NOTES for Ma1 2:41
The Maccabean soldiers related very seriously to the rest of the Sabbath in the time of the wars, it was about one of the Ten Commandments, forming the spiritual and legal basis of the Law. The traditional recommendations for the period described as regards its observation asked practically for a complete cessation of any activity, including, of course also the one that was connected to the war activities. Such a requirement can show itself practically very dangerous, but they already appeared at the after captivity period, when the Jews didn’t have their own army and that is why they couldn’t participate in the hostilities. The religious rules concerning the rest of the Sabbath, did not consider the realities connected with the war. Now this inadaptability played a fatal role: the profoundly religious insurgents simply refused to take in their hands weapons and defend themselves, considering it a violation of the rest of the Sabbath.
They tried on the day of the Sabbath to hide from the opponent pursuing them, but it did not always succeed, especially that the prescriptions concerning the Sabbath, among other things, also limited this distance, which we could walk on the day of Sabbath. The insurgents observing the rest of Sabbath turned out easy preys for the Syrian soldiers. This is when the decision was taken: the rest of Sabbath can be violated during the war, if it is required by the logic of the hostilities. Such a decision can seem a forced concession to the circumstances, but by looking at it closer, the picture is a little different. The rest of the Sabbath is not an end in itself; it is only a means for the deepening and the consolidation of the relationships with God.
If instead of the communion with God the day of the Sabbath the man will be waiting for death, it will not approach him at all to God. Besides, the war with the Syrians was for the insurgents a holy war, and thus, God's affair. Such affairs can find a place also on the day of the Sabbath. Purely external, at first sight the collision put before the community a serious question: what is the Sabbath - the rest for the sake of rest or rest for the sake of God? The decision of the insurgents was unequivocal: the Shabbat is rest for God and one should relate accordingly to it.