20 And so, thinking over the manner by which he ought to approach it, enduring patiently, he was determined not to permit, due to a love for life, any unlawful things.
21 Yet those who stood near, being moved by an iniquitous pity because of long friendship with the man, taking him aside privately, asked that flesh be brought which was lawful for him to eat, so that he could pretend to have eaten, just as the king had commanded, from the flesh of the sacrifice.
22 So then, by doing this, he might be freed from death. And it was because of their old friendship with the man that they performed this kindness for him.
23 But he began to consider the eminent dignity of his stage of life and old age, and the natural honor of gray hair, as well as his exemplary words and deeds from childhood. And he responded quickly, according also to the ordinances of the sacred law preserved by God, saying, that he would first be sent to the underworld.
24 "For it is not worthy for those of our age," he said, "to deceive, so that many adolescents might think that Eleazar, at ninety years, had converted to the life of the foreigners.
25 And so, they, because of my pretense and for the sake of a brief time of a corruptible life, would be misled, and, through this stain and desecration, I would defile my last years.
26 But if, in the present time, I were rescued from the torments of men, I would then not escape the hand of the Almighty, neither in life, nor in death.