19. for victory in battle stands not in the multitude of a host; but strength is from heaven.
20. They come to us in fulness of insolence and lawlessness, to destroy us and our wives and our children, for to spoil us:
21. but we fight for our lives and our laws.
22. And he himself will discomfit them before our face: but as for you, be you⌃ not afraid of them.
23. Now when he had left off speaking, he leapt suddenly upon them, and Seron and his army were discomfited before him.
24. And they pursued them in the going down of Bethhoron to the plain, and there fell of them about eight hundred men; but the residue fled into the land of the Philistines.
25. And the fear of Judas and his brethren, and the dread of them, began to fall upon the nations round about them:
26. and his name came near even to the king, and every nation told of the battles of Judas.
27. But when king Antiochus heard these words, he was full of indignation: and he sent and gathered together all the forces of his realm, an exceeding strong army.
28. And he opened his treasury, and gave his forces pay for a year, and commanded them to be ready for every need.
29. And he saw that the money failed from his treasures, and that the tributes of the country were small, because of the dissension and plague which he had brought upon the land, to the end that he might take away the laws which had been from the first days;
30. and he feared that he should not have enough as at other times for the charges and the gifts which he gave aforetime with a liberal hand, and he abounded above the kings that were before him.
31. And he was exceedingly perplexed in his mind, and he determined to go into Persia, and to take the tributes of the countries, and to gather much money.
32. And he left Lysias, an honorable man, and one of the seed royal, to be over the affairs of the king from the river Euphrates to the borders of Egypt,