15 She saw her children’s flesh dissolving around the fire, and their extremities quivering on the ground, and the flesh of their heads dropped forward down to their beards, like masks. (WEB) 16 O you mother, who was tried at this time with bitterer pangs than those at birth! (WEB) 17 O you only woman who have produced perfect holiness! (WEB)
4 Maccabees 15:15–17
Semantically similar passages
4 Maccabees 17:1–3
1 Some of the spearbearers said that when she herself was about to be seized for the purpose of being put to death, she threw herself on the pile, rather than let them touch her body. (WEB) 2 O you mother, who together with seven children destroyed the violence of the t… (WEB)
Numbers 12:11–13
11 and said to Moses, “My lord, please do not hold against us this sin we have so foolishly committed. 12 Please do not let her be like a stillborn infant whose flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother’s womb.” 13 So Moses cried out to the LORD, “O God, pl…
2 Esdras 10:11–13
11 Who then should mourn more, she who has lost so great a multitude, or you, who are grieved but for one? (WEB) 12 But if you say to me, ‘My lamentation is not like the earth’s, for I have lost the fruit of my womb, which I brought forth with pains, and bare with sorrows… (WEB)
4 Maccabees 15:29–31
29 O holy mother of a nation, avenger of the law, defender of religion, and prime bearer in the battle of the affections! (WEB) 30 O you nobler in endurance than males, and more courageous than men in perseverance! (WEB) 31 For like Noah’s ship, bearing the world in the world-filli… (WEB)
Proverbs 31:1–3
1 These are the words of King Lemuel—the burden that his mother taught him: 2 What shall I say, O my son? What, O son of my womb? What, O son of my vows? 3 Do not spend your strength on women or your vigor on those who ruin kings.
4 Maccabees 16:10–12
10 Ah, that I who had many and fair children, should be a lone widow full of sorrows! (WEB) 11 Nor, should I die, will I have a son to bury me.” But with such a lament as this, the holy and God-fearing mother wept for none of them. (WEB) 12 Nor did she divert any of them from death… (WEB)
4 Maccabees 15:23–25
23 But religious reasoning, having strengthened her courage in the midst of sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the time, parental love. (WEB) 24 Although seeing the destruction of seven children, the noble mother, after one embrace, stripped off her feelings through f… (WEB)
4 Maccabees 16:5–7
5 For we must consider also this: that, had the woman been faint hearted, as being their mother, she would have lamented over them, and perhaps might have spoken thus: (WEB) 6 “Ah! I am wretched and many times miserable, who having born seven sons, have become the mothe… (WEB)
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