August 19, 2013 – 1 Maccabees 13 – 13:24

So, Jonathon had not died in the battle, but was captured and killed at the end of this reading.  It appears he was basically killed because they found no further use from him.  It is interesting here that Simon knew that he was being lied to, but had to give what he did in order that everyone else could see that it was a lie.  He basically called Trypho’s bluff to show that he was going to be deceitful.  The fact that it says Simon knew it was a lie shows that Simon has the same type of intelligence as his brother (although Jonathon is now dead because he made a naive move in trusting Trypho at their final meeting).  Hopefully Simon can avoid mistakes like that.  And how old do we think Simon is.  He is the brother of both Judas and Jonathon and it seems as those these wars have been going on a while.  Looks like Matthias died in 167 BC at the beginning of the revolt and Simon took over in 142 BC.  So the revolt has been going on for almost 25 years.  And Simon is Matthias’ second son, he was actually older than Jonathon.  I don’t remember that being discussed when and why Jonathon took the reigns over his older brother.