Exhortation to Martyrdom 22

This too is useful for our present subject. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: “I praised all the dead more than the living, as many as are alive until now.” And who among the dead could so reasonably be praised as the one who of his own free choice accepted death for the sake of piety? Such was Eleazar, who, “welcoming death with honor rather than life with defilement, went of his own accord to the rack,” and who, “having taken up a noble resolve, worthy of his ninety years, of the eminence of his old age, of the gray hairs he had gained and made distinguished, of his most excellent upbringing from childhood, and still more of the holy and God-given legislation,” said: “It is not worthy of our age to pretend, so that many of the young, supposing that Eleazar at ninety has gone over to a foreign way of life, should themselves be led astray because of my pretence and for the sake of a brief and momentary life, and I bring defilement and disgrace on my old age. For even if for the present I escape punishment from men, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore by bravely giving up my life now I shall show myself worthy of my old age, and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws.” And I pray that you, when you come to the doors of death, or rather of freedom, especially if pains are applied (for there is no despairing of your suffering them, from the counsel of the opposing powers), will say such things as these: “It is clear to the Lord, who has holy knowledge, that though I could be released from death, I endure hard pains in my body under the scourge, but in my soul I suffer these things gladly because of fear of him.” Such was the death of Eleazar that it could be said of him: “Not only to the young but to the great majority of the nation he left his death as an example of nobility and a memorial of virtue.”