THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM
[Illustration: (drop cap G) Ruins of a Synagogue]
God had given to His people a Book foretelling the coming of the
Christ--or Messiah, as the word is written in Hebrew--so that they
might be prepared and ready for His appearance. Yet when He came they
did not receive Him. They were looking for an earthly king, and the
beautiful words spoken by the ancient prophets had no meaning to them.
When Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, the Jews were under the iron
rule of the Roman Empire, of which they formed a part, for although the
Jewish family of the Herods reigned over Judea, they only held their
throne under the Roman Emperor. This the Jews could not endure. They
longed to be a free and independent nation once again.
'When our Messiah comes He will be a great warrior,' they said. 'He
will utterly destroy all our enemies. He will make Jerusalem the
greatest and richest city in the whole earth; all other nations will
bow down before us, acknowledging that the Jews alone are the chosen
people of God.'
Thus they were expecting a Messiah who would begin his work by killing
all the Roman soldiers in Palestine.
Had Jesus of Nazareth been willing to become their earthly king and to
lead the nation against the Romans, the Jews would probably have
followed Him to a man. (John vi. 15.) But He saw that, even from a
human standpoint, the nation could not be helped in this way, and that
the Jews would only rebel against the Romans to their destruction.
Instead of widening the breach between them and their conquerors, the
Saviour sought to heal it. He called out the faith and gratitude of
the Roman centurion, and His answer to the Jewish leaders, '_Render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar's_ (Mark xii. 17) showed them the
right attitude in which to regard the Roman rule.
When, therefore, He was brought at last before Pilate, the Roman
Government had no quarrel with Him. '_Thine own nation ... hath
delivered Thee unto me,_' said Pilate who would have released his
prisoner, had not the Jews prevented it.
'_If thou let this Man go, thou art not Caesar's friend,_' they cried,
thus compelling Pilate, at the risk of being reported as a traitor to
his Emperor, to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, and to free Barabbas.
But in choosing the rebel, Barabbas (Mark xv. 7) as their hero, the
nation started on their downward road, as the story of the forty years
which followed the Saviour's crucifixion clearly shows.
For the Jews were determined at all costs to throw off the Roman yoke,
and the history of those years is one long list of terrible risings and
massacres, while cities were ruined, villages wrapped in flames, and
men, women and children perished with hunger.
Yet the keener the suffering, the more desperate the Jews became.
Their whole souls were possessed with a wild and mad passion for
revenge.
The Saviour had warned His hearers most earnestly against following
false Christs. '_Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is
Christ, or there; believe it not._' (Matthew xxiv. 23.)
Yet no sooner did a daring rebel or murderer gather a band of robbers
around him, and begin to kill and plunder, than multitudes of Jews
cried, 'The Christ, or Messiah has come; now we shall have vengeance on
our enemies!'
They were fighting against God now, and against the Book which He had
given them. All peace-loving people who could possibly do so left the
country.
[Illustration: THE PRECIOUS GOLDEN CANDLESTICK, FROM THE TEMPLE AT
JERUSALEM, CARRIED BY THE ROMAN CONQUERORS THROUGH THE STREETS OF
ROME--FROM THE BROKEN ROMAN CARVING STILL TO BE SEEN IN ROME TO-DAY]
At last, in 66 A.D., all the Jews in Jerusalem rose in a body against
their Roman governors. They surrounded the great tower of Antonia
where the Roman soldiers were quartered, and cried out to the garrison
within that their lives should be spared if they would lay down their
weapons. The Roman soldiers hesitated, but the Jews promised most
faithfully to keep their word.
The Romans believed them, and opened their gates; but no sooner were
they in the power of the Jewish mob than they were fallen upon and
murdered to the last man!
As they died the Roman soldiers, whom not even death could terrify,
lifted up their hands to Heaven, as though calling upon God to witness
that the Jews had broken their solemn oath.
The Roman Emperor could not overlook such rebellion and treachery, and
he sent a great army against Jerusalem. The Jews shut the gates of
their city, and so began the awful siege of Jerusalem.
'_And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that
the desolation thereof is nigh._' (Luke xxi. 20.)
Forty years before, Jesus Christ Himself had spoken these words, and
now there began for Jerusalem days filled with horror and woe, '_such
as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto
this time._' (Mark xiii. 19.)
The story of these days has been written for us by a wise Jew named
Josephus. He was a prisoner in the Roman camp during the siege of
Jerusalem, and he watched with dismay the great battering-rams and war
engines crashing through the walls of the Holy City. His ears rang
with the cries of rage and despair which broke from the Jews within, as
one by one their defences fell, and the end drew near!
Then food failed in the city; men fought like demons in the streets for
a tiny loaf of barley-bread; so frantic were the people with hunger
that mothers even snatched the bread from their own children's mouths!
'Look over the walls, O people of Jerusalem; the Roman soldiers are
crucifying all the prisoners they have taken, and the line of crosses
is as long as our city is wide!'
Hard, merciless as was the Roman general, even he grew sick with horror
at last, and he sent his Jewish prisoner, Josephus, to the Jews,
promising them their lives if they would give up the city. But a
furious madness had possessed the people, and they refused to yield.
Josephus pleaded in vain. He was not a Christian, but he could see
plainly enough that God was no longer with His people.
'Ah, my countrymen,' he cried, 'we did nothing without God in the past,
but now you are fighting against Him. Had God judged you worthy of
freedom, He would have punished the Romans as He did the Assyrians long
ago. God is fled out of your holy place, and stands on the side of
those against whom you fight!'[1]
It is strange and wonderful to read these words in the old history.
Even a Jew who had no faith in Jesus Christ could see plainly that the
ancient power and glory of his nation had gone.
At last the end came. The first wall fell, then the second and the
third, until the Roman soldiers, now as mad as the Jews themselves,
burst into the Holy City, hewing down the defenceless people at every
step.
And so they came to the Temple--that beautiful Temple of white marble
and gold, which still glittered like a hill of snow in the morning
sunshine, or sparkled as though wrapped in flame when the sunbeams
struck full on its golden roof.
Then redder flames than ever the sunshine made leapt above the golden
roof; pillars fell, beams crumbled to ashes, while round the altar of
sacrifice the people of Jerusalem lay heaped together, slain in such
numbers in the Holy Place that their blood flowed down the broad marble
steps in a heavy crimson stream.
And the golden candlestick and the Book of the Law were carried away in
triumph into heathen Rome.
Alas for the Holy City, over which the Saviour of the world had stood
and wept forty years before, knowing the suffering that lay before her!
'These Jews are dangerous. We must not allow them to rebuild their
city, or to become a separate people again. As a nation they must
cease to exist.'
So the Roman conquerors of Jerusalem agreed; and from that day onward
the Jewish people have had no country of their own. They have, indeed,
been '_led away captive into all nations_' (Luke xxi. 24) exactly as
the Lord foretold.
There is scarcely a country in the world where Jews may not be found,
but Jerusalem lies still in the hands of strangers, and is the property
of the Turkish nation.
The Jews were now no longer a nation. They had become merely a body of
people led by their Rabbis, or teachers of the Law; but they were still
'the people of the Book,' for even after frequent rebellions had so
angered the Romans that they passed a law forbidding a Jew to enter the
partially re-built city of Jerusalem under pain of death, they allowed
the Jewish teachers to continue the synagogue services in other parts
of Palestine, and to teach in their colleges.
The most famous Jewish college of these days was at Tiberius, on the
shores of the 'Sea of Galilee,' over whose clear depths the Lord Jesus
Christ had sailed so often, and beside whose shores He had done so many
wonderful deeds of love and mercy.
A great and beautiful college it was, with broad terraced gardens,
where the students paced to and fro, their whole hearts and souls
absorbed in their work. The Temple copy of the Book of the Law was now
in the palace of the heathen Emperor in Rome, but many less precious
copies were left to them. So all day long they studied and copied the
old Hebrew Bible.
As we have seen, the Jewish scribes had not been content with taking
the Word of God just as it stood; they had begun, even in our Lord's
day, to invent explanations of many parts of the old Books which quite
altered their true meaning.
After the fall of Jerusalem the learned Jews, shut away in their
colleges and striving to forget their sorrows, began to write down the
Scripture explanations, and to add to them so greatly that it became
more difficult to recall the comments on the Bible than it was to
remember the Bible itself.
[Illustration: MEDAL MADE BY TITUS, THE CONQUEROR OF JERUSALEM. THE
WORDS, IVDAEA CAPTA, MEAN 'CAPTIVE JUDEA.' THE WOMAN WEEPING UNDER A
PALM-TREE STANDS FOR THE CITY OF JERUSALEM]
These explanations, all collected together, are called 'The Talmud.'
Now the learned Jews grew so fond of their Talmud, that they declared a
man to be a blockhead if he knew only the Scriptures and not the Talmud
explanation.
'The law of Moses is like salt, but the Talmud is balmy spice,' they
would say.
Yet although they heeded so little the true meaning of God's Book, they
guarded its _words_ more and more carefully; and the rules for copying
any portion of the holy Books were strict indeed.
'My son,' an old teacher would say to his pupil, 'before you copy a
single word you must wash your body all over, and clothe yourself in
full Jewish dress, preparing your mind with solemn thoughts. The
parchment you write upon must be made from the skins of "clean" animals
only--that is clean according to the Law of Moses.
'The ink you write with must be of a pure black, made only from a
mixture of soot, charcoal, and honey. Though you know the whole Book
of the Law by heart, you must not write a single word from memory, but
raise your eyes to your copy, and pronounce the word aloud before
trusting it to your pen. Before writing any of the names of God you
must wash your pen: before writing His most sacred Name you must wash
your whole body. If, after your copy has itself been examined, three
corrections have to be made, that copy must be destroyed.'
Not satisfied with all these directions, the master taught his scholar
to count the _letters_ of every Book.
One of the letters in Leviticus xi. is the _middle letter_ of all the
five Books of Moses, a word in chapter x. is the middle of all the
words, and a verse in chapter viii. is the very centre of all the
verses. The letter 'A'--that is the Hebrew letter which stands for
'A'--occurs 42,377 times; the letter 'B' 35,218, and so on.
Not only this, but every scribe was required to know from memory
exactly how many letters of each kind there should be in his sheet
before he began to write. Every sheet of parchment must contain an
equal number of lines, and the breadth of each column had to be thirty
letters wide.
There are eleven verses in the Book of the Law beginning and ending
with 'N,' there are forty verses in which 'Lo' is read three times--and
so on, and so on.
How tedious and meaningless such information appears! Of what value
were all these details?
To spend all his days in learning such things as these could have no
influence on a man's character, nor make him a power for good in the
world. Not for this purpose had God revealed His will to man.
Some years ago in the coffin of an Egyptian mummy, a little jar of
wheat was found. For thousands of years it had lain there, shut up in
the dark, while out in the fields the corn which had been sown had
grown up and been reaped every year, and men and women had been fed.
But this jar of corn was useless, because it had been prevented from
doing the work in the world for which it was created.
Just so was it with the Hebrew copies of God's Word. Locked up in a
dead language, kept close, away from the world, they were like the jar
of wheat which could not grow.
But meanwhile God's Book was growing in the wide fields beyond. While
the Jews were keeping safe the _letters_ of the Old Testament, the New
Testament was beginning to do its mighty work in the great heathen
cities of the world.
[1] Josephus: 'Wars,' Books v. and vi.