4 Maccabees - Overview | Coptic Orthodox Bible Study

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This narration is from a previous version of the study and may include a combined recording of multiple chapters.

4 Maccabees asks whether a person can remain faithful when fear, appetite, pain, and love for family pull toward escape. It answers through Eleazar, seven brothers, and their mother, whose witness is also told in 2 Maccabees 6-7. The book’s argument is that devout reasoning, formed by God’s Law, can withstand the passions. Its martyrs are not unfeeling. They refuse to make bodily survival the highest good.

A Christian reading receives their courage through the Crucified and Risen Lord. The purpose is neither admiration of willpower nor fascination with violence. It is a heart trained to love God, speak truthfully, receive grace, and help another person remain faithful.

Historical and Scriptural Context

A companion to 2 Maccabees

The four Maccabean books are not four successive installments of one story. 1 Maccabees recounts the revolt and the rise of Hasmonean leadership. 2 Maccabees gives a concentrated account of the temple crisis, persecution, martyrdom, and resurrection hope. 3 Maccabees concerns an earlier Egyptian setting under Ptolemaic rule. 4 Maccabees develops the martyr tradition of 2 Maccabees 6-7 into an extended argument about the education of the soul.

The author is anonymous. The older attribution to Josephus should not be treated as established authorship. Stephen Westerholm’s introduction to the NETS translation identifies the work as an original Greek composition and draws attention to its elaborate rhetoric, speeches, repeated images, and appeal to the hearer’s pity. That literary character matters. The story is meant to form the reader, not merely supply a chronology.¹

In the opening chapters, reason, wisdom, virtue, and passion receive definitions. Joseph, the Law’s commands, and David’s refusal of water illustrate the argument. David’s episode belongs to 3:6-18. Only at 3:19 does the account turn toward the temple crisis, which continues through chapter 4. Eleazar’s trial follows in chapters 5-7. The brothers’ witness occupies chapters 8-14, their mother’s suffering and exhortation chapters 15-16, and the book closes with victory, remembrance, and glory to God.

Canon and reception

The Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles lists 1 and 2 Maccabees among the deuterocanonical books, but does not include 3 or 4 Maccabees in that list. This study therefore reads 4 Maccabees as an ancient Jewish martyr text received in parts of the Greek biblical tradition and valuable beside 2 Maccabees, without assigning it the same canonical standing as 1 and 2 Maccabees.²

The Alexandrian evidence itself requires care. In his Festal Letter 39, written in AD 367, St Athanasius names no Maccabean book either in his canonical list or among the other books appointed for introductory reading. That is what this particular fourth-century list says; it should neither be concealed nor treated as a complete description of present Coptic reception.³ Honoring martyrs remembered in a book, reading a hagiographic account, and assigning a biblical text in the lectionary are distinct acts.

Devout reasoning and Christian ascetic life

The Greek expression in 1:1 is eusebēs logismos, devout reasoning. It does not identify human reasoning with the divine Logos, the Word confessed in John 1. The Christian connection is theological: the Word heals the human mind and calls the whole person into obedience. The book’s distinction between resisting a passion and destroying human feeling helps a reader understand fasting and watchfulness without making emotional numbness the goal.

St Athanasius gives this struggle a distinctly Christian center in Life of Antony 5. Antony’s thoughts are troubled by possessions, bodily pleasure, and the apparent difficulty of perseverance. He answers through prayer, faith, and fasting, but Athanasius identifies the source of victory: “For the Lord was working with Antony”.⁴ The Incarnation grounds the body’s victory. Discipline is a response to grace, not a substitute for it.

The chapter sequence

The following chapter studies carry the complete Brenton text. This overview selects three verses from each chapter so that the book’s argument can be heard without repeating the entire series.

Geographical Significance

Jerusalem is the place of the temple crisis and the object of competing loyalties. The Seleucid kingdom supplies the political power behind Antiochus’ coercion. The book’s public trial does not justify treating Greeks as an evil people or Judeans as naturally immune to betrayal: its own account names corruption within the community, while fidelity is measured by obedience to God.

The later Byzantine remembrance locates the brothers’ trial at Antioch. That is a hagiographic witness, not a reason to invent a precise location for every scene in 4 Maccabees. Geography should clarify the pressure upon worship without becoming an imagined itinerary.

The Characters 👥

Eleazar: The aged teacher, described with priestly dignity, whose refusal protects the young from a false example. His prayer at death asks mercy for his people.

The seven brothers: A family whose shared instruction becomes mutual encouragement. Their agreement is compared with a choir and the body’s coordinated members.

The mother: Unnamed in 2 and 4 Maccabees. The Coptic Synaxarium calls her Salome, with the spelling Salomi in the St-Takla English account; the Byzantine remembrance calls her Solomonia. Her suffering belongs to her love, not to a failure of it.

Antiochus: A ruler who offers reward and threatens death in order to demand religious surrender. His power over the body cannot make a faithful confession false.

Onias and Simon: A high priest who intercedes and a rival whose accusation helps bring danger upon the temple. Their episode begins the historical argument after David’s offering.

The remembered father: In chapter 18, the mother recalls the instruction their father gave the children in the Law and the Prophets. Household teaching precedes public witness.

Light from the Word

Devout Reason and the Passions (4 Maccabees 1)

4 Maccabees 1, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

For reasoning does not rule over its own affections, but over such as are contrary to justice, and manliness, and temperance, and prudence; and yet over these, so as to withstand, without destroying them.

but I shall prove it with the greatest force from the fortitude of Eleazar, and seven brethren, and their mother, who suffered death in defence of virtue.

And this is contained in the education of the law; by means of which we learn divine things reverently, and human things profitably.

The thesis contains its own safeguard: reasoning withstands the passions without destroying them. Hunger, affection, grief, and the wish to live belong to human experience. The question is whether they become masters when fidelity becomes costly. The adjective devout matters as much as reason. Wisdom here grows within the education of the Law, not from a mind congratulating itself on independence from God. Christian asceticism can receive the distinction between feeling an impulse and consenting to its rule without treating this ancient argument as the Gospel itself.

The Law Trains Desire and Mercy (4 Maccabees 2)

4 Maccabees 2, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

It alloweth not to cut down the cultivated herbage of an enemy, but preserveth it from the destroyers, and collecteth their fallen ruins.

For at the time when God created man, He implanted within him his passions and moral nature.

And He gave a law to this mind, by living according to which it will maintain a temperate, and just, and good, and manly reign.

The Law trains more than appetite. Its concern extends to the enemy’s property and the conduct of a person who has power over another. Mercy tests self-mastery as surely as fasting does. The image of the mind ruling by God’s instruction makes discipline accountable to justice. A calm person can still be cruel; a disciplined person can still serve vanity. In this chapter the good reign of the mind is measured by reverence, temperance, justice, and courage. Compare the care for an enemy’s animal in Exodus 23:4-5 and the restraint of siege warfare in Deuteronomy 20:19-20.

David’s Offering and the Betrayal of the Temple (4 Maccabees 3)

4 Maccabees 3, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

Wherefore, setting up reasoning in opposition to his desire, he poured out the draught to God.

But the occasion now invites us to give an illustration of temperate reasoning from history.

then certain persons, bringing in new things contrary to the general unanimity, in various ways fell into calamities.

David pours out the water for which other men risked their lives. Desire ceases to be an absolute claim upon another person’s body. The offering becomes a school of gratitude and restraint. Only after this example does the book turn toward the temple crisis, introducing Onias and Simon. The change of subject is important: the David story belongs to 3:6-18, while 3:19-21 opens the account of betrayal. The chapter joins private discipline and public faithfulness without pretending they are the same event.

Onias’ Intercession and Antiochus’ Decree (4 Maccabees 4)

4 Maccabees 4, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

And Apollonius fell down half dead upon the court which is open to all nations, and extended his hands to heaven, and implored the Hebrews, with tears, to pray for him, and propitiate the heavenly host.

Onias the high priest, induced by these words, although for other reasons anxious that king Seleucus should not suppose that Apollonius was slain by human device and not by Divine punishment, prayed for him;

When, therefore, his decrees were disregarded by the people, he himself compelled by means of tortures every one of this race, by tasting forbidden meats, to abjure the Jewish religion.

Onias intercedes for the man whose intrusion threatens the temple. The priest’s action answers violence with prayer, and the endangered visitor promises to bear witness to what happened. Then the account turns toward Jason and Antiochus, showing religious leadership corrupted and fidelity criminalized. The chapter’s historical details differ from 2 Maccabees: the intruder is Apollonius rather than Heliodorus, and Antiochus is called Seleucus’ son rather than his brother. These differences remain visible. The passage is an exhortation shaped around the trial of worship, not a replacement for the fuller historical account in 2 Maccabees 3-4.

Eleazar’s Trial and Holy Refusal (4 Maccabees 5)

4 Maccabees 5, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

We, O Antiochus, who are persuaded that we live under a divine law, consider no compulsion to be so forcible as obedience to that law;

And it instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we render what is due; and it teaches us piety, so that we worship the one only God becomingly.

I will not put thee to shame, O philosopher Reason; or deny thee, O honoured priesthood, and science of the law.

Eleazar answers the king by naming the education his life has received. The Law has taught him justice toward others and worship toward God. His refusal is not a taste preference. In his own covenantal setting, the prohibition matters because it is God’s instruction; in the trial, unlawful food also becomes a staged act of surrender. Christians who do not observe the same food distinctions still recognize the duty to refuse idolatry and avoid leading a weaker neighbor into sin (Acts 15:29; 1 Corinthians 8:9-13; 10:28).

Eleazar’s Witness and Prayer (4 Maccabees 6)

4 Maccabees 6, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

Wherefore do you, O children of Abraham, die nobly for your religion.

Be merciful to thy people, and be satisfied with the punishment of me on their account.

Let my blood be a purification for them, and take my life in recompense for theirs.

The elder refuses not only a public violation but also the offer to pretend. A private explanation cannot make a public falsehood harmless when the young will take their teacher’s conduct as permission to abandon God. At death his prayer turns outward: he asks mercy for his people and offers his life on their behalf. This is genuine sacrificial and representative language. Its Christian fulfillment must be sought in the unique offering of Christ, not in a second source of redemption alongside Him.

The Elder’s Courage and Priestly Example (4 Maccabees 7)

4 Maccabees 7, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

in no way shifted the rudder of piety till it sailed into the harbour of victory over death.

For as father Aaron, armed with a censer, hastening through the consuming fire, vanquished the flame-bearing angel,

they who believe that to God they die not; for, as our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they live to God.

A pilot reaches harbor, a promontory breaks the waves, and an elder becomes a living instruction to the young. These images interpret Eleazar’s endurance without making physical strength its explanation. The reference to Aaron’s censer recalls Numbers 16:46-48 and Wisdom 18:21-25, where intercession stands amid the people’s danger. The hope of life with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob gives Christian readers a natural point of comparison with Christ’s teaching that God is the God of the living (Luke 20:37-38).

The Seven Brothers before the Tyrant (4 Maccabees 8)

4 Maccabees 8, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

but I do beg you to yield, and to enjoy my friendship; for I possess the power, not only of punishing those who disobey my commands, but of doing good to those who obey them.

Fear, young men, and the Righteousness which ye worship will be merciful to you if you err from compulsion.

But nothing of this kind did the young men say or think when about to be tortured.

The tyrant offers friendship and authority before displaying instruments of torture. Reward and terror serve the same demand. He even offers a religious excuse for surrender, suggesting that compulsion will make disobedience acceptable. The brothers recognize that he is bargaining for their confession, not merely their obedience to an administrative order. Their refusal also exposes the smaller bargains by which people learn to surrender truth for belonging. The distinction is sober: ordinary disagreement is not persecution, and prudence is not cowardice merely because it avoids danger.

The First Brothers’ Confession (4 Maccabees 9)

4 Maccabees 9, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

For we account your pity of us on the terms of unlawful escape to be worse than death.

But, as though transformed by fire into immortality, he nobly endured the rackings, saying,

How sweet is every form of death for the religion of our fathers! and he said to the tyrant,

The brothers reject a pity that makes apostasy the price of survival. Their words do not make pain unreal; the narrative shows exactly why relief would be desired. The promise of life beyond death breaks the tyrant’s claim to possess their future. Christian readers hear this beside 1 Corinthians 15:53-54, where mortality is clothed with immortality. The brother’s victory is fidelity to God, not an invitation to despise people whose bodies or minds are overwhelmed by suffering.

Faithful Speech and the God Who Hears (4 Maccabees 10)

4 Maccabees 10, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

But he said, Even if you take away the organ of speech, yet God hears the silent.

Behold, my tongue is extended, cut it off; for not for that shalt thou extirpate our reasoning.

But God shall speedily find you, since you cut off the tongue, the instrument of divine melody.

God hears the silent. The chapter’s most consoling claim comes when a witness is threatened with the loss of speech. The tyrant can injure the organ of prayer but cannot make God deaf. Hannah’s silent prayer in 1 Samuel 1:13 and the Spirit’s help in our weakness in Romans 8:26 illuminate this confession. It speaks to the sick, the exhausted, and those whose grief defeats words. The image of divine melody belongs to a person offered to God; it does not turn bodily mutilation into something beautiful in itself.

Courage before the Creator (4 Maccabees 11)

4 Maccabees 11, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

But I have come of my own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes.

Does it seem evil to thee that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?

I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

The fifth brother speaks freely before the ruler who can kill him. His appeal to the Creator refuses the king’s claim to define the worth of a human body. The chapter then carries the witness forward through another brother’s suffering. Its language of advancing willingly must be read inside a trial already governed by coercion. Refusal to purchase life by apostasy is distinct from seeking death. The ancient Martyrdom of Polycarp 4 explicitly declines to commend those who surrender themselves voluntarily for suffering.⁵

The Youngest Brother’s Last Confession (4 Maccabees 12)

4 Maccabees 12, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

will not forsake the testimony of my brethren.

And I call upon the God of my fathers to be merciful to my race.

Thus having prayed, he hurled himself into the pans; and so expired.

The youngest brother’s last prayer is for his people. His refusal remains joined to the testimony of his brothers rather than to a wish for isolated heroism. The account of his death is especially difficult for readers carrying bereavement or thoughts of self-harm. It is an ancient martyr narrative, not a direction to imitate its physical action. Christian fidelity ordinarily includes receiving care, accepting protection, and helping another person remain alive. The Church’s honor belongs to the confession of God, not to the pursuit of death.

Brotherly Love and the Holy Choir (4 Maccabees 13)

4 Maccabees 13, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

For having arranged a holy choir of piety, they encouraged one another, saying,

Brothers, may we die brotherly for the law. Let us imitate the three young men in Assyria who despised the equally afflicting furnace.

If we suffer thus, Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob will receive us, and all the fathers will commend us.

The brothers form a holy choir because they strengthen one another in the same confession. Their memory reaches back to the Three Holy Youths, and their hope reaches forward to welcome with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Brotherhood becomes more than shared feeling: each refuses to abandon the other to the tyrant’s account of reality. This gives a concrete measure for Christian companionship. A friend helps another person tell the truth and seek God, while giving practical help rather than merely demanding courage.

Love Stronger than the Threat of Death (4 Maccabees 14)

4 Maccabees 14, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

Sacred and harmonious concert of the seven brethren as concerning piety!

For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed unto death for religion’s sake, as through the immortal soul of religion.

But sympathy with her children did not turn aside the mother of the young men, who had a spirit kindred with that of Abraham.

The author lingers over the brothers’ agreement and their mother’s suffering. Love is not absent from endurance; love is precisely what makes the trial so terrible. The chapter’s bodily and familial images prevent self-mastery from becoming an isolated achievement. No reader is authorized to judge a frightened sibling or grieving parent by how closely outward composure resembles this rhetorical portrait. Love serves fidelity by sharing the burden, not by denying that a burden exists.

The Mother’s Love and Inward Suffering (4 Maccabees 15)

4 Maccabees 15, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

With what and what manner of torments was the mother herself tortured, as her sons were undergoing the wheel and the fires!

For just as in a council-room, beholding in her own soul vehement counsellors, nature and parentage and love of her children, and the racking of her children,

so thou, the guardian of the law, when surrounded on every side by the flood of passions, and straitened by violent storms which were the torments of thy children, didst bear up nobly against the storms against religion.

The mother’s inward suffering receives sustained attention. Her soul becomes the place where affection, fear, memory, and obedience meet. The image of the ark holding firm amid the flood reveals endurance without suggesting that she is untouched by grief. Read beside 2 Maccabees 7:20-29, this portrait gains its doctrinal companion: the mother entrusts her children to the Creator who gave them life and can restore it. Her witness cannot be turned into a reproach against bereaved parents or a demand that mothers suppress lament.

The Mother’s Counsel and Resurrection Hope (4 Maccabees 16)

4 Maccabees 16, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

Remember that through God ye obtained existence, and have enjoyed it.

And the righteous Daniel was cast unto the lions; and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, were slung out into a furnace of fire; yet they endured through God.

And they saw this, too, that they who die for God, live to God; as Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the patriarchs.

The mother begins with a gift: her sons received existence through God. She recalls Isaac, Daniel, and the Three Holy Youths as witnesses to dependence upon Him. Her hope is not that pain saves by itself, but that those who die for God live to God. Genesis 22 and Hebrews 11:17-19 supply the scriptural ground for reading Isaac in relation to resurrection hope. A Christian parent receives this as a call to patient formation in trust, never as permission to expose a child to preventable harm.

Victory, Immortality, and the Martyrs’ Crowns (4 Maccabees 17)

4 Maccabees 17, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

And reverence for God conquered, and crowned her own athletes.

through which, also, they now stand beside the divine throne, and live a blessed life.

For they became the antipoise to the sin of the nation; and the Divine Providence saved Israel, aforetime afflicted, by the blood of those pious ones, and their propitiatory death.

The contest ends in crowns and life beside God’s throne. Its surprising victory lies in the tyrant’s inability to make violence the final truth about the martyrs. Verse 22 describes their blood and death with the language of purification and atonement. Christians can hear a longing for the reconciliation given perfectly in Christ while preserving the difference between the martyrs’ intercession and His once-for-all redemption. The mother’s death at the opening of the chapter remains a hard text, not a model for seeking death.

Final Exhortation, Memory, and Legacy (4 Maccabees 18)

4 Maccabees 18, selected verses, Brenton Septuagint

And he used to teach you, when yet with you, the law and the prophets.

But the children of Abraham, with their victorious mother, are assembled together to the choir of their fathers; having received pure and immortal souls from God.

To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The mother’s remembrance returns the reader to the home. The children learned Scripture before they faced the trial. Abraham and Isaac, Joseph, Phinehas, the psalms, Solomon, Ezekiel, and Moses formed a language in which suffering could be brought before God. The ending is doxology, glory offered to God, rather than a last description of the tyrant. The family is remembered in company with the patriarchs. The gift handed on by the household was a way to pray, to recognize the Creator, and to hope beyond the power of the king.

Christological Reading

The Word heals human reasoning

The book’s devout reasoning is a human activity trained by the Law. The Church confesses Jesus Christ as the divine Word, the Logos, through whom all things were made (John 1:1-3). The similarity of the English words reason and Word must not erase that distinction. Christian watchfulness depends upon communion with Christ, repentance, and the gift of the Spirit. The mind is healed so that the person can love, not trained to admire its own superiority.

St Athanasius, in On the Incarnation 27-28, locates the martyrs’ courage in Christ’s defeat of death. He says that believers “choose rather to die than to deny their faith in Christ”.⁶ The force of the comparison is the gift of the risen Lord, not a rebuke to the frightened. Fear, tears, trauma, and bodily weakness do not disqualify a Christian from receiving His help. The martyr bears witness that death cannot undo the life Christ gives.

Blood offered for the people

Eleazar’s prayer in 6:28-29 asks that his blood be a purification for his people and his life be accepted on their behalf. The conclusion in 17:22 returns to the same representative, sacrificial language. It should be named plainly rather than hidden beneath general statements about courage. The author sees the martyrs’ fidelity as bearing significance for the whole people.

Two Greek expressions help clarify the language. Brenton’s “antipoise” in 17:22 renders antipsychon, the image of a life given in exchange; the CCAT Greek text places that phrase in 17:21. The “propitiatory” death is described by hilastēriou, a form in the word family used for the mercy seat in Exodus 25:17-22 and Hebrews 9:5, and for Christ in Romans 3:25. Here it qualifies death; shared vocabulary does not make every passage identical in meaning or construction.⁷

The comparison with Mark 10:45, where Christ gives His life as a ransom for many, is a Christian theological reading, not a claim that Mark repeats the same Greek word. Hebrews 9:12-14 and 10:10-14 name what belongs uniquely to Christ: eternal redemption, the cleansing of the conscience, and the one offering by which He sanctifies His people. The martyrs ask mercy and offer themselves in fidelity. Christ’s Blood accomplishes the redemption in which every martyr shares. Their witness leads toward Him rather than supplying another saving sacrifice alongside His.

Love, resurrection, and the Cross

The mother’s witness is best read beside 2 Maccabees 7:20-29. There she confesses that the Creator gave her children life and will restore it. 4 Maccabees dwells upon the inward struggle of her love; 2 Maccabees makes the Creator’s power and resurrection hope explicit. Together they prevent endurance from becoming an achievement detached from God.

A Christian reflection can also hear Luke 2:35 and John 19:25-27, where the Theotokos suffers in love beside her Son. This is a comparison within Christian contemplation, not a claim that the Maccabean mother and the Mother of God have identical roles. Christ saves; those who love Him stand before His Cross in need of His mercy. The connection must console grieving parents, never measure their faith by the suppression of sorrow.

The Church’s Voice in Worship

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

The martyrs remembered on Mesra 8

On Mesra 8, the Coptic Synaxarium commemorates “The Martyrdom of Sts. Eleazar, Salome, His Wife, and Their Children.” This falls on August 14 in 2026, 2027 and 2028. St-Takla’s English narrative calls them Lazarus the Elder and Salomi and names their seven children. Lazarus is a Greek shortened form of Eleazar, but the family descriptions are not identical: 2 Maccabees presents Eleazar as an aged scribe, and 4 Maccabees calls him a priest, without identifying him as the brothers’ father; the mother is unnamed in those books. The Coptic narrative makes him Salomi’s husband and the children’s father. Its description of Antiochus as “King of Rome” is an anachronism, not a detail to import into the biblical history. The narrative nevertheless remembers their refusal of apostasy and says that “they received the crown of martyrdom.” This commemoration is not a lectionary reading of 4 Maccabees and does not give it the canonical standing of 1 and 2 Maccabees.⁸

The readings for Mesra 8 are Psalm 4:3, 6-7 and Matthew 11:25-30 at Vespers; Psalm 112:1-2 (LXX 111:1-2) and Mark 10:13-16 at Matins; and Hebrews 11:32-12:2, 1 Peter 4:12-19, Acts 19:23-41, Psalm 66:12-14 (LXX 65:12-14), and Matthew 18:10-20 at the Liturgy. Hebrews’ remembrance of those tortured in hope of a better resurrection and the Psalm’s passage through fire and water offer a fitting way to hear the martyrs’ witness. That connection is a reading of these texts together, not a claim that the lectionary supplies an official explanation of 4 Maccabees.⁹

The Byzantine calendar also commemorates the seven Maccabee martyrs, their mother Solomonia, and their teacher Eleazar on August 1. This is a broader Orthodox witness, distinct from the Coptic date and from the names and family relationships in the Coptic Synaxarium.¹⁰

The sea, the furnace, and the household

The brothers’ remembrance of the Three Holy Youths in 13:9 and the mother’s appeal in 16:21 meet a living voice in Coptic Midnight Praise. The First Hoos, or Canticle, is the Song of Moses in Exodus 15. The Third Hoos is the hymn of the Three Holy Youths. The Church receives the memory of deliverance as words to sing to God. The brothers’ holy choir can be heard beside the deacons’ chorus and the congregation at praise: one voice strengthens another in worship.¹¹

Much of the father’s teaching in 4 Maccabees 18 remains audible in Coptic worship: the offering of Isaac at the Ninth Hour of Great Thursday, Moses’ song in the Midnight Praises of Bright Saturday, and Isaiah’s promise of God’s presence through fire in the Lenten prophecies. The dry bones of Ezekiel 37 are read in the General Funeral, while the funeral rites for monks and monk-priests read Luke 20:27-38, where the Lord teaches that the patriarchs live to God. The Ninth Hour Psalter also holds together distress, thanksgiving and the precious death of God’s saints. The home’s instruction and the Church’s prayer draw from the same Scriptures, though these appointments are not readings from 4 Maccabees itself.¹²

When the brothers hope that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will receive them, their words meet a hope still heard in Coptic prayer for the departed. The funeral service asks, “Graciously, O Lord, repose all their souls in the bosom of our holy fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” and continues its petition for rest in the Paradise of joy. The resemblance is not a reading of 4 Maccabees in the service. It is a shared language of belonging to God beyond death.¹³

A Church that remembers through its calendar

The Coptic Church dates its calendar by the Era of the Martyrs, beginning with Diocletian’s accession in AD 284. Its very way of counting years remembers witnesses who preferred fidelity to apostasy. The Maccabean account can be heard within that self-understanding, while Christian martyrdom receives its life from Christ’s Resurrection.¹⁴

Spiritual Fruit

Practice truth before a costly audience arrives. Eleazar refuses a pretense because someone younger may learn from what he appears to do. Examine the difference between private intentions and public conduct. One useful repentance is to correct a misleading impression rather than shelter behind an explanation that only we know.

Let discipline serve mercy. Chapter 2’s care for an enemy’s property belongs beside its teaching about self-mastery. A fast that makes a person proud, contemptuous, or harder to approach has lost its proper direction. Join restraint at the table to a particular act of patience or generosity, especially toward someone who receives little kindness from us.

Give children a language for prayer. The father in chapter 18 teaches Scripture before the family meets the crisis. In a Christian household, a short psalm prayed faithfully, a Gospel heard attentively, and a parent who asks forgiveness can become part of a child’s memory. Formation requires patient repetition, not the pressure to produce heroic children.

Receive weakness without surrendering hope. The book’s rhetoric praises endurance in exceptional suffering. Most readers meet it through illness, anxiety, family grief, or an ordinary duty that feels beyond their strength. Ask Christ for the next faithful action, accept practical help, and avoid comparing another person’s outward composure with a martyr’s speech.

The last chapter leaves the children with their mother in the company of the patriarchs, and gives glory to God. The tyrant no longer controls the ending. Bring to Christ the fear or desire that most often governs the day. Receive His mercy, and begin again with one truthful word, one prayer, or one act of love.

Teaching Notes

The thesis and the education of desire, 4 Maccabees 1-3

Define devout reasoning through 1:6 and 1:17. Distinguish resistance to a disordered impulse from the denial of human feeling.

Keep Joseph and David in the chapters where their examples occur. David’s water is 3:6-18, before the treasury episode.

Ask how mercy toward an enemy tests self-mastery differently from restraint of appetite.

Do not treat Christian asceticism as salvation through personality, intelligence, or willpower.

Betrayal, leadership, and confession, 4 Maccabees 4-7

Contrast Onias’ intercession with the use of religious office for advantage. Explain the historical differences from 2 Maccabees without hiding them or inventing motives for the author.

Let Eleazar’s concern for the young illuminate the refusal to pretend. Avoid reducing Torah obedience to mere rule-keeping or making pork itself the continuing Christian issue.

Explain representative sacrificial language at 6:28-29 and 17:22 through the unique sacrifice of Christ. Neither flatten the ancient words nor make the martyrs independent redeemers.

Name the elderly and sick as members who can teach faithfulness, without suggesting that their worth depends upon impressive suffering.

The brothers and their mother, 4 Maccabees 8-17

Preserve the full reading in the chapter studies, but do not prolong graphic detail for emotional effect. The governing question is confession under coercion.

Do not shame fear, trauma, chronic pain, lament, or bereavement. The mother’s portrayal is not a rule for how grieving parents must appear.

Address 11:1-3, 12:20, and 17:1 directly. These difficult narratives are not permission to seek death or neglect protection. The Martyrdom of Polycarp 4 rejects voluntary surrender for suffering.⁵

If a participant is carrying grief or thoughts of self-harm, encourage private support from a trusted priest and a qualified mental-health professional. Immediate danger requires immediate help and safety, not waiting for a class discussion or pastoral appointment.

Distinguish the Coptic Synaxarium’s family relationships from the biblical account. Respect the received remembrance without harmonizing conflicting details.

Memory in the home and in worship, 4 Maccabees 18

Compare the father’s scriptural instruction with the readings and prayers named in the worship section. The comparison is this study’s reading, not an official explanation of why those readings were appointed.

End with the doxology, not the ruler’s cruelty. Invite one modest practice of household prayer rather than a vow of extraordinary endurance.

Present the eighteen chapter studies as a continuous argument. Adjacent chapters can be taught in one meeting without combining their texts or confusing their references.

Discussion Questions

What does 1:6 preserve about human feeling when it says that reasoning withstands the passions without destroying them?

Why does chapter 2 place justice toward an enemy beside self-mastery?

What does David’s offering reveal about desire when satisfying it has endangered someone else?

How does Onias’ prayer for the intruder change the account of the temple’s defense?

Why would pretending to compromise be a real betrayal of Eleazar’s responsibility to the young?

Where do we hear reward or pressure presented as a reason to hide what we believe?

How can a community encourage faithfulness without humiliating the frightened or bereaved?

What scriptural words are being handed on in our homes, and how do they shape the way we pray in trouble?

Glossary

Devout reasoning: Human judgment trained by reverence and God’s instruction. The Greek logismos in the thesis is not the personal title Logos confessed of Christ.

Passions: Affections and pressures, including desire, fear, anger, and pain, whose rule the book’s witnesses resist. The book does not make numbness the aim.

Torah: God’s covenantal instruction, forming worship and conduct rather than merely supplying isolated prohibitions.

Martyr: A witness whose fidelity to God is carried through suffering and death. Christian martyrdom is participation in Christ’s victory.

Salome / Salomi: The mother’s name in the Coptic Synaxarium tradition. She is unnamed in 2 and 4 Maccabees; the Byzantine remembrance uses Solomonia.

Eleazar / Lazarus: Related forms of a Hebrew personal name. The Synaxarium’s identification of the elder as husband and father differs from the biblical presentation.

Antipoise: Brenton’s older English term for a counterweight, used in 17:22 for the martyrs’ representative offering in relation to the people’s sin.

Propitiatory: Describing an offering or act concerned with atonement and reconciliation. Its use here must be distinguished from Christ’s unique accomplishment of redemption.

Doxology: Praise giving glory to God, the form of the book’s final sentence.

Translation Notes

Scripture is quoted from Brenton’s Septuagint (1851), public domain. This overview gives selected verses; the chapter studies carry the complete text. The selections preserve the printed wording and verse labels.

Punctuation has been normalized where Brenton’s long dashes would otherwise interrupt the text. No wording has been changed. Brenton places both “antipoise” and “propitiatory death” in 17:22; the CCAT Greek transcription divides the first expression under 17:21. References are edition-specific.

The book’s account of the temple crisis differs in names, relationships, and payment from 2 Maccabees 3-4. Those differences are acknowledged in the chapter 4 study. Later commemorative names and relationships are not inserted into the biblical text.

Sources

Scripture is quoted from Brenton’s Septuagint (1851), public domain. Biblical companions include 2 Maccabees 6-7; John 1:1-3; Luke 2:35; John 19:25-27; Romans 3:25; Hebrews 9:5, 12-14; Hebrews 10:10-14; and Mark 10:45.

This passage has no established place in the Coptic Orthodox lectionary. Related readings and commemorations are distinguished from readings of 4 Maccabees itself. Their thematic connections are offered as interpretation, not as an official explanation of the assignments.

Stephen Westerholm, introduction to 4 Makkabees, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (2007), p. 530, official edition. Used for literary orientation, not for the embedded translation. ↩
Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, “The Deuterocanonical Books”, posted by Fr. Moses Samaan, July 19, 2012; the named list includes 1 and 2 Maccabees. ↩
St Athanasius, Festal Letter 39.4-7 (AD 367), English in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4, text. ↩
St Athanasius, Life of Antony 5, translated by H. Ellershaw, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4, text. ↩
Martyrdom of Polycarp 4, English in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, translation credited to Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, text. ↩ ↩²
St Athanasius, On the Incarnation 27.2 and 28, translated by Archibald Robertson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4, text. ↩
CCAT Greek text of 4 Maccabees, 6:29 and 17:21-22; J. H. Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, entry for hilastērios, adjective and substantive senses, entry. The grammatical distinction prevents treating the death-language and the mercy-seat image as identical constructions. ↩
Coptic Reader, Synaxarium, Mesra 8, title; St-Takla English Synaxarium, Mesra 8 narrative; J. H. Thayer, Greek lexicon, Lazarus, shortened form of Eleazar. ↩
Coptic annual lectionary, Mesra 8, Vespers, Matins, and Liturgy; August 14, 2026 readings. The same readings fall on August 14 in 2027 and 2028. ↩
Orthodox Church in America, 7 Holy Maccabee Martyrs, August 1, for the Byzantine commemoration, Solomonia, and the later Antioch setting. ↩
Coptic Reader, Midnight Praises, First Canticle (Exodus 15) and Third Canticle (Hymn of the Three Saintly Children), Bright Saturday service. ↩
Coptic lectionary: Genesis 22:1-19, Great Thursday, Ninth Hour; Deuteronomy 32:1-43, Bright Saturday, Midnight Praises (Coptic Reader); Isaiah 43:1-9, Matins prophecies on Friday of the fifth week of Great Lent; Ezekiel 37:1-14, General Funeral on Palm Sunday; Luke 20:27-38, Gospel in the Coptic funeral rites for monks and monk-priests. The Agpeya, Ninth Hour, includes Psalm 116:1-9 (LXX 114) and Psalm 116:10-19 (LXX 115). ↩
Coptic Reader, The Funeral of Men, prayer for repose, English text. ↩
Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, The Martyr Portrays the Icon of the Resurrection, opening calendar explanation, posted September 14, 2010. ↩

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4 Maccabees - Overview