7. He especially found the night advantageous for such attacks. Talk of his good courage spread everywhere.
8. Philip saw how Judas was progressing little by little and gaining ground with each success, so he wrote to Ptolemy the governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia to come to the aid of the royal government.
9. Nicanor, Patroclus’ son, one of the king’s most important political advisors, was immediately chosen and sent with a military unit of no fewer than twenty thousand men of various nationalities to eliminate Judea’s entire population. He also sent with him Gorgias, a general experienced in military affairs.
10. Nicanor agreed to raise the payment that the king owed the Romans—114,000 pounds of silver—by selling the Jewish prisoners of war.
11. Immediately, he sent a message into the coastal cities, summoning them to purchase Jews as slaves, setting the price at fifty-seven pounds of silver for every ninety persons. But he didn’t anticipate the judgment that was coming from the almighty.
12. When news of Nicanor’s plan reached Judas, he told those with him about the imminent appearance of the military force.
13. The cowardly and those who didn’t trust God’s judgment ran away and hid themselves.
14. Some were selling all they possessed while at the same time calling on the Lord to rescue those whom Nicanor had sold even before they met.
15. They asked that God do this, if not for their sake then for the sake of the covenants with their ancestors, and because he had called them by his revered and glorious name.
16. The Maccabee gathered around him approximately six thousand men. He encouraged them not to be terrified by their enemies nor to fear the great number of Gentiles coming at them unjustly. Rather, they were to fight honorably
17. and keep before their eyes the outrage committed unlawfully in the holy place, the torture of the scorned city, and the overthrow of their ancestral way of life.
18. "They rely on weapons and daring," he said, "but we trust in the almighty God, who is able to strike down with a single nod those coming against us—and even the whole world."
19. He also gave them examples of when God helped their ancestors, such as when one hundred eighty-five thousand of the enemy died during the time of Sennacherib,
20. or the battle with the Galatians in Babylonia. A total of eight thousand Jewish troops went into action along with four thousand Macedonians, who got into severe difficulty, yet the eight thousand Jewish forces, with the assistance they received from heaven, killed one hundred twenty thousand of the enemy and took the spoils of war.
21. With such words he so encouraged them that they were prepared to die for their laws and homeland. He divided the army into four parts and