JERUSALEM, The Fall of, Sylvester Hassell “There is scarcely another period in history so full of vice, corruption and disaster as the six years between the Neronian persecution and the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophetic description in the last days of our Lord began to be fulfilled before the generation to which he spoke had passed away, and the day of judgment seemed to be near at hand. So the Christians believed, and had good reason to believe. Even to earnest heathen minds (such as those of Seneca and Tacitus) that period looked as dark as midnight, according to their own descriptions.”
“The most unfortunate country in that period was Palestine, where an ancient and venerable nation brought upon itself unspeakable suffering and destruction. The tragedy of Jerusalem prefigures in miniature the final judgment, and in this light it is represented in the eschatological discourses of Christ, who foresaw the end from the beginning.”—P. Schaff
Intimately connected with the early progress of Christianity was the destruction of Jerusalem, and the entire and final overthrow of the Jewish nation. The Jews crucified the Lord of life and glory, and persecuted his followers in the most cruel manner until their nationality was put an end to—a period of about 40 years from the Savior’s death.
The Jews asked that his blood should be on them and on their children (Matt. 27:25), and their imprecation was answered. He had already foretold their overthrow and the certainty that God’s vengeance would fall on them. Said he, “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily, I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt. 23:36-38).
When the disciples showed him the buildings of the temple that he might admire them, he “said unto them, See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matt. 24:1,2).
And again said he, “The days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee even with the ground, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another” (Luke 19:43,44).
As the accomplishment of these predictions ended in the utter abolition of the Jewish church and state, a constitution which was originally founded in Divine appointment, and had existed during a period of fifteen hundred years; and as it was unquestionably the most awful revolution in all the religious dispensations of God, and which, moreover, in various ways, contributed greatly to the success of the gospel, it seems to merit especial attention at our hands.
From Nero to Vespasian there were five different Roman emperors, if we include these two, in the short space of eighteen months; and during this period the empire was a scene of confusion, desolation and misery, and not in a mood to persecute Christians, as it was subsequently.
After the death of King Herod Agrippa, the particulars of which the reader will find recorded in Acts 12., Judea again became a province of the Roman Empire, and Cuspius Fadus was sent to be its governor. He found matters very much unsettled in Palestine. The country was infested with banditti, and an imposter named Theudas had drawn large numbers after him, promising them to divide the waters of Jordan, as Joshua had done, by his single word, and lead them to pleasures beyond, etc. Theudas was taken and beheaded, and his followers dispersed, the Jews were quelled, and the banditti partially suppressed. Cuspius was succeeded by Tiberius Alexander, an apostate Jew, who very shortly gave way to make room for Ventidius Cumanus, under whose rule the troubles began which ended in the downfall of Jerusalem.
One of the Roman soldiers, at the time of the Jewish Passover, insulted the Jews by exposing his nakedness, and this exasperated them to such a degree that they complained of it to Cumanus, and charged him with ordering the offense to be given. He endeavored to reason with them, but could not succeed by words, so that he ordered his troops to the spot; and this so terrified the Jews that they fled in every direction, and twenty thousand were stifled to death in their flight by running over one another in the confined avenues that led to and from the temple.
Cumanus was succeeded by Claudius Felix as governor of Judea, and under his administration things went from bad to worse. The country swarmed with banditti; Jerusalem became the prey of false prophets and pretended workers of miracles, who were continually inciting discontent and sedition; and numbers of assassins, under the name of Sicarii, abounded in all the cities and towns of the country, committing the most horrible murders under the pretext of religious and patriotic zeal. These Sicarii could be hired by any one to assassinate an enemy or any person who seemed to stand in the way of another.
The Jewish priests, and even the pontiffs, made no hesitation in hiring these assassins to rid them of all such persons as were obnoxious to them. In the meantime Felix went forth with his soldiers in every direction, punishing the innocent with the guilty, and thereby destroyed all confidence in the Roman government as a power for the promotion of justice and equity in the land.
Felix was succeeded in the government by Festus, who, when entering upon the duties of his office, found the very priesthood engaged in war with each other. The high priests claimed a full share also, while the inferior priests were loth to yield what belonged to them. Thus parties were formed, and, each party hiring a squad of the Sicarii to accompany them, dreadful encounters often occurred, wherein many were murdered, both in Jerusalem and other towns; and even the very temple itself was defiled with the blood of these victims.
Festus, therefore, had a threefold task upon his hands; he had to suppress the violence of the priesthood against each other; that of the seditious Jews against the Romans and such as contentedly submitted to their government; and that of the banditti abroad, who infested the whole country, and robbed, plundered and massacred everywhere without mercy.
Festus dying soon after Paul was brought before him, Nero nominated his successor Albinus, of whom it is related by historians that he was such a curel and rapacious monster that Felix and Festus, with all their faults, were angels when compared with him.
After a two years’ tenure of office he was succeeded by Gessius Florus, the last and worst of all the Roman governors. His rapines, cruelties and acts of oppression, his compromising with the banditti for large sums of money, and, in short, his whole behavior, were so openly flagitious that the Jews were disposed to regard him rather as a bloody executioner sent to torture than as a magistrate to govern them. His great object seemed to be to goad the Jews to open rebellion against the Roman government, and he succeeded well at that.
In the days of Felix a dispute arose between the Jews and Syrians as to the ownership of Caesarea, each claiming it. It was referred to the emperor, who decided against the Jews, and the latter became indignant, and took up arms in defense of their claim. They assailed both Syrians and Romans in all places and on all occasions of their meeting together. Throughout all Judea little else was heard of but robberies, murders, and every species of cruelty—cities and villages filled with the dead of all ages and each sex, and of every quality, down to the tender infant.
The Caesareans fell suddenly on the jews in their city and massacred twenty thousand of them; two thousand were murdered at Ptolemais, and fifty thousand at the city of Alexandria, in Egypt. At Jerusalem, Florus one day caused his troops to go and plunder the market, and to kill all they met; and they accordingly murdered three thousand five hundred persons, men, women, and children, and the streets of the city were day after day deluged with blood. Florus gloated over the carnage, and wrote to Cestius, the governor of Syria, casting the blame of all these horrible cruelties upon the Jews.
This war of open rebellion against the Roman government was fairly inaugurated in the second year of the government of Florus, in the twelfth of Nero’s reign, A.D. 66.
The Jews next pushed their conquests beyond the river Jordan, took the fortress of Cyprus, razed it to the ground, and put all the Romans to the sword. The governor of Syria then bestirred himself, marched into Judea with a powerful army, burned towns and villages in his way, massacred all the Jews he could come at, and then encamped before Gibeon about the feast of tabernacles.
The Jews at Jerusalem, hearing of his approach, forsook the solemnities of their religion, and, even though it was the Sabbath day, flew to arms and proceeded to meet him with such fury, that had not the cavalry arrived at the moment to the support of his infantry, he had sustained a signal defeat. He lost five hundred men, while the Jews lost but twenty-two.
Cestius proffered terms of peace. The Jews killed one of his messengers, and wounded another. Enraged at this, he marched forward, and encamped in order of battle before Jerusalem on the 30th of October, A.D. 66. This put the Jews in great consternation, and they abandoned all their outworks, and retired to the inner cincture near the temple. Cestius fired the former, and laid siege to the latter, and took up his headquarters in the royal palace. He now hesitated; his generals were bribed; the Jews made a sortie and succeeded in repulsing him; they drove him back to his camp at Gibeon, harassed his rear, secured the passes, and attacked his army in flank.
Hemmed in on all sides, the mountains re-echoed with the hideous cries of his soldiers, and having lost four thousand foot and two hundred horse, favored by the intervening night, they on the eighth of November happily found a pass through the narrow straits of Bethoron and escaped.
Milman says that the Romans might easily have made themselves masters of the city of Jerusalem; and it was to the universal surprise that Cestius called off his troops. Though the war continued, Jerusalem was not besieged again till April, A.D. 70.
During this interval of about two years and a half the Christians in Jerusalem, remembering Christ’s words of warning (Matt. 24:15; Mark 13:14; Luke 21:21), fled beyond the Jordan to Pella, in the north of Perea, in the mountains of Gilead, some sixty miles northeast of Jerusalem, where king Herod Agrippa II opened to them a safe asylum; and they escaped the horrors of the final siege of Jerusalem.
The retreat of Cestius aroused Nero, who sent Vespasian and his son Titus, in the ensuing spring, into Galilee with an army of sixty thousand men, well disciplined and equipped for service. They burnt Gadara, and marched towards Jotapata; but Josephus, the celebrated historian, and at that time governor of the province, threw himself into that place and defended it for a period of forty-seven days. It was finally taken about the beginning of July, with the loss of all its inhabitants—forty thousand slain, and only twelve hundred prisoners; among the latter was Josephus himself.
Josephus predicted the elevation of Vespasian to the throne of the Caesars in three years. Vespasian did not believe it, but treated Josephus kindly as a prisoner, and when he was elected, the next year, emperor or Rome, left the army and Josephus in the care of his son Titus, who gave him much liberty, and sent him occasionally to the Jews to urge them to desist from further rebellion.
Titus took Jaffa, two miles southwest of Nazareth, while his father was besieging Jotapata. All the men were put to the sword, and women and children taken prisoners. Joppa, which had been repeopled by a great number of seditious Jews since it was taken by Cestius, was retaken by Vespasian, and about four thousand of its inhabitants destroyed. Tarichea and Tiberius were next taken. The other cities of Galilee then submitted to the Romans, except Gischala, Gamala and Mount Tabor.
Gamala was taken, and four thousand of its citizens were put to the sword, while vast numbers took their own lives rather than surrender to the Romans. Mount Tabor was taken by stratagem, and, after John of Gischala left that city and fled with his soldiers towards Jerusalem, the remaining citizens surrendered. This completed the conquest of Galilee, after which the whole Roman army took respite at Caesarea before they began the siege of Jerusalem.
While Vespasian was resting his army in winter quarters at Caesarea, the Jews were exhausting themselves in Jerusalem by their factions, and warring against each other. They were at that time, no doubt, the worst population on the face of the globe, and eventually suffered more than any other.
The dominant party, which was the war party, consisted of men of the vilest and most profligate characters that perhaps the pen of the historian ever described. They were proud, ambitious, cruel, rapacious, and addicted to the most horrid crimes. Josephus says they acted more like infernal beings than men. Yet there were men peaceably disposed within the city, and who would have sought terms with the Romans if they could. These were few, however, and suffered for their virtues.
John of Gischala, who fled from that place to Jerusalem to escape the clutches of Vespasian, had placed himself at the head of the dominant party, and practiced the most unheard of cruelties upon the innocent and inoffensive. At one time he and his party put to death twelve thousand persons of noble extraction, and in the flower of their age, butchering them in the most horrible manner. In short, the whole nation trembled at the mention of the names of these men, and did not dare to be seen or heard to weep for the murder of their nearest relatives nor even to give them burial.
When the party of John had quelled, as they supposed, all opposition to them within the walls of the city, they began to turn their murderous weapons against each other, all of which was favorable to the Romans, and well known to them. Famine and pestilence also prevailed in the city and made its conquest the easier.
Vespasian marched out of Caesarea in the spring of A.D. 70, penetrated Idumea, and plundered and burnt every place through which he passed, except where it was necessary to leave a garrison to keep the country in awe. On receiving the intelligence of his election as emperor, he left the army in charge of his son Titus, and repaired to Rome. His advice to his son was to utterly destroy Jerusalem.
Titus lost no time in complying with this command. He set his army in motion in April, marched at once to the walls of that devoted city, and commenced the siege immediately after the Passover, when Jerusalem was filled with strangers. It seemed almost impregnable, being on an eminence and surrounded with three walls and many stately towers. The first or old wall, which by reason of its vast thickness was looked upon as impregnable, had no less than sixty of these towers, lofty, firm, and strong. The second had fourteen, and third eighty. The circumference of the city was nearly four English miles.
The siege fairly commenced on the 14th of April and ended on the 8th of September, when it was taken and entered by Titus—lasting five months wanting six days. The wonder to us how a single city could withstand the power of Rome for such a length of time. Unheard of cruelties and sufferings occurred within that period. It was reported to Titus by a deserter that at one of the gates where he was stationed there were carried out to be buried one hundred and fifteen thousand eight hundred and eighty persons from the 14th of April to the 1st of July. Another told him that they had carried out at all the gates six hundred thousand, and that then, being unable to carry them all out, they had filled whole houses with them and shut them up.
One circumstance will suffice to show the deplorable famine that prevailed in the city. An unhappy and starving mother, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Moses (Deut. 28:56,57), was reduced to the necessity of feeding upon her own child. “This lady’s name was Miriam, who had taken refuge, with many others, in this devoted city, from the breaking out of the war. As the famine increased, her house was repeatedly plundered of such provisions as she had been able to procure. She had vainly endeavored, by her entreaties, to prevail upon them to put an end to her miserable existence, but the mercy was too great to be granted her. Frantic at length with fury and despair, she snatched her infant from her bosom, cut its throat and broiled it; and, having satiated her present hunger, concealed the rest. The smell of it soon drew the voracious human tigers to her house; they threatened her with the most excruciating tortures if she did not discover her provisions to them; upon which she set forth before them the relics of her mangled infant, bidding them eat heartily and not to be squeamish, since she, its once tender mother, had made no scruple to butcher, dress, and feed upon it. At the sight of this horrid dish, inhuman as they were, they stood aghast, petrified with horror, and departed, leaving the astonished mother in possession of her dismal fare.
“When the report of this spread through the city, the horror and consternation were as universal as they were inexpressible. They now for the first time began to think themselves forsaken of the providence of God, and to expect the most awful effects of his anger. Nor were their fears either unreasonable or ill-founded; for no sooner had Titus heard of this inhuman deed than he vowed the total extirpation of the city and people. “Since,” said he, “they have so often refused my proffers of pardon, and have preferred war to peace, rebellion to obedience, and famine to plenty, I am determined to bury that cursed metropolis under its ruins, that the sun may never more dart his beams upon a city where the mothers feed on the flesh of their children, and the fathers, no less guilty than themselves, choose to drive them to such extremities rather than lay down their arms.”—W. Jones
And yet such was the humanity of Titus that he felt reluctant to destroy so many human beings, frequently tendering them forgiveness upon repentance: and such his regard for the magnificence and value of the temple that it was set on fire, at last, and consumed, against his orders and in defiance of his commands, expostulations, and canings of his soldiers who did the awful deed.
Seeing that all was lost, and his endeavors to save the temple ineffectual, “Titus entered into the sanctuary and Most Holy place, the remaining grandeur and riches of which, even yet, surpassed all that had been told him of it. Out of the former he saved the golden candlestick, the table of the shew-bread, the altar of incense, all of pure gold, and the book of the law, wrapped up in a rich golden tissue. Upon his quitting that sacred place some soldiers set fire to it, obliging those who had staid behind to come out also, in consequence of which they all began to plunder it, carrying off the costly utensils, robes, gold plating of the gates, etc., insomuch that there was not one of them who did not enrich himself by it.
“A horrid massacre succeeded to this, in which many thousands perished, some by the flames, others falling from the battlements, and a greater number still by the enemy’s sword, which spared neither age, sex, nor quality. Among them were upwards of six thousand persons who had been seduced thither by a false prophet, who promised them they should find a miraculous deliverance on that very day.”
“The Romans carried their fury to the burning of all the treasure houses of the place, though they were full of the richest furniture, vestments, plate, and other valuable articles, there laid up for security; nor did they cease the dreadful work of devastation till they had destroyed all except two of the temple gates, and that part of the court that was destined for the women.”
“The temple was burned on the tenth of August, the same day of the year it was said that the first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Josephus states that the hill on which the temple stood was seething hot, and seemed enveloped to its base in one sheet of flame; that the blood was larger in quantity that the fire, and all the ground was covered with corpses. The Romans planted their eagles or standards on the temple ruins, offered their sacrifices to them, and proclaimed Titus Imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy. Thus was fulfilled Christ’s prophecy concerning the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.”
“The city was now abandoned to the fury of the soldiers, who proceeded forthwith to plunder it, setting it on fire in every direction, and murdering all that fell into their hands—whilst the factious party among the Jews, that had hitherto escaped, went and fortified themselves in the royal palace, where they killed eight thousand of their own countrymen who had taken refuge there.”
“Preparations were now making for a vigorous attack on the upper city, and particularly on the royal palace, and this occupied Titus from the 20th of August to the 7th of September, during which time great numbers came and made their submission to him, among whom were forty thousand citizens of the inferior classes, to whom he gave permission to go and settle where they would. On the 8th of September the city was taken (as had been said) and entered by Titus.”
“Josephus estimates that one million and one hundred thousand Jews were slain during the siege; eleven thousand died from starvation shortly afterwards; and ninety-seven thousand were sold into slavery, or sent to the mines, or sacrificed in the gladitorial shows in different cities.”
“It is not a little remarkable that Titus, though a heathen, was frequently obliged, during this war, to acknowledge an overruling providence, not only in the extraordinary success with which he had been favored, but also in the invincible obstinacy, through which the Jews, to the last, preferred their total destruction to an acceptance of his repeated overtures of mercy.”
“Again and again did he, in the most solemn manner, appeal to heaven that he was innocent of the blood of this wretched people (Josephus’ Wars, b.5 ch.12). In almost every chapter we find Josephus also ascribing these dreadful calamities, and the final ruin of his nation, city and temple, to an overruling power; to the offended Deity; to the sins of the people; but nowhere more pathetically than in that chapter in which he sums up a number of dreadful warnings, sent beforehand not so much to reduce them to obedience as to make them discern the Almighty hand that was ever pouring out the awful vials of his wrath upon them (Josephus’ Wars, b.6 ch.5, and b.5, ch.13).”
“As soon as the Romans had completed their destructive work of fire and slaughter, Titus set them to demolish the city, with all its noble structures, fortifications, palaces, towers, walls and other ornaments, down to the level of the ground; as though he had nothing in view but to fulfill the predictions of Christ concerning its destruction, as contained in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew’s gospel. He left nothing standing but a piece of the western wall and three towers, which he reserved merely as a monument to future ages of what had been the strength of the city, and the skill and valor of its conqueror. His orders were executed so punctually that, except what has been just mentioned, nothing remained that could serve as an index that that ground had been once inhabited; insomuch that when Titus himself, some time afterwards, passed through it on his way from Caesarea to Alexandria, in order to embark for Rome, he wept profusely at the sight of a devastation so dreadful, cursing the wretches that had compelled him to be the author of it (Josephus’ Wars, b.6 chs. 8 and 9).”
“Such was the dreadful issue of this war, terminating in the utter downfall of the Jewish state and nation, from which it has never recovered to this day; it involved in it the destruction of the temple, and the discontinuance of the services annexed to it. The desolation of the country itself went on increasing; till, from being, for its size, one of the most fertile and populous countries in the world, having about five million inhabitants, it is now become the most barren and desolate, the latest computation of the number of its inhabitants scarcely exceeding three hundred thousand.”
“Not only the wisdom, but the justice of God is also conspicuously displayed in this great event. A particular Providence had ever attended these people. They had always been favored with prosperity while obedient to God and his prophets; and, on the other hand, calamity of some kind had been the never failing consequence of their disobedience. But the measure of their iniquities was now filled up, and the wrath of heaven came upon them to the uttermost. Never had the nation in general shown a more perverse or obstinate disposition towards any of their prophets than was evinced towards Christ and his Apostles, though none of their prophets had even been sent to them with such evident marks of a Divine mission. Their inveterate hostility to Christianity continues to this day, and so does their dispersion, though they are still a distinct people, and never mix, so as to be confounded, with any of the nations among whom they have settled.”
“All other ancient peoples have blended together in an indistinguishable mass; but the Jews, having disobeyed God, and having, according to the prediction of Moses (Deut. 28:49-68), been plucked up out of their own land by a distant, eagle-like nation, of strange tongue and fierce countenance, and having been scattered among all people from one end of the earth to the other, remain still distinct from all other people, for the purpose of being, to all men, living proofs of the truth of the Old Testament, and for the fulfillment of the prophecies that are still to be accomplished.”
“The reader will perceive that the history of the Jewish war, as detailed by their own historian, Josephus, in many instances a witness of the facts he attests, forms a commentary on the prophecies of Christ. Amongst other things, he has given a distinct account of the “fearful sights and great signs from heaven” which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem; and Tacitus has confirmed the narration of Josephus (Tacit. Annal, b.5). If Christ had not expressly foretold these things, some might have suspected that Josephus exaggerated, and Tacitus was misinformed; but as the testimonies of these historians confirm the predictions of Christ, so do the predictions of Christ confirm the wonders recorded by the historians.”—W. Jones. (Hassell’s History ppg 215- 224)