CHAPTER LXVI.
For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.—Zechariah xiv. 2.
Imperial Rome, to whom the world once bowed, and whose power could command armies from "all nations," had conquered Judea, and received from her the yearly tribute of her subjection:[138] but, through the oppression of the Roman governors, and the madness of the people, the standard of revolt was planted, and the Jews attempted to break their yoke of bondage. The Roman legions, inured to war, and accustomed to the shout of victory, hastened to subdue the rebellious Israelites: they passed from city to city, and from province to province; slaughter and death marked their course; the strife was desperate; the conflict bloody; the Jews fought like men determined to conquer or to die: two hundred and forty-seven thousand seven hundred were slain before their provinces were subjugated, and an immense number made prisoners: amongst whom was Josephus, the historian of the war, who was governor of the two Galilees, and who defended them with skill and bravery. The Romans, having conquered the provinces, approached to assault Jerusalem, which was then a dreadful scene. The sound of war was heard through all her gates; regardless of the approaching foe, the Jews had turned their arms against each other; three several factions were busily engaged in the work of slaughter and destruction. Eleazar and the Zealots seized the temple; John of Gischala and his followers occupied its out-works; and Simon, the son of Gorias, possessed the whole of the lower, and a great part of the upper, town. Jerusalem was built on two hills; the highest, on which stood the temple, was called the upper town, and the other the lower: between these lay a valley covered with houses; the suburbs of the city were extensive, and encircled by a wall; two other walls also surrounded Jerusalem, the interior one of remarkable strength. Neither of the three factious parties had any just claim to supremacy or power, though all contended for dominion, and fought for plunder. The Zealots were the smallest party, but, from their situation, possessed the advantage: they sallied from their strong holds to attack John, who seized every opportunity of assaulting Simon; thus John maintained a double war, and was often obliged to divide his forces, being attacked by Eleazar and Simon at the same time. In these furious contests, no age or sex was spared; the slaughter was dreadful. When either party was repelled, the other set fire to the building, without any distinction. Regardless of their contents, they consumed granaries and store-houses, which contained a stock of corn and other necessaries of life, sufficient to maintain the inhabitants during a siege of many years; but nearly the whole was burnt, and this circumstance made way for a calamity more horrid than even war itself. Famine soon showed her meagre form, and all classes felt the dreadful effects of a scarcity of food. Such was the miserable state of Jerusalem when the Roman general Titus (son of the reigning emperor, Vespasian,) prepared to attack the city. The sight of a powerful foreign foe at their gates, with all the artillery of war, could not quell the factions within; it is true, when closely pressed by the Romans, the three parties joined to repel the common enemy, but no sooner had they breathing time, than the spirit of contention arose, and they resumed the slaughter of each other: thus they maintained a fierce contest with the besiegers, and, at the same time, seized every opportunity of destroying each other. The misery of the city was soon beyond precedent, from the dreadful effects of famine, the price of provisions became exorbitant, and, when no longer offered for sale, the houses were entered and searched, and the wretched owners tortured till they confessed where the slender pittance was concealed; at length the distress became so great, that persons parted with the whole of their property to obtain a bushel of wheat, which they eat before it could be baked, or even ground; and happy was he who could catch a morsel of meat, half roasted, half raw, from the fire. No kind of cruelty was omitted in search of food: at length their sufferings were so severe, that the wretched inhabitants were necessitated to search the vaults and sinks for sustenance, and even fed on articles too offensive to be named. The ties of nature and humanity were forgotten, the wife seized the food from her husband, the child from the parent, and even the mother from her infant.[139] The excruciating pain of famine so far overpowered the tenderest and finest affections in nature, that a woman, descended from a rich and respectable family, even killed, boiled, and ate, her own child, a son in all the artless and endearing simplicity of infancy! Well may the British mother tremble at the horrid sound, and pity the wretched Israelitish female, thus sunk below the brute. Pestilence now stalked abroad, for the air was tainted by the dead: though no less than six hundred thousand dead bodies were carried out of the city during the time Titus encamped before the walls, yet there was an incredible number who had no friends to bury them, and their bodies were enclosed in large buildings, or laid in heaps in the open air. "O Jerusalem, thou didst drink at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out" even desolation, destruction, famine and sword, "thy houses rifled, thy women ravished" by Jewish ruffians, and the city at length taken by the Roman general. Titus had again and again offered the Jews honourable terms of capitulation; but they rejected all his overtures with proud disdain, and when his soldiers took the city, exasperated at the hardships they had endured, they spared neither sex, age, or rank. Sword and fire destroyed Jerusalem and her children, and closed this horrid war, in which one million one hundred thousand Jews were slain, and ninety-seven thousand made prisoners.
CHAPTER LXVII.
The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young.—Deut. xxviii. 49, 50.
And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, 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; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.—Luke xix. 41-44.
Judea was not conquered by the neighbouring Asiatic states, but by the Roman, Europeans of a "fierce and warlike countenance," who knew not the Jewish language, and regarded not "the persons of the old, nor showed favour to the young." It will not be difficult to trace the Roman soldiers in this eloquently descriptive character. No nation excelled them in their military prowess, or in the rapidity of their conquests. In comparatively a very short period of time, they extended their empire over all the then civilised part of the globe. The insignia of their legions was not more descriptive of their valour, than of the unexampled rapidity of their movements. The celebrated motto of Cæsar, "I came, I saw, I conquered," was neither of a doubtful, or boasting, character. Their career was indeed "as swift as the eagle flieth." No nation or people did long withstand the fierceness of their attacks, or the persevering energy of their generals. In their triumphs over their enemies, they frequently displayed a ferocity happily unknown in modern warfare. The most distinguished of their captives, without regard to age or sex, were dragged in triumph, amidst the shouts of the conquerors, and the insults of the rabble. Often, when exasperated by the protracted defence of a brave people struggling for their existence, instead of respecting such patriotic efforts, they inflicted the most horrid barbarities upon the unresisting and unhappy objects of their vengeance; and a slaughter, indiscriminating in its fury, and dreadful in its results, marked the blood-stained progress of the licentious soldiery, who "regarded not the person of the old, nor showed favour to the young." History informs us, that the Romans, under Titus and Vespasian, after a protracted siege, unparalleled in horror, and sanguinary beyond example, at length became masters of this once-favoured spot; and if we compare the predictions of Christ with the events which occurred, and followed at the taking of this devoted city, we shall be struck with the coincidence of the declaration, and its awful fulfilment.
His foreknowledge of the dreadful calamities which should precede and accompany the destruction of Jerusalem, caused our blessed Saviour, when he beheld the city, to weep over it: and, surely, if this once-favoured race had then known the day of its visitation, the Lord would have turned from his fierce anger: but these things "were hid from their eyes." Having rejected the Lord of Glory, they were given over to judicial blindness, and the Lord brought upon them "a nation from afar" to execute his vengeance. Jerusalem was "trodden down by the Gentiles," and there was "great distress upon the land, and wrath upon the people." The sword and the spear from without, and famine and pestilence and civil discord within, were indeed unto them "the beginning of sorrows." The predicted day was now come, when their "enemies should cast a trench about them, and compass them round, and keep them in on every side." Their walls of strength, their beautiful palaces, and their magnificent temple, were laid "even with the ground." Not "one stone was left upon another" that was not thrown down; and all the princes and the nobles, the ruler and the ruled, the priest and the people, and "the children within thee," either "fell by the edge of the sword," or were "led away captive into all nations," for there was "great distress in the land, and wrath upon the people."