Antiochus Eupator, son of the infamous Antiochus Epiphanes, inherited his father's hatred of the Jews. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster in 1899, Eupator dispatched his cousin Lysias with an army of 80,000 horsemen and eighty war elephants—a force designed to annihilate Judah once and for all.
The Macedonian army reached Bethther and laid siege. They built a ditch around the city, brought battering rams and siege stones, and began their assault. Judah and the Hasmonean fighters defended the walls with desperate courage, but they were vastly outnumbered.
In the midst of battle, Eleazar—one of Judah's brothers—spotted an enormous elephant bearing royal armor, larger than all the others. Convinced that Eupator himself was riding it, Eleazar made a decision that would become legendary. He charged through the enemy ranks, cutting soldiers down on every side, and reached the great beast. Dropping to the ground, he crawled beneath the elephant and drove his sword upward into its belly. The elephant collapsed on top of him. Eleazar was crushed to death beneath the animal he had killed—a sacrifice that stunned both armies.
The siege ground on. The Jews inside the city began to starve, for it was a sabbatical year and their food stores were depleted. Judah's forces were weakening. But then word reached Eupator that Demetrius had risen against him with a Roman army back in Macedon. Eupator sued for peace, sending a letter to Judah addressed to "Judah the Anointed one of battle and to the rest of the people." The letter granted the Jews permission to live in peace and observe their law. He even sent Menelaos to negotiate terms, and offered an apology: "Pardon whatever actions my father erringly did." The siege was lifted—not by military victory, but by the shifting politics of empire.