Fatally was the word of the great prophet of Israel accomplished; fearfully fell the sword, to smite away root and branch; solemnly, and by a hand which scorned the strength of man, was the deluge of ruin let loose against the throne of David. And still through almost two thousand years, the flood of desolation is at the full; no mountain-top is seen rising above; no spot is left clear for the sole of the Jewish foot; no dove returns with the olive.
Eternal King, shall this be forever? Wilt Thou utterly reject the children of him whom thy right hand brought from the land of the idolater? Wilt Thou forever hide Thy glory from the tribes whom it led through the burning wilderness? Wilt Thou never raise the broken kingdom of Thy servant Israel? Still we wander in darkness, the tenants of a prison, whose chains we feel at every step; the scoff of the idolater, the captive of the infidel. Have we not abided without king or priest, or ephod or teraphim, “many days”—when are those days to be at an end?
Yet is not the captivity at last about to close? Is not the trumpet at the lip to summon Thy chosen? Are not the broken tribes now awaiting but Thy command to come from the desert, from the dungeon, from the mine, like the light from darkness? I gaze upon the stars and think, countless and glorious as they are, such shall yet be thy multitude and thy splendor, people of the undone! The promise of the King of Kings is fulfilling, and even now, to my withered eyes, to my struggling prayer, to the deeper agonies of a supplication that no tongue can utter, there is a vision and an answer. On the flint, worn by kneeling, I hear the midnight voice; and weeping, wait for the day that will come, tho heaven and earth shall pass away.
CHAPTER XLVI
A Cry of Wo
My first object was to ascertain the fate of my family. From Constantius I could learn nothing, for the severity of his wound had reduced him to such a state that he recognized no one. I sat by him day after day, watching with bitter solicitude for the return of his senses. He raved continually of his wife, and of every other name that I loved. The affecting eloquence of his appeals sometimes plunged me into the deepest depression—sometimes drove me out to seek relief from them, even in the horrors of the streets. I was the most solitary of men. In those melancholy wanderings, none spoke to me; I spoke to none. The kinsmen whom I had left under the command of my brave son were slain or dispersed, and on the night when I saw him warring with his native ardor, the men whom he led to the foot of the rampart were an accidental band, excited by his brilliant intrepidity to choose him at the instant for their captain. In sorrow, indeed, had I entered Jerusalem.
The Devastation of Jerusalem
The devastation of the city was enormous during its tumults. The great factions were reduced to two, but in the struggle a large portion of the Temple had been burned. The stately chambers of the priests were dust and embers. The cloisters which surrounded the sanctuary were beaten down or left naked to the visitation of the seasons, which now, as by the peculiar wrath of heaven, had assumed a fierce and ominous inclemency. Tremendous bursts of tempest constantly shook the city, and the popular mind was kept in perpetual alarm at the accidents which followed those storms. Fires were frequently caused by the lightning; deluges of rain flooded the streets, and falling on the shattered roofs, increased the misery of their famishing inhabitants; the sudden severity of winter in the midst of spring added to the sufferings of a people doubly unprovided to encounter it, by its unexpectedness and by their necessary exposure on the battlements and in the field.
Within the walls all bore the look of a grave, and even that grave shaken by some great convulsion of nature. From the battlements the sight was absolute despair. The Roman camps covered the hills, and we could see the soldiery sharpening the very lances that were to drink our blood. The fires of their night-watches lighted up the horizon round. We hourly heard the sound of their trumpets and their shouts, as the sheep in the fold might hear the roaring of the lion and the tiger, ready to leap their feeble boundary. Yet the valor of the people was never wearied out. The vast mound, whose circle was to shut us up from the help of man or the hope of escape, was the grand object of attack and defense; and tho thousands of my countrymen covered the ground at its foot with their corpses, the Jew was still ready to rush on the Roman spear. This valor was spontaneous, for subordination had long been at an end. The names of John of Giscala, and Simon, influential as they were in the earlier periods of the war, had lost their force in the civil fury and desperate pressures of the siege. No leaders were acknowledged but hatred of the enemy, iron fortitude, and a determination not to survive the fall of Jerusalem!