Texts in Conversation
1 Maccabees quotes the opening of Psalm 136 to celebrate Judas Maccabeus’s return from battle, connecting his military victory with the liturgy of gratitude and with what God did in Israel's traditional history.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Psalm 136:1
Hebrew Bible
1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loyal love endures. 2 Give thanks to the God of gods, for his loyal love endures. 3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his loyal love endures. 4 To the one who performs magnificent, amazing deeds all by himself, for his loyal love endures. 5 To the one who used wisdom to make the heavens, for his loyal love endures.
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
1 Maccabees 4:24
Deuterocanon
22 they all fled into the land of the Philistines. 23 Judas returned to plunder the camp, and they took much gold, silver, blue, sea purple, and great riches. 24 Then they returned home, and sang a song of thanksgiving, and gave praise to heaven, because he is good, because his mercy endures forever. 25 Israel had a great deliverance that day. 26 The foreigners who had escaped came and told Lysias all the things that had happened.
Date: 134–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The laments comprise about a third of the pieces that may qualify as poetry in 1 Maccabees (compare 2:49b–68; 3:3–9; 4:24b; 4:30b–33; 7:17, 37–38; 9:21, 41; 14:4–15). It is noteworthy that all except the last two of these lyrical segments are in the first half of the book, which is devoted to the careers of Mattathias and Judas. The only piece that explicitly mentions joy is the last one, the eulogy of Simon, which thereby reflects a reversal of fortunes compared to the five laments (14:4–15). Three pieces are scriptural quotations (4:24b [compare Ps 136:1]; 7:17 [compare Psalm 79:2–3]; 9:21 [compare 2 Samuel 1:25a, 27a; Judges 3:9]). The five laments along with Mattathias’s farewell speech (2:48b–68) and the ode to Judas (3:3–9) represent the highest concentration of poetry in 1 Maccabees as they punctuate the narration from Antiochus’s plundering of the Temple to Judas’s leading of his troops into battle at Emmaus (1:20–3:60) ..."
Michael W. Duggan, “1 Maccabees: Emotions of Life and Death in Narrative and Lament,” in Ancient Jewish Prayers and Emotions: Emotions Associated with Jewish Prayer in and around the Second Temple Period, ed. Stefan C. Reif and Renate Egger-Wenzel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 95–116.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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