11 If I were to say, “Certainly the darkness will cover me, and the light will turn to night all around me,” 12 even the darkness is not too dark for you to see, and the night is as bright as day; darkness and light are the same to you. 13 Certainly you made my mind and heart; you wove me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give you thanks because your deeds are awesome and amazing. You knew me thoroughly; 15 my frame^* was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret and sewed together in the depths of the earth.

20 The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Although she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord. 21 She encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors. Filled with a noble spirit, she reinforced her woman's reasoning with a man's courage, and said to them, 22 "I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. 23 Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws." 24 Antiochus felt that he was being treated with contempt, and he was suspicious of her reproachful tone. The youngest brother being still alive, Antiochus not only appealed to him in words, but promised with oaths that he would make him rich and enviable if he would turn from the ways of his ancestors, and that he would take him for his Friend and entrust him with public affairs.