that now seem to make hope impossible.

The angels are seen by the persecutors, not by the captives. God does not require His people to inspect the means of their rescue before receiving it. The elephants turn upon the armed force, and the king orders release. The community survives without becoming the author of its own military victory.

The feast is integral to the answer. The intended burial place becomes a place of booths, psalms, dance, and thanksgiving. Verse 36 guards its purpose: the days are kept because God saved them, not for indulgence. Gratitude is given a shared form so that the mercy will outlast its first emotion.

The dates in verse 38 preserve the Egyptian names Pachon and Epiphi, related to Coptic Pashons (Bashans) and Epep (Abib). The ancient civil calendar drifted through the solar year, however, so these dates cannot be equated with today’s Bashans 25 or Abib 4-7. Familiar month names establish a connection of place and calendar tradition, not a modern feast assignment.⁶

A delivered people must remember (3 Maccabees 7)

¹⁶ They themselves having held fast their God unto death, and having enjoyed a full deliverance, departed from the city garlanded with sweet-flowered wreaths of every kind. Uttering exclamations of joy, with songs of praise, and melodious hymns they thanked the God of their fathers, the eternal Saviour of Israel. ²⁰ These they registered as sacred upon a pillar, when they had dedicated the place of their festivity to be one of prayer. They departed unharmed, free, abundant in joy, preserved by the king’s command, by land, by sea, and by river, each to his own home. ²³ Blessed be the Redeemer of Israel unto everlasting. Amen.

Ptolemy’s second letter publicly answers the earlier slander. The Jews are acquitted, protected, and sent home. He acknowledges the God who shielded them, even while shifting blame onto advisers. Public vindication is real without making his self-defense admirable.

Verses 10-15 also record the killing of more than three hundred apostates and describe joy at their destruction. An overview must not hide that severity behind the feast. The narrative treats deliberate abandonment of God’s law as betrayal, but it is not a Christian command to punish religious failure with violence. Christ rebukes His disciples’ desire to consume opponents with fire (Luke 9:54-56), and St Paul directs forgiveness and renewed love toward the disciplined offender (2 Corinthians 2:6-8). A Christian reading holds the seriousness of apostasy together with the possibility of repentance and restoration.

The people then sing, set apart days of joy, dedicate a place of prayer, and return home with their property restored. Their pillar answers the earlier pillar of stigma. They have been publicly described by the king’s hostility; now they leave a public remembrance of God’s mercy. Deliverance is complete only when it becomes thanksgiving, prayer, and holy memory.

The closing blessing leads the Christian reader toward Luke 1:68, where Zechariah blesses the Lord God of Israel because He has visited and redeemed His people. The book leaves us before the Redeemer, not before Ptolemy’s power. Its last word prepares a life of worship.

Christological Reading

The temple crisis finds its Christian center in Christ’s own Body (John 2:19-22). Hebrews 9:7 remembers the high priest entering alone once a year, the restriction invoked before Ptolemy. Hebrews 9:11-14 announces Christ’s entrance by His own Blood, and Hebrews 10:19-22 opens the way for His people to draw near. Ptolemy demands access by rank; Christ gives access through His self-offering. Holiness is neither a royal possession nor a barrier overcome by force. Communion is God’s gift, received through the Son.

The cry at the gates of Hades also reaches beyond temporary escape. Christ enters death and rises; the gates of Hades cannot prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18). 3 Maccabees narrates a community saved from execution. Christian hope includes those who are faithful and nevertheless die. The risen Lord’s promise is greater than a repetition of this particular rescue.

The final blessing is fulfilled without erasing Israel’s hope. Luke 1:68-79 joins redemption, remembered covenant, forgiveness, holiness, and peace. A delivered people is freed to serve God. That is why thanksgiving cannot be separated from repentance, mercy toward the fallen, or repair of the material injuries done to neighbors.

Simon and Eleazar need not become one-to-one symbols of Christ, and each elephant, gate, or cup need not conceal a separate prediction. Their prayers, the protected sanctuary, the threatened people, and the feast of deliverance lead toward the Lord who gathers the faithful into His Cross and Resurrection while preserving the story’s own voices.

The Church’s Voice in Worship

This passage has no established place in the Coptic Orthodox lectionary.

The book’s prayers and feasts still speak to the Church’s worship. The people remember mercy before rescue and establish remembrance after it. Supplication, lament, psalmody, thanksgiving, and days set apart keep life directed toward God rather than toward either panic or self-congratulation.

Bright Saturday’s Midnight Praises give Eleazar’s remembered mercies a living voice. The First Canticle is the Song of Moses in Exodus 15, beginning: “Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke saying, “Let us sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously.”” The Third Canticle is the hymn of the Three Holy Youths and opens: “Blessed are You, O Lord, God of our fathers: and exceedingly to be blessed, and exalted above all forever.”⁷ The acts recalled by the endangered community become words sung to God. Remembering His mercy teaches the heart both to ask and to praise.

The final blessing is especially close to Zechariah’s canticle in Luke 1:68-79. Both bless Israel’s Redeemer, and Luke carries deliverance toward forgiveness and service in holiness. The connection is a Christian reading of these texts, not a claim that 3 Maccabees itself has an appointed Coptic service.

The fourth Sunday of Kiahk and Paona 30 include Luke 1:57-80 at the Liturgy, and Luke 1:68-79, the canticle of Zechariah, is included in Bright Saturday’s Midnight Praises. Its blessing of Israel’s Redeemer carries the book’s last words toward forgiveness and service in holiness. These are appointed uses of Luke; their relationship to 3 Maccabees is a Christian comparison, not an appointment of this book.⁸

The Coptic Church counts its years by the Era of the Martyrs, beginning with Diocletian’s accession in AD 284. Its calendar remembers the cost of fidelity, giving Coptic readers a familiar setting in which to hear this threatened community’s prayer and thanksgiving.⁹

Spiritual Fruit

Receive holy things rather than possessing them

Ptolemy’s “I ought to be allowed” can survive inside religious service. Familiarity with a sanctuary, a responsibility, or years of work can become a claim that no one may correct us. Let reverence begin with a small act of obedience: receive a correction without defending your importance, prepare for Communion attentively, or ask forgiveness where service has become control.

Keep distinction without contempt

The Jews’ loyalty and their worship coexist. Resist the bargain that makes acceptance conditional on disobedience, but refuse the pleasure of despising people who do not share your faith. A concrete act of neighborly care can prevent fidelity from curdling into suspicion.

Let remembered mercy give fear a direction

The families in chapter 5 are not rebuked for tears. Their memory gives them somewhere to take those tears. When anxiety narrows prayer to the latest threat, recall one actual mercy and thank God for it before continuing your petition. Seek protection and help where harm is present; trust in Providence is not an instruction to remain exposed to abuse.

Make gratitude durable

The delivered community sets apart time and dedicates a place of prayer. Choose a modest equivalent: keep a written thanksgiving, remember a mercy in family prayer, or let rescue become a recurring work of service. The aim is not to keep reliving terror but to keep honoring the One who met you there.

Seek restoration, not superiority

The harsh treatment of apostates cannot be made a Christian program. Examine your own compromises before judging another’s failure. Where repentance begins, cooperate with the Church’s work of healing, confession, and reconciliation. The God who remembers His covenant teaches us to desire the sinner’s return.

The people leave the place of danger and return to ordinary homes. A pillar remains, telling future generations that fear did not have the final word. Let the memory of God’s mercy enter the rooms where we now live. Blessed be the Redeemer of Israel, who teaches His people to pray, to receive, and to remember.

Teaching Notes

• Begin with the book’s distinct story: Ptolemaic Egypt, not Judas Maccabeus or the Hasmonean revolt. Keep military background proportionate to what the narrative needs.
• Explain wider Greek Orthodox reception and Coptic canonical practice without treating either as an embarrassment. Athanasius’ historical list should be reported accurately, not made to settle every later ecclesial question.
• Distinguish Simon’s prayer in chapter 2 from Eleazar’s in chapter 6. Let participants identify how each remembered act answers the immediate crisis.
• Follow the human cost through chapters 4-5. Never turn the elephants into entertainment or shame families for trembling, lament, or grief.
• Keep the protective prayer and rescue in view without promising that every faithful person will be spared death. The companion Maccabean books include martyrdom.
• Give 3 Maccabees 7:10-15 enough attention to prevent misuse. Preserve its severity while making Christ’s refusal of retaliatory religious violence plain.
• Compare the two pillars, 3 Maccabees 2:27 and 3 Maccabees 7:20. Ask what a family or parish should deliberately remember.
• Use maps for orientation, not proof of every narrated detail. Images of Daniel and the Three Holy Youths depict the acts invoked by Eleazar, not this elephant rescue.
• Do not force every object into an allegory. Christological fulfillment should grow from the temple, prayer, death, redemption, and thanksgiving already explained.
• The lesson’s final emphasis should be the blessing of the Redeemer and the life of worship that follows it.

Discussion Questions

1. What does Ptolemy’s claim to enter the sanctuary reveal about the spiritual danger of entitlement?
2. How do Simon’s and Eleazar’s prayers use different memories to address their present dangers?
3. How can a community be loyal to its country while refusing religious surrender?
4. Why does the narrator linger over brides, elders, parents, and infants before describing rescue?
5. What do sleep and forgetfulness reveal about the limits of the king’s power?
6. How can remembered mercy strengthen prayer without requiring us to pretend we are unafraid?
7. Why must the executions of chapter 7 be read beside Christ’s rebuke in Luke 9 and the apostolic call to restoration?
8. What changes between the pillar of stigma and the pillar of sacred joy?
9. How does Christ open a way into holiness that Ptolemy could never seize?
10. What would make a remembered mercy durable in your household or parish?

Glossary

• Diaspora: Jewish communities living outside the land of Israel, especially the communities of Egypt in this book.
• Ptolemaic kingdom: The Hellenistic kingdom centered in Egypt after Alexander the Great.
• Seleucid kingdom: The Hellenistic kingdom whose rulers contested the region with the Ptolemies; Antiochus IV belongs to the later crisis narrated in 1 and 2 Maccabees.
• Holy of Holies: The innermost sanctuary, entered by the high priest according to the Law.
• Dionysus: A Greek god associated with wine and ecstatic rites. The royal policy ties participation in his rites to civic privilege.
• Hippodrome: A venue for racing, used in the story as a place of threatened mass execution.
• Providence: God’s wise care and governance of creation and history, often working before its effects are understood.
• Confessor: Someone who remains faithful under threat and suffering, whether or not that person is killed.
• Apostasy: Abandonment of faith and allegiance to God. The book’s condemnation of it does not authorize Christian coercion or violence.
• Septuagint: The Greek scriptural tradition of Israel, transmitted in manuscripts with differing contents and received in the Church.
• Deuterocanonical: A designation used for books beyond the Hebrew canon that are received in traditional Christian Old Testaments. Its scope is not identical in every ecclesial tradition.
• Doxology: Praise directed to God; the book closes in a blessing of Israel’s Redeemer.
• Inclusio: A framing correspondence at the beginning and end of a work, here the pillar of stigma answered by the pillar of sacred remembrance.

Translation Notes

Embedded Scripture is from Brenton’s English Septuagint (LXX). The overview quotes selected complete verses from each chapter; the chapter studies contain the full chapters. Brenton’s wording and punctuation are retained. Brief New Testament cross-reference language uses NKJV.

Brenton’s “Philopater” and “Philopator” name the same king; “Sennacherim” is Sennacherib. “Presbyters” means elders. “Held fast their God unto death” describes fidelity maintained under the threat of death, not a claim that these delivered people had already died.

The two prayers use different scriptural examples. Simon’s prayer must not be credited with Sennacherib, the Three Holy Youths, Daniel, or Jonah; those belong to Eleazar’s prayer. Egyptian month names are retained as ancient dates, not converted into contemporary Coptic feast dates.

Sources

• Lancelot C. L. Brenton, The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament (1851), 3 Maccabees 1-7; Esther 6:1-3.
• John 2:19-22; Hebrews 9:7-14; Hebrews 10:19-22; Matthew 16:18; Luke 9:51-56; Luke 1:68-79; 2 Corinthians 2:6-8; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NKJV.
• St Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letter 39.4, 7 (AD 367), NPNF English edition, cited below.
• St Augustine, City of God 18.36, Marcus Dods’ NPNF English translation, cited below.

This passage has no established place in the Coptic Orthodox lectionary.

Footnotes

1. Society for Old Testament Study, 3 Maccabees, sections on authorship, interpretation, and reception history. Its historical assessment is a scholarly orientation, not an ecclesial ruling. ↩ ↩²

2. Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, The Deuterocanonical Books; Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States, Q&A 2012. The Los Angeles list includes 1 and 2 Maccabees; the Southern Diocese answer says 3 and 4 are not included in the canon. ↩

3. St Athanasius, Festal Letter 39.4, 7, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 4 (1892), English edition edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, text. ↩

4. St Augustine, City of God 18.36, translated by Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 2 (1887), English text. ↩

5. Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, Establishment of the Church of Alexandria, for St Mark’s see; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Septuagint, for the Egyptian Jewish setting and Alexandrian translation tradition. ↩

6. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Egyptian calendar, on the 365-day civil year and its drift through the seasons. ↩

7. Coptic Reader, Bright Saturday Midnight Praises, The First Canticle (Exodus 15) and The Third Canticle (The Hymn of the Three Saintly Children), English service text, 11 April 2026. The Third Canticle follows the Prayer of Azariah as a distinct hymn. ↩

8. Coptic Katameros, fourth Sunday of Kiahk and Paona 30, Liturgy Gospel, Luke 1:57-80, attested in CopticChurch.net, fourth Sunday of Kiahk and Paona 30. Bright Saturday service order, Midnight Praises, Prayer of Zechariah the Priest, Luke 1:68-79. Fixed-day readings may be displaced by the seasonal cycle. ↩

9. Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, The Martyr Portrays the Icon of the Resurrection, opening calendar explanation, posted September 14, 2010. ↩