This paper analyzes the transformation of the martyrology of the mother of the seven martyred sons recounted in 2 Macc 7:1–42 and 4 Maccabees within rabbinic narrative. It takes as its starting point the view, most clearly articulated by Jan Willem van Henten, that the blood of the martyrs in both 2 and 4 Maccabees is linked to an already well-developed notion of vicarious suffering and death and that it, in turn, restores the disrupted politico-theocratic order to its rightful form. Yet while the blood of the martyrs is said to effect the fate of the nation as a whole, the martyrs’ reward of eternal life (4 Macc 17:18–19; 18:6–19) is not extended to their compatriots and the punishment meted out to the oppressor is similarly targeted only against the individual oppressor, Antiochus IV (4 Macc 9:9, 10:11–21, and 12:12–18). In this important respect, 4 Maccabees operates with a notion of retributive justice quite different from the one found in historical apocalypses such as Daniel. These variations indicate that the symbolic significance of the image of the blood of the martyrs is not fixed, but is largely dependent on the larger literary context and genre in which it appears. By extension, the meanings that the blood of the martyrs carries in rabbinic narrative are likewise conditioned by the specific contours of the discourse of blood in Late Antiquity. This is perhaps especially true within the context of the version of the story of the mother and her seven sons found in Lamentations Rabbati, a verse-by-verse exegetical commentary on the book of Lamentations from fifth- or sixth-century Palestine. The creators of this midrashic work freely juxtaposed Maccabean and rabbinic martyrology and even recast the Maccabean martyrs as victims of Roman oppression. The narrative in Lamentations Rabbati echoes many of the features found in its earlier Second Temple parallels, most notably the theme of the martyrs’ blood. This proves particularly significant because the blood motif is otherwise absent from all the other rabbinic versions of the story (bGit 57b; Pesiq. Rbti 43; SER 28 [30]; YalqSh to Deut, §938; YalqSh to Lam, §1029). I interpret the re-narration of this story in Lamentations Rabbati within the overall programme of the midrash, which, as a meditation on the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, explicitly explores the nature of religious piety in a post-sacrificial Judaism.