Woman with seven sons

Description

The woman with seven sons was a Jewish martyr described in 2 Maccabees 7 and other sources, who had seven sons that were arrested (along with her) by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who forced them to prove their respect to him by consuming pork. When they refused, he tortured and killed the sons one by one in front of the unflinching and stout-hearted mother.

The story likely occurred around the beginning of the religious persecutions in 167-166 BCE. Although unnamed in 2 Maccabees, the mother is known variously as Hannah,Miriam,Solomonia, and Shmouni.

Narrative
2 Maccabees
Shortly before the revolt of Judas Maccabeus (2 Maccabees 8), Antiochus IV Epiphanes arrested a mother and her seven sons, and tried to force them to eat pork. One of the brothers said, on behalf of everyone, that even if they were all to die, they would not break the law. The angry king ordered to heat up the pans and cauldrons, and he ordered the first brother to have his tongue cut off, the skin to be removed from the head and the ends of the limbs cut off – All this was happening in front of the rest of the brothers and mother, who, in the meantime, encouraged each other to passively resist the tormentors’ demands. When the first martyr was inert and still breathing, Epiphanes ordered him to be thrown into a hot frying pan. When he died, the next one was brought in and the skin was stripped from his head along with his hair. Each of the seven brothers endured the same torture. The torment of the sons was watched by their tenacious and rather stoic mother, who had lost all her sons.

The narrator mentions that the mother “was the most remarkable of all, and deserves to be remembered with special honour. She watched her seven sons die in the space of a single day, yet she bore it bravely because she put her trust in the Lord.” Each of the sons makes a speech as he dies, and the last one says that his brothers are “dead under God’s covenant of everlasting life”. The narrator ends by saying that the mother died, without saying whether she was executed, or died in some other way.