III.  Campaigns against the Neighboring Peoples.  The first book of Maccabees records in detail the repeated blows that Judas struck against his heathen foes.  At Akrabattine, probably identical with the Scorpion Pass at the southwestern end of the Dead Sea, he fought and won a signal victory over his hereditary foes, the Idumeans.  His chief enemy on the east was Timotheus, the leader of the Ammonites against whom Judas was successful in the preliminary skirmishes.  Angered by these defeats, the heathen east of the Jordan attacked the resident Jews, who fled to one of the towns, where they were besieged.  Judas, assembling six thousand of his picked warriors, made a rapid march of three days out into the wilderness.  He apparently carried few supplies, but depended rather upon the spoil of the captured towns for support.  Bosra, far out on the borders of the desert, was seized and looted.  Thence returning westward, he rescued the Jews from the town of Damethah, or, as it appears in the Syriac, Rametha.  This is probably identical with the modern town of Remtheh a little south of the Yarmuk on the great pilgrim highway from Damascus to Mecca.  After making a detour to the south he crossed the Yarmuk and captured a series of towns lying to the north and northeast of this river.  Returning he apparently met his Ammonite foe, who had succeeded in rallying an army, at the point where the pilgrim highway crosses the headwaters of the Yarmuk.  Here Judas won a sweeping victory.  Then collecting the many Jews of the dispersion who had settled near these upper waters of the Yarmuk, he returned victoriously to Jerusalem.  His brother Simon, who had been despatched on a similar mission to Galilee, likewise came back bringing many fellow-Jews and laden with spoils.

Anticipating a renewal of the Syrian attack, Judas next made a rapid campaign into the territory of the Idumeans, capturing the old Hebrew capital of Hebron and carrying his victories as far as Ashdod on the western borders of the Philistine plain.  Within a few months he had overrun and partially conquered a territory larger than the kingdom of David.  In an incredibly short time this peasant warrior had won more victories against greater odds than any other leader in Israel’s history.  The results of these victories were necessarily ephemeral.  They accomplished, however, three things:  (1) Judas intimidated his foes and established his prestige; (2) he was able to rescue thousands of Jews from the hands of the heathen; and (3) by bringing them back to Judea he increased its population and laid the foundations of that kingdom which rose as the result of his patriotic achievements.