everywhere in the Temple; then all the precious vessels were seized, the
shewbread table of gold, the candlesticks, and the whole treasury, and
carried away by the king; the walls were thrown down, and the place made
desolate.

Some Jews were still faithful to their God, but they were horribly
punished and tortured to death before the eyes of the king; and when at
last he went away to his own country, taking with him the wicked high
priest Menelaus, he left behind him a governor and an army of soldiers
stationed in the tower of Acra, which overlooked the Temple hill, and
sent for an old man from Athens to teach the people the heathen rites
and ceremonies. Any person who observed the Sabbath day, or any other
ordinance of the law of Moses, was put to death in a most cruel manner;
all the books of the Old Testament Scripture that could be found were
either burnt or defiled, by having pictures of Greek gods painted upon
them; and the heathen priests went from place to place, with a little
brazen altar and image and a guard of soldiers, who were to kill every
person who refused to burn incense before the idol. It was the very
saddest time that the Jews had ever known, and there seemed no help near
or far off; they could have no hope, except in the promises that God
would never fail His people, or forsake His inheritance, and in the
prophecies that bad times should come, but good ones after them.

The Greeks, in going through the towns to enforce the idol worship, came
to a little city called Modin, somewhere on the hills on the coast of
the Mediterranean Sea, not far from Joppa. There they sent out, as
usual, orders to all the men of the town to meet them in the
marketplace; but they were told beforehand, that the chief person in the
place was an old man named Mattathias, of a priestly family, and so much
respected, that all the other inhabitants of the place were sure to do