Catholic Commentary
Jason's Murderous Coup and Wretched End
5When a false rumor had arisen that Antiochus was dead, Jason took not less than a thousand men, and suddenly made an assault upon the city. When those who were on the wall were being routed, and the city was at length nearly taken, Menelaus took refuge in the citadel.6But Jason slaughtered his own citizens without mercy, not considering that good success against kinsmen is the greatest misfortune, but supposing himself to be setting up trophies over enemies, and not over fellow-countrymen.7He didn’t win control of the government, but receiving shame as the result of his conspiracy, he fled again as a fugitive into the country of the Ammonites.8At last therefore he met with a miserable end. Having been imprisoned at the court of Aretas the prince of the Arabians, fleeing from city to city, pursued by all men, hated as a rebel against the laws, and abhorred as the executioner of his country and his fellow citizens, he was cast ashore in Egypt.9He who had driven many from their own country into exile perished in exile, having crossed the sea to the Lacedaemonians, hoping to find shelter there because they were near of kin.10He who had thrown out a multitude unburied had none to mourn for him. He didn’t have any funeral at all and no place in the tomb of his ancestors.
2 Maccabees 5:5–10 describes Jason's failed coup against the Jerusalem high priest Menelaus, in which he slaughters thousands of fellow Jews while pursuing power through false pretenses, only to be eventually hunted down and denied burial—his fate becoming a cautionary tale of violent ambition destroying itself. The passage illustrates how fratricidal violence constitutes the gravest moral failure, and how Jason's self-deception in treating kinsmen as enemies leads inevitably to complete degradation and exile.
Jason murdered his own people for power built on a lie, and died unburied and unmourned—the wages of trading covenant identity for ambition.
Commentary
Verse 5 sets the scene with bitter irony: Jason's entire bid for power rests on a lie — a "false rumor" (Greek: pseudēs phēmē) that Antiochus IV had died. False information is the foundation of his enterprise, and this detail is not incidental. The author of 2 Maccabees is a careful literary craftsman; from the very first word of Jason's return, his cause is marked as a thing built on unreality. With "not less than a thousand men," Jason storms Jerusalem in what amounts to a civil war. That Menelaus — himself the usurper who had displaced Jason — is forced to flee into the citadel underscores how thoroughly Jason has plunged Jerusalem into chaos. Two illegitimate high priests, each installed through bribery of a pagan king, now wage war in the holy city.
Verse 6 is among the most morally incisive lines in all of Maccabees. The author does not merely condemn Jason's violence but diagnoses its spiritual pathology: Jason "did not consider" (ou logizomenos) — he did not reckon, did not reflect. He treated the slaughter of fellow Jews as a military triumph, "supposing himself to be setting up trophies over enemies." The Greek word for "trophies" (tropaia) evokes victory monuments erected on the field of battle. To erect such trophies over one's own people is the ultimate inversion of honor. The author delivers the moral axiom explicitly: "good success against kinsmen is the greatest misfortune." This is a classically Hellenistic ethical formulation — the author of 2 Maccabees, writing in polished Greek, meets his educated audience on their own rhetorical ground — but the content is thoroughly biblical: the sin of Cain, the slaughter of brothers, is presented here as not merely evil but self-defeating and self-destroying.
Verse 7 records the coup's failure with swift economy. Jason "did not win control of the government" — the prize he sought through bloodshed eluded him entirely. He "fled again as a fugitive into the country of the Ammonites," east of the Jordan, historically associated with hostility to Israel (cf. Nehemiah 4:3; Judges 10:6–9). The word "again" (palin) is pointed: this is Jason's second flight, echoing his first exile when Menelaus displaced him. His life has become a cycle of grasping and losing.
Verse 8 catalogs his degradation in accumulating clauses — a rhetorical technique of piling up miseries that mirrors the piling up of crimes. He is "imprisoned," "fleeing from city to city," "pursued by all men," "hated as a rebel against the laws," and "abhorred as the executioner of his country." The phrase "executioner of his country" (koinos tēs patridos polemos) — literally "common enemy of his fatherland" — is a formal legal-political term of disgrace in Hellenistic culture, the worst civic condemnation. Aretas, prince of the Nabataean Arabs, briefly holds him. Jason ends up "cast ashore in Egypt," a detail loaded with resonance: Egypt is the land of bondage, the paradigmatic place of Israel's humiliation, and to end there as a castaway is a kind of anti-Exodus.
Verse 9 deepens the irony with perfect symmetry: "He who had driven many from their own country into exile perished in exile." This is the lex talionis operating not through human decree but through providential justice. Jason's flight to "the Lacedaemonians" (Spartans) was motivated by a supposed kinship between Jews and Spartans, referenced also in 1 Maccabees 12:21 and grounded in a diplomatic correspondence. That he found no shelter there — that even this tenuous ethnic connection offered no refuge — is the final humiliation of a man who had traded his covenantal identity for a Greek persona.
Verse 10 closes with the most devastating detail of all: Jason, who "had thrown out a multitude unburied," received no burial himself. In the ancient Jewish world, honorable burial was among the most sacred duties owed to the dead (cf. Tobit 1:17–19; 2:3–8). To die unburied was not merely an indignity but a sign of divine abandonment — one need only recall the prophetic curses in Jeremiah 22:18–19 against the wicked king Jehoiakim: "He shall be buried with the burial of an ass." Jason's lack of mourners, lack of funeral rites, and exclusion from his ancestral tomb constitute a triple negation of everything Jewish identity meant: community, continuity, and the hope of rest with one's fathers.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition reads this passage through several interlocking lenses that deepen its significance far beyond a historical cautionary tale.
Divine Retributive Justice and Providence: The Catechism teaches that "God is the sovereign master of his plan" (CCC §306) and that nothing — not even human wickedness — escapes his providential ordering. The author of 2 Maccabees is not a dispassionate historian; he is a theologian of history. Jason's catastrophic end is presented as the working-out of divine justice within time, a theme the Church Fathers treasured. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on similar passages, insisted that the downfall of the wicked is not mere chance but the pedagogy of God, meant to instruct the living.
The Sin of Fratricide and Social Justice: The slaughter of "fellow citizens" evokes the Cain-Abel paradigm that runs throughout Catholic social teaching. Gaudium et Spes §27 lists among the gravest offenses against human dignity "murder, genocide... deportations" — precisely the crimes Jason commits. The author's moral observation that "success against kinsmen is the greatest misfortune" anticipates the Church's consistent teaching that no political or ideological end justifies the destruction of the human community.
Apostasy and Its Consequences: Jason had already apostasized in 2 Maccabees 4, converting Jerusalem's youth to Hellenistic paganism. The Council of Trent and later the Catechism (CCC §1856) distinguish mortal sin's capacity to rupture one's relationship with God; Jason's trajectory is a sustained portrait of that rupture made visible in the political and personal spheres.
Burial and the Resurrection of the Body: That Jason dies unburied is, in light of the broader theology of 2 Maccabees — which explicitly affirms bodily resurrection in 7:9, 11, 14 — a profound theological statement. The Church's reverence for the bodies of the dead (CCC §2300) is rooted in the conviction that the body shares in the dignity of the person awaiting resurrection. To deny burial is symbolically to deny that dignity. Jason, having denied it to others, receives it as his judgment.
For Today
Jason's story is a mirror held up to the temptation — ever-present and intensely modern — to abandon one's covenantal identity in exchange for cultural acceptance, social status, or political power. He began as a priest of God's covenant and ended a stateless fugitive. Contemporary Catholics face analogous, if less dramatic, pressures: to privatize or relativize their faith for professional advancement, to treat the Church's moral teaching as negotiable when it conflicts with ideological comfort, or to identify more with partisan tribe than with the Body of Christ.
The passage also carries a sharp warning about the self-delusion that accompanies ambition unchecked by conscience. Jason "did not consider" — he had stopped thinking morally. Regular examination of conscience, the practice the Church has always commended as essential to the spiritual life (CCC §1454), is precisely the antidote to Jason's failure of reflection. Ask: Am I treating those I disagree with — in my parish, my family, my civic community — as enemies to be defeated, or as kinsmen to be served? The one who "sets up trophies over fellow-countrymen" has lost more than the battle; he has lost himself.
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