Catholic Commentary
Judas's Fame Spreads to the Nations
25The fear of Judas and his kindred, and the dread of them, began to fall on the nations around them.26His fame reached the king, and every nation told of the battles of Judas.
1 Maccabees 3:25–26 describes how fear of Judas and his followers spread among neighboring nations while his military fame reached King Antiochus IV. The passage depicts Judas as a providential deliverer whose courage and faithfulness inspire awe throughout the known world, positioning his struggle against the Seleucid oppressor as a significant historical and theological event.
Fidelity to God produces a witness the world cannot ignore—Judas's fame spread not through PR but through courageous integrity.
1 Maccabees 3:25 — "The fear of Judas and his kindred, and the dread of them, began to fall on the nations around them."
The language of "fear" (Greek: phobos) and "dread" (Greek: ptoia) falling upon surrounding peoples is a deliberate literary and theological signal. It recalls the archaic Hebrew idiom of divine terror (pachad and eimah) preceding Israel's victories in the conquest narratives — the same language used of the inhabitants of Canaan trembling before Israel in Exodus 15:16 and Joshua 2:9. The author of 1 Maccabees, writing in an elevated, almost classical biblical Hebrew style later translated into Greek, consciously invokes this tradition to cast Judas as standing in a long line of Spirit-empowered deliverers. The verb began (erxato) is significant: it marks an incipient, growing reality. This is not yet the full flowering of Judas's power — it is a dawn, a first tremor felt in the nations. The phrase "his kindred" (hoi adelphoi autou) emphasizes that the terror is not caused by a lone hero but by a covenantal community acting in solidarity, anticipating the ecclesial dimension of spiritual warfare in Catholic thought.
1 Maccabees 3:26 — "His fame reached the king, and every nation told of the battles of Judas."
The "king" is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid monarch who had desecrated the Temple and precipitated the Maccabean revolt. That his name is not mentioned here is rhetorically pointed: the focus is on Judas, not his persecutor. The word "fame" (Greek: akoe, literally "the hearing" or "report") carries connotations of the kind of prophetic shema — that which is heard and proclaimed. The phrase "every nation told" (pas ethnos) is universalist in scope and deliberately hyperbolic: it positions the battles of Judas not merely as a local insurrection but as a world-historical event. This universalism is theologically loaded. Israel's faithfulness, enacted through Judas's courage, becomes a testimony to the Gentiles — not a conquest of them, but a proclamation among them.
Typological and Spiritual Senses:
In the typological reading so central to Catholic biblical interpretation (cf. CCC §§115–119), Judas Maccabeus functions as a figura of Christ the King-Warrior. Just as Judas's fame "reached the king" — the enemy — and spread among all nations, so Christ's victory over sin and death resounds through all creation and confronts every power that has set itself against God. The "dread" that falls on the nations anticipates the trembling of demonic powers before Christ's exorcisms (Mark 1:24) and ultimately before his resurrection (Matthew 28:4). The spread of fame to "every nation" (pas ethnos) prefigures the missionary mandate of Matthew 28:19, where the risen Christ sends his disciples to all nations. At the level of the moral sense, the passage teaches that fidelity to God — even in seemingly hopeless military or spiritual struggle — will, in God's providence, produce a witness that the world cannot ignore.
Catholic tradition reads the Books of Maccabees not merely as historical narrative but as inspired Scripture carrying genuine theological weight — a point underscored by the Council of Trent's definitive inclusion of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the canonical Scriptures (Session IV, 1546), against Protestant challenges. This canonical status means that the figure of Judas Maccabeus is not merely an admirable historical freedom-fighter but a genuine bearer of typological meaning within the Church's interpretive tradition.
St. Ambrose of Milan, in De Officiis (I.40), held up the Maccabees as supreme models of the virtue of fortitude, arguing that their courage was not mere natural bravado but virtue animated by faith in God — a point directly applicable to these verses, where the terror Judas inspires is inseparable from the divine power working through him.
The Catechism's teaching on the sensus plenior — the fuller sense of Scripture fulfilled in Christ (CCC §117) — invites us to read the spreading fame of Judas as an anticipation of the universal proclamation of the Gospel. Where Judas's fame reaches every nation as testimony to one man's courageous fidelity, the Church's kerygma reaches every nation as testimony to Christ's definitive victory.
Furthermore, the passage illuminates the Catholic understanding of the communio sanctorum in spiritual combat. The dread falls not on Judas alone but on "Judas and his kindred" — the Church does not fight alone but as a body (cf. Ephesians 6:10–18), united in a shared warfare against spiritual powers. Pope St. John Paul II, in Novo Millennio Ineunte (§29), called the Church to a "new boldness" (parresia) in proclaiming Christ — the same boldness that made Judas's name resound among the nations.
Contemporary Catholics often feel that faithful witness is invisible — that standing for the Church's teaching on life, marriage, or social justice produces no noticeable effect in a hostile culture. These two verses offer a corrective. The author of 1 Maccabees records that fear and wonder spread among the nations not because Judas ran a communications campaign, but because he fought with integrity and trust in God. His reputation was a by-product of his fidelity, not a goal in itself.
The practical application is this: Catholics are not called to manage their public image, but to fight the battles in front of them — in the workplace, in the family, in the public square — with courage rooted in prayer and sacramental life. When that is done faithfully, the witness spreads. Parish communities that are genuinely alive in worship, visibly sacrificial in charity, and unashamed in catechesis become, like Judas's band, a presence that the surrounding culture cannot explain away. The task is not to seek fame but to seek fidelity; God tends to the former in his own time and measure.
Commentary