In the winter of 161 b.c., freezing wind and driving rain slicked the limestone ridges of Judea as Seleucid columns marched south from Syria. Infantrymen dragged supply carts and heavy weaponry up the steep incline toward Jerusalem, struggling against mud and biting cold. Every ravine and stone terrace along the road offered natural cover for local resistance fighters watching the foreign advance. King Demetrius had dispatched Bacchides, and later Nicanor, to crush the uprising and install Alcimus as high priest. Nicanor pitched his camp at Beth-horon with a massive Syrian force, while Judas encamped three miles away at Adasa with three thousand hardened fighters. The imperial baggage train carried silver pay chests equal to forty years of a common laborer's wages, but the rough terrain stripped the invading army of its tactical advantage.
The struggle centered on control of the temple and the office of high priest in Jerusalem. Alcimus betrayed his own people to secure imperial patronage from King Demetrius. In response, Bacchides executed sixty Hasideans in a single day, breaking a sworn oath of peace and throwing their bodies into a stone cistern at Beth-zaith. This slaughter convinced the Judeans that no agreement with the Seleucid Empire or its Greek and Gentile allies could be trusted. When Nicanor arrived, he attempted to capture Judas through false negotiations before losing five thousand men in a skirmish at Caphar-salama. Retreating to Jerusalem, Nicanor stood before the temple altar and swore to burn the sanctuary to the ground unless Judas was surrendered to him. The priests prayed to the God of Heaven for defense against this threat. On the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, the two armies collided at Adasa, a tactical choke point where Judean rebels had previously routed imperial forces. Nicanor fell in the first clash of shields, and his leaderless infantry fled toward Gazara.
The limestone ramparts protecting Jerusalem stood constructed from ashlar blocks weighing up to eight tons each, quarried and set by generations of stonemasons using iron wedges, levers, and plumb lines. These walls functioned as a defensive barrier against siege engines and infantry assaults. When Judas and his troops pursued the defeated Seleucid army across fifteen miles of rough terrain toward Gazara, they stripped the fallen soldiers of their gear. They cut off Nicanor's head and the right hand he had raised in defiance against the temple, transporting them back to Jerusalem. They secured these severed pieces to the outer masonry near the city gates. The display served a direct function in mountain warfare. It proved to the local population that imperial arrogance relied entirely on military capability, and once that capability collapsed, the threat amounted to nothing more than dead meat.
An iron spear is useless once the man holding it loses his footing on wet limestone.
The defeat of Nicanor left the Seleucid army scattered across the road to Gazara, stripping Syria of fifteen tons of weapons, armor, and silver coinage. In Jerusalem, the severed head and right hand remained mounted on the limestone masonry, marking the thirteenth day of Adar as a permanent winter festival of Judean independence.