5. Now there is in that place a tower of fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it had all round it a gallery descending sheer on every side into the ashes.
6. Here him that is guilty of sacrilege, or has attained a preeminence in any other evil deeds, they all push forward into destruction.
7. By such a fate it befell the breaker of the law, Menelaus, to die, without obtaining so much as a grave in the earth, and that right justly;
8. for inasmuch as he had perpetrated many sins against the altar, whose fire and whose ashes were holy, in ashes did he receive his death.
9. Now the king, infuriated in spirit, was coming with intent to inflict on the Jews the very worst of the sufferings that had befallen them in his father’s time.
10. But when Judas heard of these things, he gave charge to the multitude to call upon the Lord day and night, beseeching him, if ever at any other time, so now to succour them that were at the point to be deprived of the law and their country and the holy temple,
11. and not to suffer the people that had been but now a little while revived to fall into the hands of those profane heathen.
12. So when they had all done the same thing together, beseeching the merciful Lord with weeping and fastings and prostration for three days without ceasing, Judas exhorted them and commanded they should join him for service.
13. And having gone apart with the elders he resolved that, before the king’s army should enter into Judaea and make themselves masters of the city, they should go forth and try the matter in fight by the help of God.
14. And committing the decision to the Lord of the world, and exhorting them that were with him to contend nobly even to death for laws, temple, city, country, commonwealth, he pitched his camp by Modin.