ACT IV.

The outer Courts of the Temple at Jerusalem.

SCENE I. —­ JUDAS MACCABAEUS; CAPTAINS; JEWS.

JUDAS. 
Behold, our enemies are discomfited. 
Jerusalem is fallen; and our banners
Float from her battlements, and o’er her gates
Nicanor’s severed head, a sign of terror,
Blackens in wind and sun.

CAPTAINS. 
O Maccabaeus,
The citadel of Antiochus, wherein
The Mother with her Seven Sons was murdered,
Is still defiant.

JUDAS. 
Wait.

CAPTAINS. 
Its hateful aspect
Insults us with the bitter memories
Of other days.

JUDAS. 
Wait; it shall disappear
And vanish as a cloud.  First let us cleanse
The Sanctuary.  See, it is become
Waste like a wilderness.  Its golden gates
Wrenched from their hinges and consumed by fire;
Shrubs growing in its courts as in a forest;
Upon its altars hideous and strange idols;
And strewn about its pavement at my feet
Its Sacred Books, half burned and painted o’er
With images of heathen gods.

JEWS. 
Woe! woe! 
Our beauty and our glory are laid waste! 
The Gentiles have profaned our holy places!

(Lamentation and alarm of trumpets.)

JUDAS. 
This sound of trumpets, and this lamentation,
The heart-cry of a people toward the heavens,
Stir me to wrath and vengeance.  Go, my captains;
I hold you back no longer.  Batter down
The citadel of Antiochus, while here
We sweep away his altars and his gods.

SCENE II. —­ JUDAS MACCABAEUS; JASON; JEWS,

JEWS. 
Lurking among the ruins of the Temple,
Deep in its inner courts, we found this man,
Clad as High-Priest.

JUDAS. 
I ask not who thou art. 
I know thy face, writ over with deceit
As are these tattered volumes of the Law
With heathen images.  A priest of God
Wast thou in other days, but thou art now
A priest of Satan.  Traitor, thou art Jason.

JASON. 
I am thy prisoner, Judas Maccabaeus,
And it would ill become me to conceal
My name or office.

JUDAS. 
Over yonder gate
There hangs the head of one who was a Greek. 
What should prevent me now, thou man of sin,
From hanging at its side the head of one
Who born a Jew hath made himself a Greek?

JASON. 
Justice prevents thee.

JUDAS. 
Justice?  Thou art stained
With every crime against which the Decalogue
Thunders with all its thunder.

JASON. 
If not Justice,
Then Mercy, her handmaiden.

JUDAS. 
When hast thou
At any time, to any man or woman,
Or even to any little child, shown mercy?

JASON. 
I have but done what King Antiochus
Commanded me.