Circumstances were soon to test the readiness of the Jews, in times of national danger, to observe the attitude of passive spectators and wait for a Divine deliverance. It was not altogether in this spirit that the priests met the savage persecutions of Antiochus. They made no vain attempts to exorcise this evil spirit with hymns, and psalteries, and harps, and trumpets; but the priest Mattathias and his sons slew the king’s commissioner and raised the standard of armed revolt. We do indeed find indications of something like obedience to the chronicler’s principles. A body of the revolted Jews were attacked on the Sabbath Day; they made no attempt to defend themselves: “When they gave them battle with all speed, they answered them not, neither cast they a stone at them, nor stopped the places where they lay hid, ... and their enemies rose up against them on the sabbath, and slew them, with their wives, and their children, and their cattle, to the number of a thousand people.”(386) No Divine intervention rewarded this devoted faith, nor apparently did the Jews expect it, for they had said, “Let us die all in our innocency; heaven and earth shall testify for us that ye put us to death wrongfully.” This is, after all, a higher note than that of Chronicles: obedience may not bring invariable reward; nevertheless the faithful will not swerve from their loyalty. But the priestly leaders of the people looked with no favourable eye upon this offering up of human hecatombs in honour of the sanctity of the Sabbath. They were not prepared to die passively; and, as representatives of Jehovah and of the nation for the time being, they decreed that henceforth they would fight against those who attacked them, even on the Sabbath Day. Warfare on these more secular principles was crowned with that visible success which the chronicler regarded as the manifest sign of Divine approval; and a dynasty of royal priests filled the throne and led the armies of Israel, and assured and strengthened their authority by intrigues and alliances with every heathen sovereign within their reach. Chapter V. Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah: The Consequences of a Foreign Marriage. 2 Chron. xxi.-xxiii.