And very great wrath came upon Israel: While it is certainly possible to interpret wrath as “divine wrath” (New English Bible), as Good News Bible has done, we doubt this is correct. 1Maccabees does not express the prophetic idea that Israel suffers as a result of God’s punishment for sin. We believe the alternative rendering for this verse in the New English Bible footnote is much better: “Israel lived under a reign of terror.” The aim is to close the section with a summary statement of how bad things were in the land. We could say “Those were horrible, terrible days for Israel,” “It was a time of horrible suffering for Israel,” or even “And the people of Israel suffered terribly.”

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.