Catholic Commentary
Jonathan Secures Tax Exemptions and Royal Letters for Judea (Part 2)
36Not one of these grants shall be annulled from this time forth and forever.37Now therefore be careful to make a copy of these things, and let it be given to Jonathan, and let it be set up on the holy mountain in a suitable and conspicuous place.’”
1 Maccabees 11:36–37 records a Seleucid royal decree declaring that King Demetrius II's grants to Jonathan and the Jewish people are irrevocable forever, with orders that the document be copied, given to Jonathan, and displayed prominently on the Temple Mount. This formal ratification uses the language of eternal obligation to guarantee Jewish exemptions and privileges.
A pagan king's written decree, sealed with the word "forever," becomes an instrument of God's providence—showing how divine care works through human law and public witness.
1 Maccabees 11:36 — "Not one of these grants shall be annulled from this time forth and forever."
This verse constitutes the formal ratification clause of the Seleucid royal letter, a legal formula well attested in Hellenistic royal correspondence. The phrase "from this time forth and forever" (ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν καὶ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in the Greek) is a striking piece of chancery language, yet it resonates far beyond the diplomatic register. In granting irrevocability, Demetrius II is doing what ancient rulers did when they wished to bind not only themselves but their successors: he is casting a human decree in the language of perpetual obligation.
The reader of 1 Maccabees who is steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures will immediately hear overtones of the divine covenants. The Torah repeatedly uses similar formulations — "an everlasting covenant," "throughout your generations," "forever" — to describe God's binding commitments to Israel. Here, the irony is palpable and theologically purposeful: a Gentile king, acting for entirely pragmatic political reasons (he needed Jonathan's military support against his rival Trypho), employs the language of eternity. Yet the author of 1 Maccabees sees in this no mere accident. Divine providence can work through the decrees of pagan rulers to ensure the welfare of God's people — a theme running from Cyrus the Great (Isaiah 44–45) to the edicts recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah.
The word "annulled" (ἀθετηθήσεται) also carries legal and covenantal weight. In the Septuagint, the same root is used for the annulment or violation of covenants with God. By placing it here in the negative — "not one shall be annulled" — the text subtly elevates Jonathan's negotiated freedoms to the status of something inviolable, mirroring the inalienability of the Mosaic exemptions and privileges God Himself secured for Israel.
1 Maccabees 11:37 — "Now therefore be careful to make a copy of these things, and let it be given to Jonathan, and let it be set up on the holy mountain in a suitable and conspicuous place."
Three distinct actions are commanded: (1) copy the document; (2) deliver it to Jonathan; (3) display it publicly on the "holy mountain" — Jerusalem, specifically the Temple Mount. Each carries its own significance.
The copying of official texts was a standard ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic practice for ensuring durability and wide dissemination, but 1 Maccabees has already shown a particular interest in written documents as guarantors of fidelity (cf. 1 Macc 8:22, where the Roman treaty is inscribed on bronze tablets). Writing confers permanence; it turns the spoken or negotiated word into a fixed, verifiable record that can be appealed to in the future.
The delivery to Jonathan personally underscores his role not merely as a military commander but as the legitimate representative and protector of the Jewish people — simultaneously High Priest, military commander, and now diplomatic broker. He is a mediating figure who gathers the strands of priestly, royal, and prophetic roles that the Maccabean crisis demanded.
Most striking is the command to display the grant "on the holy mountain in a suitable and conspicuous place." The Temple Mount is the locus of God's presence, the axis mundi of Jewish theology. To inscribe a royal privilege there is to make the holy site itself the guarantor of the agreement — to invoke, implicitly, the divine witness to the king's words. Josephus (Antiquities XIII.4.9) confirms this practice of public inscription at the Temple. This public display also functions as a proclamation to the entire people of Israel: their exemptions are secured, their identity protected, their worship undisturbed.
Catholic tradition recognizes that divine providence operates not only through Israel's prophets and priests but through the political structures of the nations — what the Catechism calls God's governance of history toward its ultimate end (CCC 302–303). The Seleucid king, without knowing it, becomes an instrument of providential care for the covenant people. St. Augustine's theology of history, developed in The City of God, offers a framework: earthly kingdoms serve the City of God not by intention but by disposition — God ordering even human ambition and rivalry toward the preservation of His people. Demetrius II needed Jonathan's troops; God used that need to shelter His sanctuary.
The public inscription on the holy mountain carries deep sacramental resonances that Catholic tradition illuminates particularly well. The Church has always insisted on the public, visible, and inscribed character of divine revelation. The Mosaic law was written on stone tablets; the New Law is written on hearts (Jer 31:33; 2 Cor 3:3), but it is also proclaimed, taught, and displayed in the life of the Church — in liturgy, sacred art, and doctrine. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and Dei Verbum §8 both stress that revelation is transmitted not only in writing but through living tradition that is publicly received and handed on. Jonathan's care to receive and display the written guarantee prefigures the Church's custodianship of the written Word and her solemn declarations of doctrine as irrevocable — most powerfully in the definition of dogmas declared to hold "from this time forth and forever" in the very language of conciliar anathemas.
The irrevocability formula of verse 36 also anticipates Catholic teaching on the indefectibility of the Church (CCC 869) and the permanence of Scripture's inspiration (Dei Verbum §11). God's word, once given, cannot be annulled.
For Catholics today, these verses offer a pointed meditation on the relationship between law, document, and living community. We live in an age that is simultaneously saturated with texts and deeply suspicious of institutions that claim permanent authority. The Church's habit of issuing solemn, irrevocable declarations — on Scripture, on the sacraments, on moral teaching — can seem imperious to modern ears. But 1 Maccabees reminds us that permanence in a written guarantee is not arrogance; it is the only real protection a vulnerable people has against the shifting winds of political convenience. Jonathan did not trust to memory or goodwill; he asked for it in writing, displayed it in public, and placed it where God could be its witness.
Concretely: Catholics should reflect on how they treat the Church's written Tradition — the Catechism, conciliar documents, papal encyclicals. Do we treat them as negotiable positions, or as the carefully inscribed grants of a faithful God, meant to be received, copied, and placed "in a suitable and conspicuous place" in our homes, parishes, and minds? The spiritual discipline of memorizing and displaying Scripture and Church teaching in one's home is a modest but real participation in this ancient pattern of written witness.