1 The Jewish brethren in Jerusalem and those in the land of Judea, To their Jewish brethren in Egypt, Greeting, and good peace. 2 May God do good to you, and may he remember his covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, his faithful servants. 3 May he give you all a heart to worship him and to do his will with a strong heart and a willing spirit. 4 May he open your heart to his law and his commandments, and may he bring peace. 5 May he hear your prayers and be reconciled to you, and may he not forsake you in time of evil. 6 We are now praying for you here. 7 In the reign of Demetrius, in the one hundred and sixty-ninth year,¹ we Jews wrote to you, in the critical distress which came upon us in those years after Jason and his company revolted from the holy land and the kingdom 8 and burned the gate and shed innocent blood. We besought the Lord and we were heard, and we offered sacrifice and cereal offering, and we lighted the lamps and we set out the loaves. 9 And now see that you keep the feast of booths in the month of Chislev, in the one hundred and eighty-eighth year.²
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¹ 1:7 143 BC. ² 1:9 124 BC.
The "feast of booths" here is not the same as the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles) mentioned in Scripture. The Biblical festival of Tabernacles is celebrated in October (Tishri) as a memorial of the Jews' time in the wilderness under God's protection. This December (Chislev) festival is Hanukkah, mentioned in the Bible only in John 10:22.
The motive for the writing of the book is to bring the Egyptian Jews into a harmonious worship practice with temple worship in Jerusalem. In about 170 BC, a priest named Onias IV (son of the Onias III mentioned in 2 Macc. 4:33 ff.) founded a new temple, slightly smaller than Solomon's, in Leontopolis in Egypt.
The way in which Hanukkah is described here makes it sound as if some people (such as the author) were seeking to replace the Feast of Tabernacles with the more immediate celebration of Hanukkah.
What happens when believers begin to replace something the Bible says with their own ideas? Hanukkah, of course, was a perfectly acceptable festival. Jesus attended the Hanukkah celebration during his ministry. But since Hanukkah is never commanded as a feast of the Jews by God (these events took place only a hundred and fifty years before Christ) they could not replace or supplant the festivals of Moses. From our New Testament perspective, this is perhaps a little academic since we celebrate none of these festivals at all anymore. But we can apply the principal: We don't replace God's word with our own customs or new ideas.
But we need to keep focused on what God's word does and does not say. When we hold up a tradition as being more important than the work of the Gospel, then may Paul walk up to face to face and rebuke us as he did Peter in Antioch (Galatians 2:11-12). Instead, we grab onto Paul's inspired command: "We are justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law" (Gal. 2:16).
Note: The Jerusalem Bible, an authorized Catholic translation, betrays the editor's opinion of preaching in his introduction to 2 Maccabees, saying that the book is not the best writing: "at times it is turgid, frequently pompous; more a sermon than a history."
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