And Jonathan said to those with him may be expressed as “Jonathan said to his soldiers.”

Let us rise up now and fight for our lives: Let us rise up now is a loud, brave, excited call to action. We advise most translators to ignore the literal meaning of these word and to duplicate their impact. New Jerusalem Bible and Goldstein translate simply “Up!” Other possible models are “Come on!” “Let’s go!” “Get ready!” or even “Now or never!” For fight for our lives, translators need to find an expression that shows the extreme danger they are in. They must fight hard or they will all be killed.

For today things are not as they were before is literally “for today is not like yesterday or the day before” (An American Translation). Good News Bible expresses the meaning of this clause well with “We are in a worse situation than we have ever been in before,” and so does Contemporary English Version with “We’ve never been in this much danger before.”

It is possible to combine verses 44 and 45; see the suggested model below.

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.