Catholic Commentary
Gorgias Retreats and Israel Gives Thanks (Part 2)
24Then they returned home, and sang a song of thanksgiving, and gave praise to heaven, because he is good, because his mercy endures forever.25Israel had a great deliverance that day.
1 Maccabees 4:24–25 describes how Judas Maccabeus and his forces return from battle, singing a thanksgiving song praising God's eternal mercy using words from Psalm 136, thereby connecting their military victory to Israel's pattern of divine salvation history. The passage frames the Maccabean triumph as a salvific act comparable to the Exodus, emphasizing that deliverance comes through God's intervention rather than human military prowess.
After winning a battle, Judas Maccabeus does not celebrate his own courage—he returns home and sings a psalm, teaching that victory belongs to God's mercy alone.
1 Maccabees 4:24 — "They returned home, and sang a song of thanksgiving, and gave praise to heaven"
The sequence here is deliberate and theologically charged: first the return, then the song. The Maccabees do not linger on the battlefield in triumph; they return — a movement that mirrors the ritual return of Israel to the sanctuary after God acts on her behalf. The phrase "gave praise to heaven" uses the reverential Jewish circumlocution for the divine name, a linguistic habit that runs throughout 1–2 Maccabees and signals the book's deeply pious, Second Temple Jewish character. "Heaven" is not a vague cosmic force but the dwelling place of the living God who intervenes in history.
The song they sing is identified by its refrain: "because he is good, because his mercy endures forever" — almost verbatim the antiphon of Psalm 136 (LXX: Psalm 135), one of the great Hallel psalms sung at Temple liturgies and Passover. This is not merely poetic decoration. The author is deliberately casting the Maccabean victory within the pattern of Israel's saving history: just as God divided the Red Sea (Ps 136:13–15) and gave the land to Israel (Ps 136:21–22), he has now shattered another pagan army threatening his people. The hesed (loving-kindness, mercy) of God is the theological spine of the moment. Judas and his men do not say "we won"; they say "he is good."
The thanksgiving song also resonates with 2 Chronicles 20:21, where King Jehoshaphat sends singers before the army chanting this very refrain — and God routs the enemy. The author of 1 Maccabees almost certainly intends this allusion. Judas is a new Jehoshaphat; the victory belongs to liturgical faith, not tactical brilliance.
1 Maccabees 4:25 — "Israel had a great deliverance that day"
The word translated "deliverance" (Greek: sōtēria; Hebrew background: yeshua) carries enormous theological weight. This is not merely military relief; it is salvific language. The same root gives us the name Joshua — and Jesus. The narrator steps back from the action to offer a summary verdict, using the idiom of Israel's ancient historiography (cf. 1 Sam 11:13; 14:23) to frame what has happened as a divine saving act on the scale of the Exodus and the Judges period. "That day" echoes the prophetic yom YHWH — the day of the Lord's decisive action.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
At the typological level, this small liturgical scene prefigures the Church's own post-Resurrection practice: after the great deliverance of Easter, the disciples "return" to the upper room, break bread, and give thanks (eucharistia). The pattern — combat with the powers of darkness, victory through God's intervention, return, and Eucharistic thanksgiving — is the very grammar of Christian worship. The Mass itself follows this arc. The words "because he is good, because his mercy endures forever" persist from Jewish liturgy directly into Catholic worship in the responsorial psalms and the Gloria.
Catholic tradition illuminates these verses on several levels. First, the primacy of thanksgiving in worship. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2637–2638) teaches that thanksgiving characterizes the prayer of the Church, especially in the Eucharist. Eucharistia — the very name of the central sacrament — means "thanksgiving." When the Maccabees return singing "his mercy endures forever," they enact what the Catechism calls the "movement of gratitude" that belongs to every creature before its Creator. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on similar passages, wrote that thanksgiving offered in adversity is the most perfect form of prayer, because it acknowledges that all good, including deliverance, proceeds from God alone (Homilies on the Statues, III).
Second, the theology of hesed — divine mercy — is central to Catholic moral theology and spiritual life. Pope Francis in Misericordiae Vultus (2015, §6) identifies mercy as "the beating heart of the Gospel," rooting this claim in precisely the Old Testament tradition of hesed that this passage celebrates. The Maccabees' song anticipates Mary's Magnificat (Lk 1:50–54), where God's mercy across generations becomes the basis of radical praise.
Third, the canonical recognition of 1 Maccabees as deuterocanonical Scripture (defined at the Council of Trent, Session IV, 1546) means that this passage carries the authority of inspired Scripture. Protestant Bibles omit it; Catholic readers receive it as the Word of God — including its testimony that authentic military and civic resistance, when placed under God and concluded with worship, belongs within the economy of salvation history.
Contemporary Catholics face a culture that reflexively attributes success to personal ability, strategic planning, or good fortune. These two verses offer a counter-catechesis: the Maccabees win a battle and immediately sing a psalm. They do not hold a press conference or erect a monument to their own courage. The spiritual discipline here is concrete and imitable: when something good happens — a medical diagnosis comes back clear, a family crisis resolves, a work endeavor succeeds — the Catholic instinct formed by this passage is to return and give thanks, in the words of the liturgy, before doing anything else.
For Catholics engaged in any form of cultural, political, or spiritual struggle — defending life, resisting secularism, persevering in faith within a hostile environment — the Maccabean model insists that the struggle is won or lost at the altar before it is won or lost in the arena. The practice of praying the responsorial psalm "His mercy endures forever" at Sunday Mass is not ceremonial filler; it is formation in the same theology of dependence that enabled Judas Maccabeus to fight, and then to sing.
Commentary