walls round about the
city, and reared towers of great height against the incursions of
enemies, and set guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura,
that it might serve as a citadel against any distresses that might come
from our enemies.

CHAPTER 8. How Judas Subdued The Nations Round About; And How Simon Beat
The People Of Tyre And Ptolemais; And How Judas Overcame Timotheus,
And Forced Him To Fly Away, And Did Many Other Things After Joseph And
Azarias Had Been Beaten

1. When these things were over, the nations round about the Jews were
very uneasy at the revival of their power, and rose up together, and
destroyed many of them, as gaining advantage over them by laying snares
for them, and making secret conspiracies against them. Judas made
perpetual expeditions against these men, and endeavored to restrain
them from those incursions, and to prevent the mischiefs they did to
the Jews. So he fell upon the Idumeans, the posterity of Esau, at
Acrabattene, and slew a great many of them, and took their spoils. He
also shut up the sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews; and he
sat down about them, and besieged them, and burnt their towers, and
destroyed the men [that were in them]. After this he went thence in
haste against the Ammonites, who had a great and a numerous army, of
which Timotheus was the commander. And when he had subdued them, he
seized on the city Jazer, and took their wives and their children
captives, and burnt the city, and then returned into Judea. But when the
neighboring nations understood that he was returned, they got together
in great numbers in the land of Gilead, and came against those Jews that
were at their borders, who then fled to the garrison of Dathema; and
sent to Judas, to inform him that Timotheus was endeavoring to take the
place whither they were fled. And as these epistles were reading,
there came other messengers out of Galilee, who informed him that
the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre and Sidon, and strangers of
Galilee, were gotten together.

2. Accordingly Judas, upon considering what was fit to be done, with
relation to the necessity both these cases required, gave order that
Simon his brother should take three thousand chosen men, and go to the
assistance of the Jews in Galilee, while he and another of his brothers,
Jonathan, made haste into the land of Gilead, with eight thousand
soldiers. And he left Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, to