Catholic Commentary
Gorgias Outflanked: Judas Slips Away
1Gorgias took five thousand infantry, a thousand chosen cavalry, and the army moved out at night,2that it might fall upon the army of the Jews and strike them suddenly. The men of the citadel were his guides.3Judas heard of this, and he and the valiant men moved, that he might strike the king’s army which was at Emmaus4while the forces were still dispersed from the camp.5Gorgias came into the camp of Judas at night and found no man. He sought them in the mountains; for he said, “These men are running away from us.”
1 Maccabees 4:1–5 describes Gorgias's military strategy to ambush Judas's camp at night with five thousand infantry and cavalry, but Judas learns of the plan and instead attacks the main Seleucid base at Emmaus while forces are dispersed. When Gorgias arrives to find the Jewish camp empty, he misinterprets the tactical withdrawal as cowardly flight, remaining blind to Judas's offensive maneuver.
Judas doesn't flee when Gorgias comes for him at night—he turns the hunter into the hunted by striking the undefended camp at Emmaus while his enemy searches empty mountains for a retreating army.
Commentary
1 Maccabees 4:1 — The Weight of Imperial Force Gorgias commands an impressive display of Seleucid military might: five thousand infantry and a thousand elite cavalry. The specificity of these numbers is not merely documentary; the author of 1 Maccabees uses them to heighten the drama of what follows. The reader is meant to feel the crushing disproportion between this professional imperial army and the ragged band of Jewish fighters camped nearby. The nocturnal timing of the operation signals Gorgias's intent to exploit surprise and darkness — strategically shrewd, but laden with symbolic irony in a text steeped in the theology of light and darkness.
1 Maccabees 4:2 — Betrayal from Within The note that "men of the citadel were his guides" is theologically charged. The Akra, the Seleucid citadel in Jerusalem, was garrisoned in part by Hellenized Jews — fellow Israelites who had collaborated with the occupying power. Their role as guides for a foreign army against their own people is treated by the author as a form of treachery that compounds the spiritual crisis of the revolt. This is not merely a military detail; it reflects the deeper conflict within Israel itself between fidelity to the covenant and accommodation to pagan culture. The enemy, in part, came from inside the house.
1 Maccabees 4:3 — The Intelligence of the Faithful "Judas heard of this" — the simplicity of the phrase belies its importance. Judas is not depicted as omniscient or supernaturally warned (though divine providence is presumed throughout the book); he has cultivated the situational awareness of a faithful commander. His response is immediate and audacious: rather than flee or prepare a defensive stand, he redirects his forces toward the now-vulnerable main Seleucid camp at Emmaus. Emmaus is named with deliberate geographic precision; it is the locus of Seleucid power in the region, and striking it while Gorgias is away is a stroke of inspired daring.
1 Maccabees 4:4 — Strategic Genius as Theological Motif The crucial phrase "while the forces were still dispersed from the camp" reveals Judas's logic: Gorgias has divided the Seleucid army, unwittingly creating a window of vulnerability. What Gorgias intended as a pincer movement has instead exposed his own base. The author presents Judas's perception of this opening not as mere cleverness but as a form of wisdom — the same practical wisdom (Hebrew: sekhel) praised in Israel's great leaders. The dispersal of the enemy echoes motifs from Exodus and Joshua, where God confuses and scatters those who oppose his people (cf. Ex 14:24; Josh 10:10).
1 Maccabees 4:5 — The Empty Tent and the Arrogance of the Powerful Gorgias arrives at the Jewish camp to find it deserted. His conclusion — "These men are running away from us" — is the pivot point of the entire passage. His reading of the empty camp as cowardly retreat is a catastrophic misreading born of pride. He does not imagine that Judas could have gone on the offensive. His contempt for the Jews as fugitives blinds him to the real situation. The empty camp is, in effect, a trap — not one set deliberately, but one that Gorgias springs by his own assumption of superiority. Typologically, the empty camp anticipates other "empty spaces" in salvation history that confound those who come expecting to find the defeated: most supremely, the empty tomb.
Catholic Commentary
From a Catholic perspective, this passage is a rich site for reflection on divine providence operating through human prudence and courage. The Catechism teaches that "God's almighty providence... works through secondary causes" (CCC 308), and these verses are a precise illustration: Judas's military intelligence, his bold decision-making, and his reading of the strategic moment are all secondary causes through which God's providential care for his covenant people operates. The author of 1 Maccabees does not suspend natural causality in favor of miracle; he shows God working within the grain of human courage and wisdom.
St. Ambrose, in De Officiis, holds up the Maccabees as models of the virtue of fortitude — not reckless aggression, but the courage that acts decisively in the service of justice and the defense of the holy. Judas's nocturnal counter-maneuver exemplifies precisely this: fortitude ordered by prudence, the cardinal virtue that discerns the right means to a right end.
The treachery of the Hellenized Jews from the citadel also resonates with patristic warnings about apostasy and collaboration with worldly power against the community of faith. Origen and Cyprian both invoke the Maccabean crisis as a type of any age in which cultural conformity tempts believers to betray their brethren. The Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes (§ 76) acknowledges that the Church must always resist the temptation to become an instrument of secular power against her own members.
Finally, Gorgias's vainglorious misreading of the empty camp — "These men are running away from us" — serves as a patristic touchstone for the danger of pride (superbia) distorting judgment. Gregory the Great, in his Moralia in Job, repeatedly warns that pride causes the powerful to misread reality, projecting their own categories onto situations they do not truly see. The empty tent becomes a parable of God's capacity to work precisely in apparent absence and defeat.
For Today
Contemporary Catholics often encounter a version of Gorgias's error: reading the apparent smallness or "retreat" of the Church in secular culture as evidence of her defeat or irrelevance. These verses challenge that reading directly. Judas's empty camp is not a rout — it is a repositioning. The Church's withdrawal from certain forms of cultural dominance in the modern West may similarly be an occasion for a more focused, more courageous strike at what truly matters: the proclamation of the Gospel, the defense of human dignity, the formation of disciples.
More personally, the passage speaks to the Catholic facing a situation of overwhelming opposition — in a workplace hostile to faith, in a family fractured by unbelief, in a culture that presumes the faithful are simply "running away." The counsel of these verses is Judas's counsel: do not let the enemy define the terms of engagement. Gather intelligence, act with prudence, strike where the Spirit opens a way, and do not mistake your enemy's contempt for an accurate account of your situation. The one who finds your tent empty may be the one who is truly lost.
Cross-References