Opening the secret door in the ceiling, they threw stones and struck down the leader and his men: The secret door was an opening known to the priests but not to anyone else who entered the building (compare Bel 21 [Dan 14.21]). Good News Bible says “trap doors hidden,” but “secret opening” is a better model. It was not a “door” in the sense that someone would walk through it. Obviously the priests threw stones at everyone below, and from the rest of the verse we know they killed them, but the Greek here mentions only one person as struck down; namely the leader, that is, the king. The Greek does not have and his men, but it is clearly implied here, so translators may make it explicit. The Greek verb translated struck down is a powerful one. It means to strike with lightning. New English Bible renders they threw stones and struck down the leader as “hurled stones at them. The king fell, as if struck by a thunderbolt.” New Jerusalem Bible translates “struck the leader down by hurling stones like thunderbolts.” Goldstein has “they rained stones down upon the thunderstruck commander.” We could also say “they threw stones on him and his men. Like lightning, the stones hit the king.”

And dismembered them and cut off their heads and threw them to the people outside: Dismembered them refers to cutting off their arms and legs. Good News Bible says simply “cut up the bodies,” but this writer likes gruesome details, so it would be closer to the intent to be more literal. We are not told who the people outside might be.

An alternative model for this verse is:

• The priests uncovered a secret opening in the ceiling, and threw stones down on him and his men. The king was hit as if by a bolt of lightning. The priests took the bodies, cut off the arms and legs, along with the heads, and tossed the heads to people [standing] outside [the temple].

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.