128:3.4

But the people of the citadel in Jerusalem were hindered from going out and from going into the country, and from buying and selling. So they were very hungry, and a great number of them perished from famine. Then they cried out to Simon, that he should give them his right hand; and he gave it to them; but he expelled them from there, and he cleansed the citadel from its pollutions. He entered into it on the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred seventy-first year, with praise and palm branches, with harps, with cymbals, and with stringed instruments, with hymns, and with songs, because a great enemy had been destroyed out of Israel. Simon ordained that they should keep that day every year with gladness. He made the hill of the temple that was by the citadel stronger than before, and he lived there with his men. Simon saw that his son John was a man, so he made him leader of all his forces; and he lived in Gazara.

The Jews sent some of their council and of their elders to him. The greetings, welcoming gifts, and congratulations of the past, given by them, filled him with the greater eagerness to visit their city. Having arrived at Jerusalem, sacrificed, and offered thank-offerings to the Greatest God, and done whatever else was suitable to the sanctity of the place, and entered the inner court, he was so impressed with the magnificence of the place, and so wondered at the orderly arrangements of the temple, that he considered entering the sanctuary itself. When they told him that this was not permissible, none of the nation, not even the priests in general, but only the supreme high priest of all, and he only once in a year, was allowed to go in, he would by no means give way. Then they read the law to him, but he persisted in intruding, exclaiming that he ought to be allowed. He said, “Even if they were deprived of this honor, I shouldn’t be.” He asked why, when he entered all the other temples, did none of the priests who were present forbid him. He was thoroughly answered by someone, that he did wrong to boast of this. “Well, since I have done this,” said he, “be the cause what it may, shall I not enter with or without your consent?”

Simon went into Galilee and fought many battles with the Gentiles, and the Gentiles were defeated before him. He pursued them to the gate of Ptolemais. About three thousand men of the Gentiles fell, and he took their spoils. They took to them those who were in Galilee and in Arbatta, with their wives, their children, and all that they had, and brought them into Judea with great gladness. Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan passed over the Jordan, and went three days’ journey in the wilderness. They met with the Nabathaeans, and these met them in a peaceful manner and told them all things that had happened to their kindred in the land of Gilead, and how many of them were shut up in Bosora, Bosor, Alema, Casphor, Maked, and Carnaim—all these cities are strong and large— and how they were shut up in the rest of the cities of the land of Gilead, and that tomorrow they planned to encamp against the strongholds, and to take them, and to destroy all these men in one day.