2 Maccabees 8:15-17

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

¹⁵ if not for their own sake, yet for the sake of the covenants made with their fathers, and because he had called them by his holy and glorious name. ¹⁶ But Maccabe′us gathered his men together, to the number of six thousand, and exhorted them not to be frightened by the enemy and not to fear the great multitude of Gentiles who were wickedly coming against them, but to fight nobly, ¹⁷ keeping before their eyes the lawless outrage which the Gentiles^[a] had committed against the holy place, and the torture of the derided city, and besides, the overthrow of their ancestral way of life.