1 Maccabees 5:45-47

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

The Return to Jerusalem

⁴⁵ Then Judas gathered together all the Israelites in Gilead, the small and the great, with their wives and children and goods, a very large company, to go to the land of Judah. ⁴⁶ So they came to Ephron. This was a large and very strong town on the road, and they could not go around it to the right or to the left; they had to go through it. ⁴⁷ But the people of the town shut them out and blocked up the gates with stones.