“Then the foreigners who were in the strongholds that Bacchides had built fled. All of them left their places and departed to their own lands. Only in Beth-zur did some remain who had forsaken the law and the commandments. It served as a place of refuge.”

With the closing of the Jerusalem prison, many of the Hellenistic foreigners left for their own countries. However, some of the renegades, the lawless and godless Jews, had a place of refuge in Beth-zur.