In grateful acknowledgment, Antiochus
confirmed and enlarged certain privileges of the "holy camp,"
i.e., of Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities, xii. 3, 3). It soon,
however, became manifest that the Jews had made but a poor bargain
in this exchange. Three years after his defeat at Magnesia,
Antiochus III. died (187), leaving to his son Seleucus IV. an immense
burden of debt, which he had incurred by his unprosperous Roman
war. Seleucus, in his straits, could not afford to be over-scrupulous
in appropriating money where it was to be found: he did not need to
be twice told that the wealth of the temple at Jerusalem was out of
all proportion to the expenses of the sacrificial service. The
sacred treasure accordingly made the narrowest possible escape
from being plundered; Heliodorus, who had been charged by the
king to seize it, was deterred at the last moment by a heavenly
vision. But the Jews derived no permanent advantage from this.
It was a priest of rank, Simon by name, who had called the
attention of the king to the temple treasure; his motive had been
spite against the high priest Onias III.
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