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Catholic Commentary
The Abomination of Desolation and the Witness of the Faithful Martyrs (Part 1)
54On the fifteenth day of Chislev, in the one hundred forty fifth year, they built an abomination of desolation upon the altar, and in the cities of Judah on every side they built idol altars.55At the doors of the houses and in the streets they burned incense.56They tore up the books of the law which they found and set them on fire.57Anyone who was found with any book of the covenant, and if any consented to the law, the king’s sentence delivered him to death.58Thus did they in their might to Israel, to those who were found month by month in the cities.59On the twenty-fifth day of the month they sacrificed upon the idol altar that was on top of the altar of burnt offering.60They put to death women who had circumcised their children, according to the commandment.61They hung their babies around their necks, and their houses, and those who had circumcised them.
1 Maccabees 1:54–61 describes Antiochus IV's systematic desecration of the Jewish Temple and suppression of Jewish practice, including installing a pagan altar over the altar of burnt offering, burning Torah scrolls, and executing Jews who observed circumcision and Jewish law. The persecution targeted the covenant identity of Israel through state-sponsored legal measures that made religious observance punishable by death.
Antiochus didn't just attack the Temple—he made covenant faithfulness itself illegal, forcing mothers to choose between their God and their children's lives.
Verse 58 — Monthly Enforcement The persecution is described as recurring "month by month," suggesting systematic patrols or inspections. The cycle of monthly enforcement may deliberately mirror the Jewish calendar of festivals, profaning sacred time with inquisitorial terror.
Verse 59 — The Sacrifice on the Twenty-Fifth of Chislev Ten days after the altar's installation comes the first pagan sacrifice upon it, on the twenty-fifth of Chislev—the very date that would, after the Maccabean victory, become Hanukkah. The placement of the sacrifice "on top of the altar of burnt offering" is the nadir: the fire that once carried Israel's worship heavenward now carries the stench of idolatry.
Verses 60–61 — The Martyrdom of Mothers and Infants These two verses are among the most harrowing in the entire Old Testament. Women who circumcised their sons—fulfilling the foundational covenant sign of Genesis 17—were executed. Their dead infants were hung around the necks of the mothers' corpses, and the fathers and circumcisers were similarly killed. This is not incidental cruelty; it is targeted destruction of the covenant sign itself. Circumcision marked the male child as a son of Abraham; to kill mothers for performing it was to make covenant fidelity a crime punishable by the most theatrical public death. The hanging of babies from dead mothers' necks is an act of deliberate desecration, inverting the nursing bond into a tableau of horror.
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage on multiple levels.
The Abomination as Prophetic Fulfillment and Type. Daniel 11:31 and 12:11 prophesy the "abomination of desolation," and 1 Maccabees 1:54 is the historical fulfillment. Yet Jesus himself re-applies the phrase to a future event (Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14), signaling that this Antiochene sacrilege is typological—a figure of eschatological desecration. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on Matthew, identifies the pattern: every assault on the sacred space where God dwells—Temple, Church, the human soul—carries the structure of this "abomination." The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§675) speaks of the final trial of the Church that will involve a "religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth."
Martyrdom and the Theology of Witness. The mothers of verses 60–61 are among the earliest martyrs presented by Scripture as dying precisely as a form of fidelity to a covenant sign. The Church Fathers—especially St. Cyprian (De exhortatione martyrii) and Origen (Exhortatio ad martyrium)—drew directly on the Maccabean martyrs as models. The Second Vatican Council, in Lumen Gentium §42, affirms that martyrdom "is regarded by the Church as the highest gift and the supreme test of love." CCC §2473 defines martyrdom as bearing "witness to the truth of the faith and of Christian doctrine." These mothers exemplify precisely this: they die not despite their maternal love but through it, as an act of covenantal obedience.
Scripture as Sacred Deposit. The burning of Torah scrolls prefigures every attack on Sacred Scripture and Tradition as the vehicles of divine Revelation. Dei Verbum §9 teaches that Scripture and Tradition together form "one sacred deposit of the Word of God." To destroy one is to assault the living memory of God's covenant—an assault these martyrs resisted with their lives.
Contemporary Catholics may be tempted to read these verses as ancient horror, safely remote. They are not. The structure of Antiochus's campaign—erecting false altars in sacred spaces, criminalizing possession of the Word of God, making public apostasy the price of survival, targeting the bodies of children as leverage against faithful parents—recurs in every age of persecution, including our own. Christians in North Korea, Nigeria, and China face structurally similar choices today.
But the application is also interior. The "abomination of desolation" can be read, as the Fathers did, as a figure of whatever usurps God's place in the sanctuary of the heart. When career, comfort, social approval, or fear of ridicule causes a Catholic to suppress or hide faith—to refuse, in effect, to "consent to the law"—the abomination is erected again in miniature.
The mothers of verse 60 pose a direct challenge: What covenantal act—the baptism of a child, the refusal of a sinful instruction, the profession of unpopular doctrine—are you prepared to perform at genuine personal cost? These women did not negotiate with the altar of Zeus. Their witness is an invitation to examine what we would, and would not, surrender.
Commentary
Verse 54 — The Abomination Installed (Chislev 15, 167 BC) The "abomination of desolation" (Greek: bdelygma erēmōseōs) is the pivotal event of this entire crisis. The date—the fifteenth of Chislev—is precise and deliberate: the author records it as a day of infamy to be remembered as surely as any feast day. "They built" (ōkodomēsan) over the sacred altar of burnt offering—the very point of Israel's communion with God—a pagan altar, most likely dedicated to Zeus Olympios, as 2 Maccabees 6:2 confirms. The word "abomination" (bdelygma) is the standard LXX term for idols, carrying connotations of moral revulsion and cultic defilement. "Desolation" signals that the Temple is now abandoned by God's presence. The horror is amplified geographically: not only Jerusalem but "the cities of Judah on every side" were colonized by idol altars, making apostasy the law of the entire land.
Verse 55 — Public Idolatry Enforced Burning incense "at the doors of houses and in the streets" represents the forced intrusion of pagan worship into domestic and civic life. This was not merely permission to worship Greek gods; it was compulsory public apostasy, designed to make the private observance of Jewish law both visible and deadly. Domestic space—where Torah was taught and the Sabbath kept—was invaded by the very instruments of its negation.
Verse 56 — The Burning of the Torah The burning of the books of the Law strikes at the heart of Israel's identity. The Torah was not merely a legal code but the living word by which Israel existed in covenant relationship with God. To burn it was to attempt the annihilation of Israel as a people constituted by divine speech. This act prefigures every subsequent attempt to silence the Word of God—whether the Diocletianic persecution's demand that Christians hand over their scriptures (traditores), or the Index's corrupted inversions, or modern totalitarianisms' burning of books. The text's wording is careful: the books were both "torn up" and "set on fire," a double destruction aimed at complete obliteration.
Verse 57 — Death for Possessing the Covenant Here the text makes explicit what was implicit: possession of a scroll of the Law or personal observance of it ("if any consented to the law") was now a capital crime under royal decree. The phrase "the king's sentence delivered him to death" underscores the juridical, state-sponsored character of the persecution—this is not mob violence but systematic, legal martyrdom. The word "consented" (synkatatithemai) is theologically rich: it implies an act of will, of deliberate interior adherence. The martyrs die not merely for an ethnic custom but for a covenantal choice.