# Weep on, ye childless mothers, weep! DESTRUC DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 1. JERUSALEM was built on two mountains, and surrounded by three walls on every side, except where it was enclosed with deep valleys, which were deemed inaccessible. Each wall was fortified by high towers. The celebrated temple, and strong castle of Antonia, were on the east side of the city, and directly opposite to the Mount of Olives. But notwithstanding the prodigious strength of this famed metropolis, the infatuated Jews brought on their own destruction by their intestine contests. At a time when a formidable army was rapidly advancing, and the Jews were assembling from all parts to keep the passover, the contending factions were continually inventing new methods of mutual destruction, and in their ungoverned fury they wasted and destroyed such vast quantities of provisions as might have preserved the city many years. 2. Such was the miserable situation of Jerusalem, when Titus began his march towards it with a formidable army; and, having laid waste the country in his progress, and slaughtered the inhabitants, arrived before its walls. The sight of the Romans produced a temporary reconciliation among the contending factions, and they unanimously resolved to oppose the common enemy. Their fust saily was accordingly made with such fury and resolution, though Titus displayed uncommon valour on this occasion, the besiegers were obliged to Bandon their camps, and flee to the mountúns. No sooner had the Jew's a short interval of quiet from their foreign enemies, than their civil disorders were renewed. John, by an impious stratagem, found means to cut off, or force Eleazer's men to submit to him; and the factions were again reduced to two, who opposed each other with implacable animosity. 3. The Romans, in the mean time, exerted all their energy in making preparations for a powerful attack upon Jerusalem. Trees were cut down, houses levelled, rocks cleft asunder, and valleys filled up; towers were raised, and battering rams erected, with other engines of destruction, against the devoted city. After the offers of peace, which Titus had repeatedly sent by Josephus, were rejected with indignation, the Romans began to play their engines with all their might. The strenuous attacks of the enemy again united the contending parties within the walls, who had also engines, which they plied with uncommon fury. They had taken them lately from Cestius, but were so ignorant of their use, they did little execution, while the Roman legions made terrible havoc. The rebels were soon compelled to retire from the ponderous stones, which they threw incessantly from the towers they had erected, and the battering rams were at full liberty to play against the walls. A breach was soon made in it, at which the Romans entered and encamped in the city, while the Jews retreated behind the second enclosure. 4. The victors immediately advanced to the second wall, and plied their engines and battering rams so furiously, that one of the towers they had erected began to shake, and the Jews, who occupied it, perceiving their impending ruin, set it on fire, and precipitated themselves into the flames. The fall of this structure gave the Romans an entrance into the second enclosure. They were, however, repulsed by the besieged; but at length regained the place entirely, and prepared for attacking the third and inner wall. The vast number of people which were enclosed in Jerusalem, occasioned a famine, which raged in a terrible manner; and, as their calamities increased, the fury of the zealots, if possible, rose to a greater height. They forced open the houses of their fellow citizens, in search of provisions; if they found any, they inflicted the most exquisite tortures upon them, under pretence that they had food concealed. The nearest relations, in the extremity of hunger, snatched the food from each other. 5. Josephus, who was an eye-witness of the unparalleled sufferings the Jews experienced during the siege of their metropolis, remarks, that "all the calamities that ever befel any nation since the beginning of the world, were inferior to the miseries of his countrymen at this awful period." Thus we see the exact fulfilment of the emphatic words of our Saviour respecting the great tribulation in Jerusalem. "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” 6. Titus, who was apprized of their wretched condition, relaxed the siege four days; and, being still desirous of saving the city, caused provisions to be distributed to his army in sight of the Jews, who flocked upon the walls to behold it. Josephus was next sent to his countrymen, to attempt to persuade them not to plunge themselves in inevitable ruin, by persisting in defence of a place which could hold out but little longer, and which the Romans looked upon as already their own. He exhorted them, in the most pathetic terms, to save themselves, their temple, and their country; and painted in strong colours the fatal effects which would result from their obstinacy. But the people, after many bitter invectives, began to dart their arrows at him; yet he continued to address them with greater vehemence, and many were induced by his eloquence, to run the utmost risk in order to escape to the Romans; while others became more desperate, and resolved to hold out to the last extremity. 7. The Jews, who were forcibly seized by the Romans without the walls, and who made the utmost resistance for fear of punishment, were scourged and crucified near the city. Famine made them so daring in these excursions, that five hundred, and sometimes more, suffered this dreadful death every day; and, on account of the number, Josephus observes, that " space was wanted for the crosses, and crosses for the captives." And yet, contrary to Titus's intention, the seditious Jews were not disposed to a surrender by these horrid spectacles. In order to check desertion, they represented the sufferers as suppliants, and not as men taken by resistance. Yet even some, who deemed capital punishment inevitable, escaped to the Romans, considering death, by the hands of their enemies, a desirable refuge, when compared with the complicated distress which they endured. And though Titus mutilated many, and sent them to assure the people that voluntary deserters were well treated by him, and earnestly to recommend a surrender of the city, the Jews reviled Titus from the walls, defied his menaces, and continued to defend the city by every method which stratagem, courage, and despair, could suggest. 8. In order to accelerate the destined ruin of Jerusalem, Titus, discouraged and exasperated by the repeated destruction of his engines and towers, undertook the arduous task of enclosing the city with a strong wall, in order to prevent the inhabitants from receiving any succour from the adjacent country, or eluding his vengeance by flight. Such was the persevering spirit of the soldiers, that in three days they enclosed the city by a wall nearly five miles in circuit. Thus was the prophecy of our Saviour accomplished: "The days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side." Upon this, the famine raged with augmented violence, and destroyed whole families; while Jerusalem exhibited a horrid spectacle of emaciated invalids and putrescent bodies. The dead were too numerous to be interred; and many expired in the performance of this office. The public calamity was too great for lamentation, and the silence of unutterable wo overspread the city. 9. The zealots, at this awful period, endeavoured to encourage the obstinacy of the people, by hiring a set of wretches, pretenders to prophecy, to go about the city, and declare the near approach of a speedy and miraculous deliverance. This impious stratagem for a while afforded delusive hopes to the miserable remains of the Jewish nation. But at length an affair took place in Jerusalem, which filled the inhabitants with consterna 152188 tion and despair; and the Romans with horror and indignation. A Jewess, eminent for birth and opulence, rendered frantic with her sufferings, was reduced to the dreadful extremity of killing and feeding upon her infant. Titus, being apprized of this inhuman deed, swore the total extirpation of the accursed city and people; and called Heaven to witness, that he was not the author of their calamity. 10. The Romans, having pursued the attack with the utmost rigour, advanced their last engines against the walls, after having converted into a desert, for wood to construct them, a country well planted, and interspersed with gardens, for more than eleven miles round the city. They scaled the inner wall, and after a sanguinary encounter, made themselves masters of the fortress of Antonia. Still, however, not only the zealots, but many of the people, were yet so blinded, that, though nothing was now left but the temple, and the Romans were making formidable preparation to batter it down, they could not persuade themselves that God would suffer that holy place to be taken by heathens; but still expected a miraculous deliverance. And though the war was advancing towards the temple, they themselves burnt the portico, which joined it to Antonia; which occasioned Titus to remark, that they began to destroy, with their own hands, that magnificent edifice, which he had preserved. 11. The Roman commander had determined in council not to burn the temple, considering the existence of so proud a structure an honour to himself. He therefore attempted to batter down one of the galleries of the precinct; but as the strength of the wall eluded the force of all his engines, his troops next endeavoured to scale it, but were repulsed with considerable loss. When Titus found, that his desire of saving the sacred building was likely to cost many lives, he set fire to the gates of the outer temple, which, being plaited with silver, burnt all night, and the flame rapidly communicated to the adjacent galleries and porticoes. Titus, who was still desirous of preserving the temple, caused the flames to be extinguished; and appeased |