33. The king, rising before dawn, moved his force hastily along the road to Beth-zechariah; and the troops prepared for battle and sounded the trumpet.
34. They made the elephants drunk on the juice of grapes and mulberries to get them ready to fight.
35. The beasts were distributed along the phalanxes, each elephant having assigned to it a thousand men in coats of mail, with bronze helmets on their heads, and five hundred picked cavalry.
36. These accompanied the beast wherever it was; wherever it moved, they moved too and never left it.
37. Each elephant was outfitted with a strong wooden tower, fastened to it by a harness; each tower held three soldiers who fought from it, besides the Indian driver.
38. The remaining cavalry were stationed on one or the other of the two flanks of the army, to harass the enemy and to be protected by the phalanxes.
39. When the sun shone on the gold and bronze shields, the mountains gleamed with their brightness and blazed like flaming torches.
40. Part of the king’s army spread out along the heights, while some were on low ground, and they marched forward steadily in good order.
41. All who heard the noise of their numbers, the tramp of their marching, and the clanging of the arms, trembled; for the army was very great and strong.
42. Judas with his army advanced to fight, and six hundred men of the king’s army fell.
43. Eleazar, called Avaran, saw one of the beasts covered with royal armor and bigger than any of the others, and so he thought the king was on it.
44. He gave up his life to save his people and win an everlasting name for himself.
45. He dashed courageously up to it in the middle of the phalanx, killing men right and left, so that they parted before him.
46. He ran under the elephant, stabbed it and killed it. The beast fell to the ground on top of him, and he died there.
47. But when Judas’ troops saw the strength of the royal army and the ardor of its forces, they retreated from them.
48. Some of the king’s army went up to Jerusalem to attack them, and the king established camps in Judea and at Mount Zion.
49. He made peace with the people of Beth-zur, and they evacuated the city, because they had no food there to enable them to withstand a siege, for that was a sabbath year in the land.
50. The king took Beth-zur and stationed a garrison there to hold it.