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2 Maccabees describes Judas Maccabeus encouraging his troops by declaring that victory does not depend on the size of an army but on divine strength, demonstrating his piety with the use of Psalm 20.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Psalm 20:7
Hebrew Bible
5 Then we will shout for joy over your victory; we will rejoice in the name of our God. May the Lord grant all your requests. 6 Now I am sure that the Lord will deliver his chosen king; he will intervene for him from his holy, heavenly temple, and display his mighty ability to deliver. 7 Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we depend on the Lord our God. 8 They will fall down, but we will stand firm. 9 The Lord will deliver the king; he will answer us when we call to him for help!
Date: 600–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
2 Maccabees 8:18
Deuterocanon
16 So Maccabaeus gathered his men together, six thousand in number, and exhorted them not to be frightened by the enemy, nor to fear the great multitude of the heathen who came wrongfully against them, but to fight nobly, 17 setting before their eyes the outrage that had been lawlessly perpetrated upon the holy place, and the torture of the city that had been turned to mockery, and further the overthrow of the way of life received from their ancestors. 18 “For they,” he said, “trust their weapons and daring deeds, but we trust in the almighty God, since he is able at a nod to cast down those who are coming against us, and even the whole world.” 19 Moreover, he recounted to them the help given from time to time in the days of their ancestors, both in the days of Sennacherib, when one hundred eighty-five thousand perished, 20 and in the land of Babylon, in the battle that was fought against the Gauls, how they came to the battle with eight thousand in all, with four thousand Macedonians, and how, the Macedonians being hard pressed, the eight thousand destroyed the hundred and twenty thousand because of the help which they had from heaven, and took a great deal of plunder.
Date: 160–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Compare Psalm 20:7, 33:16–22; Isaiah 30:1–5, 31:1–3; Ezekiel 17:11–21; Hosea 10:13 ... 2 Maccabees 8:18–20, 8:24; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 4.116–117, 4.297, 7.390, 15.127, 15.138 ..."
Caryn A. Reeder, Gendering War and Peace in the Gospel of Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 26–72.
* 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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