1 King Antiochus was traveling through the upper provinces when he heard that Elymais, a city in Persia, was famous for its great quantities of silver and gold.
2 Its temple was very rich and contained gold shields, breastplates, and weapons that Alexander (the son of Philip, the first Macedonian king to rule over the Greeks) left there.
3 So he went and tried to take the city by force and plunder it. But he was unsuccessful because the city’s inhabitants knew about his plan.
4 They resisted him in battle, and he fled. With great disappointment, he planned to return to Babylon.
5 While King Antiochus was in Persia, someone came to him and reported that the armies that had gone into the land of Judah had been thoroughly defeated.
6 Lysias, who had gone first with a strong force, had turned and run from the Jews. The Jews then grew stronger when they took weapons, supplies, and abundant spoils from the armies they defeated.
7 They had taken down the disgusting thing that he had set up on the altar in Jerusalem. Furthermore, they had surrounded the sanctuary and also Lysias’ town Beth-zur with high walls like before.