possessions through the provinces he'd recovered. He went and conquered a bunch of provinces and as he's coming back to Egypt, as he goes through each area he's celebrating, he entered Jerusalem and after a blasphemous act of offering sacrifices to God, he attempted to enter the most holy place of the temple in spite of the protests and entreaties of the Jews in charge. So he comes to Jerusalem, he's gonna he's gonna celebrate there as well and he offers some blasphemous offerings but then he wants to go in the most holy place and this is what the historian says, he was smitten from God with such a terror and confusion of mind that he was carried out of the place in a manner half dead. On this he departed from Jerusalem filled with great wrath against the whole nation of the Jews for that which happened to him in that place and venting many threatenings against them for it and in the verse 12 it talks about him casting down many ten thousands and it's talking it's describing his retaliations against the Jews for this incident. One of the points that is important for for me in this is that even in the condition that Israel is at during this time period of history, God is still involved with God's people at this time. He he's protected the most holy place from being entered by this king. Now continuing on in the historical narrative about this, in vengeance for his disgrace at Jerusalem he returned to his country and endeavored to force the many Jews in Egypt to sacrifice their heathen gods and renounce the worship to sacrifice to Egypt's heathen gods and to renounce their worship of Jehovah. When 300 Jews adopted the heathen religion they were excommunicated by the Jewish society. Regarding this as a further insult to himself, Pilipater determined to destroy the Jews in his dominion and commanded that as many as could be rounded up be brought in chains to Alexandria. These were placed in a large arena and it was proposed that on a certain day a great public spectacle would be made by turning wild and drunken elephants upon them. The devout Jews earnestly called upon God. When the appointed time came the drunken and maddened beasts were let loose but they turned their rage upon all those who came to see the show and destroyed great numbers of them and besides several appearances were soon seen in the air which much frightened the king and all the spectators, all which manifesting the interposal of divine power and the protection of those people. Pilipater does not any longer prosecute his rage against them but ordered them to be all set free and fearing the divine vengeance upon him in their behalf he restored them to all their privileges rescinding and revoking all his decrees which he had published against them. But three years afterwards however in 213 BC Pilipater on another pretext slew 40,000 Jews.