11-CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 11
“. . . and there will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.” —Predictions of Jesus;Luke 21:11
“While the temple was on fire, every thing was plundered that came to hand, and ten thousand of those that were caught were slain nor was there commiseration of any age, or any reverence of gravity, but children, and old men, and profane persons, and priests, were all slain in the same manner; so that this war went around all sorts of men, and brought them to destruction, and as well those that made supplication for their lives as those that defended themselves by fighting. The flame was also carried along way, and made an echo together with the groans of those that were slain; and because the hill was high, and the works at the temple were very great, one would have thought the whole city had been on fire. Nor can one imagine any thing either greater or more terrible than this noise; for there was at once a shout of the Roman legions, and a sad clamor of the seditious, who were now surrounded with fire and sword.
“The people also that were left above were beaten back upon the enemy, and, under a great consternation, made sad moans at the calamity they were under: the multitude also that was in the city joined in this outcry with those that were upon the hill. And besides, many of those that were worn away by the famine, and their mouths almost closed, when they saw the fire of the holy house, they exerted their utmost strength, and broke out into groans and outcries again, while the mountains echoed back the wail. Yet was the misery itself more terrible than this disorder; for one would have thought the hill on which the temple stood was seething hot, and full of fire on every part of it; that the blood was larger in quantity than the fire; and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them: for the ground did nowhere appear visible for the dead bodies that lay on it; but the soldiers went over heaps of those bodies, as they ran upon such as fled from them. And now it was that the multitude of the robbers were thrust out of the inner court of the temple by the Romans, and had much ado to get into the outer court, and from thence into the city, while the remainder of the populace fled into the cloister of that outer court. As for the priests, some of them plucked up from the holy house the spikes that were upon it, with their leaden bases, and shot them at the Romans instead of darts.14As the fire burst out upon them, they retired to the wall, that was eight cubits broad, and there tarried; yet did two of those of eminence among them, who might have saved themselves by going over to the Romans, or have borne up with courage, and taken their fortune with the others, throw themselves into the fire, and were burned, together with the holy house: their names were Meirus, the son of Belgas, and Joseph, the son of Daleus.
“And now the Romans, judging that it was in vain to spare what was round about the holy house, burned all those places, as also the remains of the cloisters and the gates, two excepted; the one on the east side and the other on the south, both which, however, they burned afterward. They also burned down the treasury chambers, in which was an immense quantity of money, and an immense number of garments, and other precious goods there deposited; and, to speak all in a few words, there it was that the entire riches of the Jews were heaped up together, while the rich people had there built themselves chambers to contain such furniture.
“The soldiers also came to the rest of the cloisters that were in the outer court of the temple, whither the women and children, and a great mixed multitude of the people, fled, in number about six thousand. But before had determined any thing about these people, or given the commanders any orders relating to them, the soldiers were in such a rage that they set that cloister on fire; by which means it came to pass that some of these were destroyed by throwing themselves down headlong, and some were burned in the cloisters themselves. Nor did any one of them escape with his life.
“A false prophet was the occasion of these people’s destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that ‘God commanded them to get upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.’ Now, there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people, who denounced this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God; and this was in order to keep them from deserting, and that they might be buoyed up above fear and care by such hopes. Now, a man that is in adversity does easily comply with such promises; for, when such a seducer makes him believe that he shall be delivered from those miseries which oppress him, then is it that the patient is full of hopes of such his deliverance.
“Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as believed God himself; while they slid not attend nor give credit to the signs that were sq evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation, but like men infatuated, without either eyes to see, or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them. Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet that continued a whole year.
“Thus also, before the Jews’ rebellion, and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month Nisan, and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright daytime; which light lasted for half an hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it. At the same festival also a heifer, as she was led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth in the midst of the temple.
“Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court of the temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night. Now, those that kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and with great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared, that the signal foreshadowed the desolation that was coming upon them.
“Besides these, a few days after that feast, on the one and twentieth day of the month Jyar, a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared. I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals: for, before sunset, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities.
“Moreover, at that feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner court of the temple, as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, Ihey said, that in the first place they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a multitude, saying, ‘LET US REMOVE HENCE.’ But what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud, ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people.’
“This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city. However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did he not either say any thing for himself, or any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before. Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, when he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet did not he make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears; but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, ‘Woe, woe to Jerusalem.’ And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him who he was and whence he caine and why he uttered such words, he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy cry, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him.
“Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he had said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if it were his premeditated vow, ‘ Woe, woe to Jerusalem.’ Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day; nor good words to those that gave him food; but this was his reply to all men, and indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come. This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals, and he continued it for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for, as he was going round upon the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, ‘Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house.’ And just as he added at the last, ‘Woe, woe to myself also,’ there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages, he gave up the ghost.”
Josephus adds, “What did most elevate the Jews in undertaking this war was an ambiguous oracle that was found in their sacred writings, which declared, ‘About that time one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.’ The Jews,” says he, “took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived for this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea.”
Here our historian shows himself to be as blind as those he has been describing — the “veil” was indeed upon his own heart. Had he not, like his countrymen, been looking for a military Messiah instead of a spiritual Deliverer and Prince, he might have recognized in Him “who opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, and raised the dead to life,” that glorious personage of whom the prophet spake when he said, “Behold thy King cometh;” or of whom Isaiah prophesied when he said, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called WONDERFUL, COUNSELOR, THE MIGHTY GOD, THE EVERLASTING FATHER, THE PRINCE OF PEACE. Of the increase of his government and PEACE there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.”
How different was this PRINCE OF PEACE from Vespasian the slaughtering warrior! But the same prophet who uttered an oracle by no means “ambiguous,” uttered also another, equally clear. He predicted the very blindness which is manifested by Josephus and his countrymen. “Who,” says he, “bath believed our report 7” And he declares that this very Messiah, whose coming and Character he had foretold, should be “despised and rejected of men;“ nay more, persecuted and slain by them, “led like a lamb to the slaughter.”