2 Maccabees 8:15-17

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

¹⁵ if not for their own sake, then for the sake of the covenants made with their ancestors, and because he had called them by his holy and glorious name. ¹⁶ But Maccabeus gathered his forces together, to the number 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 that 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.