2 Maccabees 9:23

²¹As for me, I was weak, or else I would have remembered kindly your honor and good will. Returning out of Persia, and being taken with a grievous disease, I thought it necessary to care for the common safety of all:

²²not distrusting my health, but having great hope to escape this sickness.

— 2 Maccabees 9:23 —

²⁴to the end that, if anything fell out contrary to expectation, or if any tidings were brought that were grievous, they of the land, knowing to whom the state was left, might not be troubled:

²⁵Again, considering how that the princes that are borderers and neighbors unto my kingdom wait for opportunities, and expect what shall be the event, I have appointed my son Antiochus king, whom I often committed and commended unto many of you, when I went up into the high provinces; to whom I have written as followeth: