¶Then Eleazar, an illustrious priest of the country, who had attained to length of days, and whose life had been adorned with virtue, caused the elders who were around him to cease to cry out to the holy God, and prayed this:

“O king, mighty in power, most high, Almighty God, who regulates the whole creation with your tender mercy,

look at the seed of Abraham, at the children of the sanctified Jacob, your sanctified inheritance, O Father, now being wrongfully destroyed as foreigners in a foreign land.

You destroyed Pharaoh with his army of chariots when that lord of this same Egypt was uplifted with lawless daring and loud-sounding tongue. Shedding the beams of your mercy upon the race of Israel, you overwhelmed him and his proud army.

When Sennacherim, the grievous king of the Assyrians, exulting in his countless army, had subdued the whole land with his spear and was lifting himself against your holy city with boastings grievous to be endured, you, O Lord, demolished him and displayed your might to many nations.

When the three friends in the land of Babylon of their own will exposed their lives to the fire rather than serve vain things, you sent a moist coolness through the fiery furnace, and brought the fire on all their adversaries.

It was you who, when Daniel was hurled, through slander and envy, as a prey to lions down below, brought him back again unharmed to light.

When Jonah was pining away in the belly of the sea-born monster, you looked at him, O Father, and recovered him to the sight of his own.

Now, you who hate insolence, you who abound in mercy, you who are the protector of all things, appear quickly to those of the race of Israel, who are insulted by abhorred, lawless gentiles.

If our life during our exile has been stained with iniquity, deliver us from the hand of the enemy, and destroy us, O Lord, by the death which you prefer.

Don’t let the vain-minded congratulate vain idols at the destruction of your beloved, saying, ‘Their god didn’t deliver them.’

You who are All-powerful and Almighty, O Eternal One, behold! Have mercy on us who are being withdrawn from life, like traitors, by the unreasoning insolence of lawless men.

Let the heathen cower before your invincible might today, O glorious One, who have all power to save the race of Jacob.

The whole band of infants and their parents ask you with tears.

Let it be shown to all the nations that you are with us, O Lord, and have not turned your face away from us, but as you said that you would not forget them even in the land of their enemies, so fulfill this saying, O Lord.”

¶Now, at the time that Eleazar had ended his prayer, the king came along to the hippodrome with the wild animals, and with his tumultuous power.

When the Jews saw this, they uttered a loud cry to heaven so that the adjacent valleys resounded and caused an irrepressible lamentation throughout the army.

Then the all-glorious, all-powerful, and true God, displayed his holy countenance, and opened the gates of heaven, from which two angels, dreadful of form, came down and were visible to all but the Jews.

They stood opposite, and filled the enemies’ army with confusion and cowardice, and bound them with immoveable shackles.

A cold shudder came over the person of the king, and oblivion paralyzed the vehemence of his spirit.

They turned back the animals on the armed forces who followed them; and the animals trampled them and destroyed them.

The king’s wrath was converted into compassion; and he wept at the things he had devised.

For when he heard the cry, and saw them all on the verge of destruction, with tears he angrily threatened his friends, saying,