Catholic Commentary
Fortification of Zion and Bethsura
60At that time, they fortified mount Zion with high walls and strong towers around it, lest perhaps the Gentiles might come and trample them down, as they had done before.61Judas stationed a garrison to guard it. They fortified Bethsura to keep it, that the people might have a stronghold near Idumaea.
1 Maccabees 4:60–61 describes Judas Maccabeus fortifying Mount Zion with high walls and towers immediately after rededicating the Temple, stationing a military garrison to protect it from Gentile desecration. He also fortified Bethsura to the south as a defensive buffer against threats from Idumaea, establishing layered protection for the newly restored sanctuary.
Judas doesn't celebrate the Temple's purification and then leave it exposed — he immediately builds walls, because restored sacred things must be actively guarded.
1 Maccabees 4:60 — The Fortification of Mount Zion
The phrase "at that time" (Latin: in illo tempore) links these verses inseparably to what immediately precedes: the joyful rededication of the altar and the eight-day feast of Hanukkah (1 Macc 4:36–59). The celebration is barely concluded before Judas pivots to the sober business of defense. This sequencing is deliberate and theologically charged: the author of 1 Maccabees understands that restoration without protection is incomplete. The sacred cannot be left exposed.
"High walls and strong towers around it" echoes the language of Nehemiah's rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls after the Babylonian exile (Neh 2–6), a conscious literary parallel that places Judas in the tradition of Israel's great restorer-leaders. The motivation given — "lest perhaps the Gentiles might come and trample them down, as they had done before" — is a pointed reference to the desecration carried out under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (cf. 1 Macc 1:29–40; 4:38), where the sanctuary was turned into a pagan high place. The memory of that trampling (the Greek katapatēsōsin evokes livestock crushing grain) is the engine of Judas's urgency. History is not merely recalled; it is prophylactically addressed in stone and mortar.
It is significant that Mount Zion is being re-fortified. The Maccabean literature is aware that what has been lost once can be lost again. Vigilance is not the opposite of trust in God; in 1 Maccabees, human effort and divine assistance operate in genuine cooperation.
1 Maccabees 4:61 — The Garrison at Zion and the Fort at Bethsura
Judas's prudence is further displayed in two distinct but related actions. First, he "stationed a garrison" (apostēma) on Mount Zion itself — a standing military presence at the heart of sacred geography. Holy places require human custodians. Second, he "fortified Bethsura," the strategically critical hilltop town (modern Khirbet et-Tubeiqah) roughly 25 miles south of Jerusalem, commanding the main road from Idumaea (Edom). The Idumeans were traditional enemies of Israel (descendants of Esau, perpetual rivals of Jacob's line), and their proximity represented a persistent threat of infiltration from the south. By fortifying Bethsura, Judas creates a buffer zone — a defensive threshold — between the purified Temple and a hostile frontier.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Fathers read Zion typologically as the Church. Origen and Eusebius understood the building of the spiritual Temple to be inseparable from moral and doctrinal fortification. The "high walls" around Zion become, in the spiritual sense, the walls of sound doctrine, sacramental life, and moral discipline that protect the people of God from the encroachment of what 1 Peter 5:8 calls the "roaring lion." The "garrison" stationed within is the ordained ministry and the episcopate, entrusted as watchmen over the flock. Bethsura's frontier role speaks to the Church's need for a living witness at the margins — missionaries, monasteries at civilization's edge, lay apostolates in secular culture — who hold the boundary between the sacred and the hostile world.
Catholic tradition brings several uniquely illuminating lenses to this passage. First, the cooperation of divine grace and human effort — a hallmark of Catholic soteriology and ecclesiology — is vividly enacted here. Judas does not presume that God's miraculous assistance in battle (cf. 1 Macc 4:6–15) renders human fortification unnecessary. The Council of Trent's affirmation that grace perfects and works through human nature and effort (Session VI, Decree on Justification, ch. 16) finds a military prefigurement in Judas's prudent stonework. Grace does not make walls; it empowers those who build them.
Second, the indefectibility and protection of the Church is illuminated here. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the Church... will not pass away" and that Christ is her "ever-living Advocate" (CCC 869). Yet this indefectibility is not passive — the Church must, like Judas, maintain doctrinal and moral fortifications. Pope Leo XIII, in Satis Cognitum (1896), wrote that the unity and integrity of the Church requires both interior holiness and exterior structure. The walls of Zion speak to the necessity of visible, institutional embodiment of the holy.
Third, the eschatological dimension of Zion resonates here. St. Augustine in The City of God (Book XVIII) interprets the earthly Jerusalem and its fortifications as a figure of the pilgrim Church — a city that is simultaneously vulnerable and defended by providence. The garrison at Zion is thus a figure of the Holy Spirit guarding the Church through her sacraments and her saints until the final consummation.
Contemporary Catholics can be tempted toward a purely interior, privatized faith that neglects the "fortification" of the communities, institutions, and spaces in which that faith is lived and transmitted. These verses challenge that tendency directly. Just as Judas knew that a purified Temple left unguarded would be trampled again, Catholics today are called to actively protect what has been renewed — through faithful catechesis, the defense of Catholic schools and hospitals, and the cultivation of genuine parish community. Bethsura's strategic placement at the Idumean frontier speaks to the necessity of a robust Catholic presence at the frontiers of secular culture: in universities, media, law, and medicine. Personal conversion is not enough; renewed hearts must build and inhabit renewed structures. Practically, this passage invites the examination of conscience: What have I been given — a restored family life, a revived parish, a personal spiritual renewal — that I have left unguarded? What "garrison" of prayer, accountability, and community do I need to station there so it is not lost again?
Commentary