It is God who has saved all his people: The Greek grammar of this sentence, which extends into verse 18, is strange, and it is possible that the text is defective. But in spite of the problems, the Greek does make sense. Revised Standard Version translates it literally, but Good News Bible begins this verse simply with “God has saved all his people” (similarly Contemporary English Version), which we recommend.

And has returned the inheritance to all: The inheritance refers to the Jewish homeland. An alternative model for this clause is “and has returned to all of us our land that we inherited from our ancestors” (similarly Contemporary English Version).

And the kingship and priesthood and consecration: Here the meaning becomes difficult, since God had not restored the kingship. Whether he had restored the consecration depends on what we understand by it. Goldstein thinks the verb “will restore” has dropped out of the text, so that the last part of this verse should say “will also restore the kingdom and the priesthood and the sanctification.” This makes a lot of sense, especially preceding verse 18, but this is still a guess by Goldstein and we hesitate to recommend it. Perhaps kingship can be understood as political control over their own land and their own destiny, national independence, so that we may translate “God has also let us have control over our country again” or “God has also given us independence again.” Priesthood means “God has given us back our priests.” Consecration probably refers to the restoration of the priestly rituals in the Temple.

Here is a possible approach to this verse:

• God has saved [or, rescued] all of his people, and has returned to all of us our land that was handed down to us by our ancestors. Thanks to God, we govern ourselves [or, we are independent] again, and the priests are conducting worship in the Temple again.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.