Historia De Excidio Hierosolymitanae Urbis Anacephalaeosis

The History of the Destruction of the City of Jerusalem: A Recapitulation, that is, a Repetition of almost everything that was said in the earlier books. Chapter One. In the forty-second year after the passion of the Lord, and the first year of the reign of Vespasian, Judaea was being torn apart by harsh wars and domestic seditions. Their very city, Jerusalem, was laboring under internal strife. There was no intermission, no rest, no truces; at every moment they fought. Many fell, countless were slaughtered. Blood defiled everything, and even filled the thresholds of the temple. Everywhere corpses lay; some were struck by arrows, others by javelins. No place was free from danger; there was no hope of conversion, no opportunity for flight. Everything was mournful and full of horror, and full of savagery: everywhere there was mourning, everywhere fear: the clamor of women, the wailing of old men, the groaning of the dying, the despair of the living—so that you would call those who remained wretched, and those who perished blessed. How you were deceived by your own peoples, you who once seemed blessed! How you were stormed by your own arms, when your hands were turned against you, you who were accustomed to conquer without arms and to strike the enemy without any price, when Angels fought for you, and the courses of the sea, the chasms of the earth, the crashes of the sky served you?

Chapter Two. Arise now, Moses, and see your people and the inheritance of the people entrusted to you, perishing by their own hands: behold that people of God, for whom the sea opened a path as they walked, for whom the sky supplied food when they hungered, now shut in without the sea, besieged without Pharaoh, fasting without a famine of the lands. Arise, Aaron, who once, when because of an offense against God death was devouring many of the people, stood between the living and the dead, and death stood still, and by the interposition of your body the plague halted, nor could it pass to infect the living. Rise up also, you, Joshua son of Nun, who leveled the impregnable walls of Jericho with sounding trumpets; and see the people to whom you subjected foreigners, now themselves subjected and oppressed. Rise up, David, who used to drive out the raging spirit by the sweetness of your lyre alone, and see how fury now held sway, and how it washed all the sweetness of your psalms from the minds of the lost, and how each one of the leaders brings the whole people to death, in order to extort freedom, for which you yourself offered yourself to death. Rise up, Elisha, who brought an enemy into Samaria and made him a friend. Through you in the Syrian camp the crash of chariots and the sound of horses and valor resounded: the enemy fled, the Jew escaped the siege. Where now are those merits, and where now are those works of the saints? No wonder, if the works of the prophets have failed, who denied the authority of the prophets.

Therefore arms are turned against you, Judea; your prayers avail you nothing, because your faith accomplishes nothing. Therefore your own people have become hostile to you, because your perfidy has turned against you. What remedy is sought, when the author of the remedy is not won over? What did you think would happen, when with your own hands you were extinguishing your own life, when with your own voices you were destroying your advocate, if not that you would also lay hands upon yourself? You have the reward you sought. You tore from yourself the Guardian of peace; you sought the death of the arbiter of your life; you demanded that Barabbas be granted to you—he who, because of the sedition and murder committed in the city, had been sent to prison (Luke 23:19). Therefore salvation withdrew from you, peace departed, tranquility ceased. Sedition was given to you, destruction was given to you. Acknowledge today that Barabbas lives, and Jesus is dead. Therefore sedition reigns in you, peace is buried, so that you may perish more cruelly at the hands of your own, and before you perished at the hands of strangers.

CHAPTER III. Why so much, wretched city, did your own people bring upon you with Roman arms, as much as they brought evils? That you might fight against the Romans, your own people did this: the Romans wanted peace, you began war. What reason was there for you to provoke those stronger than you? Is it harsh that a Gentile entered the sacred temple against the law? But it was no longer the temple of God. You were not the city of God, nor could you be, you who were a tomb of the dead, especially of your own, whom you yourself had killed, not those you lost to the enemy. For how could you be a dwelling place of life, you who were a habitation of death, a den of crimes, a cave of robbers? In you lay Ananus and John, the high priests, unburied; and those who had once been clothed in priestly vestments, who had been objects of veneration even to foreigners, lay disfigured. Their corpses became food for birds and devouring for dogs, their limbs torn apart and scattered throughout the whole city, so that the appearance of former sanctity seemed to lament such an outrage against a sacred name and the deformity of a once beautiful office. But you yourself began this indignity, you who in your very midst killed prophets, you who stoned the saints of the Lord. Before the temple Zacharias lay lifeless, lay unburied: therefore your blood washes that away.

What cause of death was there for Aunus, except that he rebuked your people because they would not rise up for the defense of the temple, because he demanded their lost liberty, their abandoned virtue, the trampled relics of ancient rites, the defiled altars? He declared that the people should be abandoned, defiled as they were by the use of insensible images and statues, no longer feeling anything, like cattle? For even dumb animals are accustomed to show a change in response to vengeance, to feel injury, to be roused by a goad, to avoid blows. Whoever, therefore, is neither roused nor knows how to avoid what harms him is like those who do not feel. CHAPTER IV. And truly, where is your liberty, for the sake of which you once thought you should yield neither to Egyptians, nor to Palestinians, nor to Assyrians, nor later to Medes? Where is that faith of the Maccabees, which once, with few men, routed the Babylonians, put the Persians to flight, struck down Demetrius; and finally, in children and women, overcame the arms, sword, and fires of Antiochus, and preferred to die for the observance of their ancestral laws rather than obey royal commands? Where is that devotion of the fathers, the most beautiful of all passions, by which they offered themselves to death not for their children, not for their wives, but for the temple of God? Before, even the priestly rod flourished, cut from a wild root; now faith withers, piety is buried, and all emulation of virtue has departed. No wonder, if a people who have withdrawn from God and follow a spirit of wicked contradiction are divided against themselves.

For how could he keep his own peace, who rejected the peace of God? The peace of God is Christ, who made both one (Ephesians 2:14). Rightly, therefore, from one people we became many, set against ourselves, because they refused to follow Jesus, who unites what is divided, but followed the spirit of fury, who divides what is joined. CHAPTER 5. Therefore, Jerusalem, you were paying the penalty for your treachery, when with your own hands you destroyed your own fortifications, when with your own swords you stabbed your own vitals, so that the enemy took pity, so that he spared, and you raged. For you saw that God fought against you and took the part of the Romans, so that you yourself inflicted voluntary destruction upon yourself: therefore the Romans preferred to be spectators rather than executioners, lest, while your people raged among themselves over their own entrails, they be thought to apply a hand of contagion rather than of courage. To these punishments of abominable slaughter was added the impious savagery of cruelty, so that they denied burial to all who had been killed either in the temple or about the city squares: nor was there any leisure for anyone to bury, while they were occupied with wars among themselves, and the care of striking rather than of burying held everyone. Thus in a certain madness the duties of piety had perished, the ministries of impiety grew fierce; and nothing more had perished in such great calamities than mercy, which alone is accustomed to relieve miseries, to console hardships.

For indeed, those who had lost their own people did not dare to bury them because of fear, since grave terror pressed upon them from the leaders of the opposing faction; and those who had killed were wary of strangers, lest anyone should seize those bodies for burial. Thus it was necessary for all to fear, lest what they wished to grant to another they should take for themselves, or—what is worse—lest the use of the tomb they had prepared they themselves should not obtain. CHAPTER VI. Therefore, in the temple itself, instead of sweet-smelling ointments, instead of fragrant incense, instead of the odors of various spices, there was a heavy stench from unburied corpses, which the rain had dissolved, which the fire had consumed, which the sun had heated. All the limbs of the slain citizens stank with a foul odor. Hence the putrefaction of dissolved entrails, hence the reek of burnt bodies filled all the senses and mouths of the living, so that they themselves, not long after, were consumed by a more severe disease, and lamented over the survivors that they perished by a harsher punishment, and that they were preserved for this: to see that together with the fatherland the laws of nature were also dissolved, that the right of the living was denied, peace to the citizens, burial to the dead, that human and divine things alike were stained and polluted, all things mixed together. That mercy was considered a crime, cruelty was held in place of religion, a fortress in the temple, war on the threshold, funerals at the altars: they beheld with their eyes those things which, when the prophets foretold them, they would not have believed would come to pass. For David had said of these things: "They have polluted your holy temple, they have placed the mortal remains of your servants as food for the birds.

of the sky: they poured out their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them (Ps. 68:1-3). For at that same time, both the nations came into the inheritance of God to carry everything away, and the temple was polluted by the funerals of its own people, and the unburied corpses of the slain lay as food for birds and the voracity of beasts, blood was poured out so that it stood like a pool in the temple, and there was no one to bury: because the fury of the living was transferred to the dead, and from the dead to those who still lived. Someone wished to bury a dead man, and he himself was killed. And he who had killed the dead man transferred his anger to the burier, so as to deny him burial: he who had killed the burier in turn killed him again, and exercised greater cruelty toward the dead man, so that, though owing nothing to hatred and not feeling the punishments, he robbed him of the final debt of nature. CHAPTER VII. What else could happen to those who did not accept divine oracles? They mocked the announcements of the prophets; they trampled upon all right, and they themselves hastened the future so that it came to pass. For there was an old and frequent saying, that Jerusalem would perish and its holy places be burned when the sedition of war attacked the law, and domestic hands polluted the temple of God. Nor did they understand this: How many times was the house of God destroyed! how many times sedition! how many times war! and never did that city perish, except when they truly crucified the Lord, the Temple of God, with domestic hands.

For this reason they also hear this: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). For what else was it but sacrilege, when they stretched forth impious hands against the author of salvation, when they stoned him, when they beat him, when they seized him, when they killed him? Then truly did divine fire consume the holy ones. For it was burned down by the Babylonians and rebuilt. Later it was destroyed by Pompey and restored again. But it was utterly burned down when Jesus came, and the spirits of the divine were dissolved and vanished. It was fitting that we precede with a more abundant lamentation some funeral of paternal solemnity, and as it were follow and discharge certain obsequies according to the institutions of our ancestors. CHAPTER VIII. But let us come to the culmination of the destruction of Jerusalem and to the overthrow of the Jews. For they deserved to be overthrown and held cheap, who had bought Jesus, more precious than all prices, from a disciple for thirty denarii: not to have him as Lord, but to remove him from the land of the living as a criminal. Therefore, justly from their inheritance, cheaper than straw, they were scattered into every land by the nations, which they had feared would take away their place and nation. And those who bought Jesus for thirty denarii to destroy him, justly afterwards saw thirty of their own heads sold for one denarius each, to be mocked.

Because nearly all the Jews unanimously consented to the murder of our Lord Jesus Christ, with vengeance imminent, nearly all of them from entire regions were gathered for the feast of the Azymes and were surrounded by sudden war: so that first a pestilential plague arose among them from the narrowness of the place, and then famine more quickly. That the city could contain such a multitude of men was certain from those who had been under Cestius. For when the men of the city had been enumerated by Florus, and Nero wished to signify that he despised the nation, the high priests had been asked, if they could in any way number the multitude. They, when the feast day which is called Passover was at hand, when from the ninth hour indeed to the eleventh they slaughter the victims, and through each individual group, as it were, of not fewer than ten men they are made, for it is not permitted to feast alone, and many come from the neighborhood: they counted indeed two hundred and fifty-six thousand five hundred victims. And they amount, if we reckon ten feasters for each, to two million five hundred and sixty-five thousand, all holy and pure. For lepers or those with vitiligo, or those with seminal emissions whom they call from the gynaeceum, nor women polluted with menstrual blood, nor other impure persons were permitted to participate in the sacrifices, nor even foreigners, unless they had come for the sake of religion.

CHAPTER IX. This great multitude, however, was gathered from foreign lands. Then, as if the entire race were confined in a prison, the city, packed with people, was besieged by war. Thus the number of the slain surpasses every human and divine plague ever unleashed; some were killed openly, others captured by the Romans. For, searching sewers and excavating tombs, they killed whomever they encountered. Moreover, more than two thousand were found there, some by their own hand, but more by mutual wounds, when famine had seized others. They were paying the penalties for their crimes, for after crucifying Jesus, the arbiter of divine matters, they also persecuted his disciples. Nevertheless, many of the Jews and very many of the Gentiles believed in him, drawn by his moral precepts and works that flowed beyond human possibility, to which not even his death imposed an end to faith or grace; indeed, it even increased devotion. They also laid parricidal hands upon him and led the author of life to Pilate for execution, and they pressed the reluctant judge; in this, however, Pilate is not excused, but the madness of the Jews is aggravated: for neither should he have condemned one whom he had not found guilty, nor should they have doubled sacrilege with parricide, so that he who had offered himself to redeem and heal them would be condemned.

Although Pilate himself washed his hands, saying, "I am clean from the blood of this just man; see to it yourselves" (Matthew 27:24), yet he is by no means less guilty, for although he recognized the glory of the Lord's resurrection, he was unwilling to preach it, but faithlessly scorned to believe it, as is testified by his own letter, sent to Caesar in this manner. CHAPTER X. Pontius Pilate to Claudius, greetings. Recently it happened, and I myself have proven, that the Jews, out of envy, punished their own and their descendants with a cruel condemnation. Finally, when they had a promise from their fathers that God would send them from heaven a Holy One who would be called the King of their merit, and that He had promised to send Him to earth through a Virgin: when this one, therefore, God of the Hebrews had sent to me as governor in Judea, and they had seen Him give sight to the blind, cleanse lepers, heal paralytics, drive demons from men, even raise the dead, command the winds, walk with dry feet upon the waves of the sea, and do many other things, when all the people of the Jews were calling Him the Son of God, the princes of the Jews suffered envy against Him, and they seized Him and handed Him over to me, and lying to me about Him, they said one thing for another, asserting that He was a magician and acted against their law. I, however, believed it to be so, and after scourging, I handed Him over to their judgment. They, however, crucified Him, and after burying Him, they set a guard.

But he, while my soldiers were guarding him, rose again on the third day. To such an extent did the wickedness of the Jews blaze up that they gave money to the guards and said: "Say that his disciples stole his body" (Matthew 28:13). But when they had received the money, what had been done could not be kept silent. For they both testified that they had seen him rise again and that they had received money from the Jews. CHAPTER XI. We have entered upon these matters so that no one may lie otherwise and think that the lies of the Jews are to be believed. Concerning this, even the faithless themselves bear witness, as Josephus, the writer of histories, says that there was at that time a wise man (if indeed, he says, it is fitting to call him a man), a creator of wonderful works, who appeared to his disciples, living after the third day of his death according to the writings of the prophets; who also prophesied these and countless other things full of miracles concerning him. From that time the congregation of Christians began and penetrated into every race of men; nor did any nation of the Roman world remain that was left without experience of his worship. If the Jews do not believe us, let them at least believe their own: this is what Josephus said, whom they themselves consider the greatest. And yet in that he spoke the truth because of his fidelity to history, since he thought it wrong to deceive, he did not believe because of the hardness of his heart and the intention of his perfidy; nevertheless, he does not prejudice the truth because he did not believe, but rather added to the testimony, since even an unbeliever and unwilling witness denied it.

in which the eternal power of Christ Jesus shone forth, so that even the princes of the synagogue, who had seized him for death, confessed him to be God. And truly, as if God, without exception of persons or any fear of death, he foretold the future destruction of the city and the temple, but he was not moved by the injury to the temple. But because they were rebuked by him for their crimes and sacrileges, from this their anger blazed up, so that they killed him, whom no times would have had. For while others, by preaching, had earned to do what they did, he had the power to obtain everything he wished to be done. CHAPTER XII. Therefore, on the eighth day of the month of September, the city was burned; throughout the entire time, seven hundred thousand were slain, or myriads, as many assert—yet of all the Jews, but not all of the same region or place, since they had gathered from everywhere at the time of the Passover solemnity; ninety-seven thousand captives were led away. Finally, such was the multitude of captives that it was profitable for thirty to be sold by the Romans for one coin or crown. After the siege was completed, Caesar Titus ordered the city and the temple to be razed to the ground, so that the word of the Lord Jesus preaching might be fulfilled: "Amen, I say to you, not one stone will be left upon another that will not be destroyed" (Matthew 24:2). Such indeed was the end of the siege of Jerusalem.

The same city of Jerusalem was founded by a certain Canaanite named Putens, who in his native tongue was called the Just King. He first named it Solyma, and later added a temple; hence the city was called Hierosolyma. From the beginning, it had its inhabitants from the Canaanite people. David was the first Hebrew man to expel the Canaanites, established his own people there, and made for himself a royal house in that city. He also wished to build a temple for God, but was forbidden by an oracle, and left Solomon as his heir, who was to build the temple that he himself had vowed. And so Solomon founded the temple. The remaining kings also added many things to the adornment of the city; envy arose from its magnificence. CHAPTER XIII. Yet among all the works, the temple excelled, with its very great workmanship and gleaming marble, a precious and very large curtain, woven with scarlet, hyacinth, and byssus, made of purple not as idle material of such diversity, but whose appearance signified the mystery of things confessing: that it was the temple of him who, as creator of the elements, ruled over heaven and air, earth and sea, and alone governed and directed all things. For by scarlet the fiery heaven is signified, by hyacinth the air, by byssus the earth, by purple the sea, which is dyed with marine shellfish: so that you may gather two from color, two from generation.

Finally, the high priest was accustomed to express these four things in his garment, when the greatest solemnity of the feast days occurred; as if he were putting on the whole world, about to supplicate for the pustule, in the figure of him who was to come, the high priest Jesus, to take away the sin of the world. The high priest wore a linen inner covering on his thighs, because in the priest above all others the faith of the mind and the chastity of the body are sought, which ought to gird the intemperance of the flesh. There were two sacred tabernacles, one inner, the other outer: into the latter the priests always entered; into the inner one, which was called the holy, the high priest entered once, not without blood which he carried for himself and for the ignorance and fault of the people. The Holy Spirit signifying this, that Jesus would come, who alone would truly enter into the inner divine sanctuaries of the sacraments, and the ark of the celestial substance, who alone would know all things; also that he would reconcile the Father to the whole world by his blood, so that he might have mercy on both the celestial and the earthly. Finally, after he came, he pacified all things through the blood of his cross, which are in heaven or on earth (Colossians 1:20).

CHAPTER 14. Inside was the incense burner, inside the table, inside the lamp. The incense burner, so that priestly prayer is directed to God the Father just as incense is (Psalm 140:2). The table, because on it are the passion of Christ and the mysteries of the sacraments. Whence David says: You have set a table before me (Psalm 22:5), whose twelve loaves, as it were, are the twelve Apostles, witnesses of his passion and resurrection. The lamp, which is placed under the candelabrum, was formerly under the modius, that is, the measure of the law; now it is in the fullness of grace, pouring forth frequent light in a seven-branched form, because the Holy Spirit illuminates the temple with the seven greatest graces of the powers of God. Therefore, the knowledge of the Trinity was in the inner parts of the temple, which were called the Holy of Holies, where once the rod of Aaron was kept and blossomed: because priestly grace was to work more fully in Christ after his death, by which he redeemed the world. The Jews, therefore, if they had wished to believe, had signs of the imminent destruction evident, by which they were warned, as if by clear voices, of the end coming upon them. For for nearly a year a comet hung over the temple itself in the likeness of a hanging sword, also foretelling by sword and fire the future devastation of the people, the kingdom, and the city itself. For what would the likeness of a sword announce but war, what would fire announce but conflagration? And it was seen before the people separated themselves from the Romans.

During the very days of Passover, on the eighth day of the eleventh month, at about the ninth hour each night, the temple and its altar shone with such light that it seemed like daylight, remaining for about half an hour each day. The common people interpreted this as a sign of the nation’s impending prosperity, and they were impelled as if the time for recovering their liberty had come. The more prudent, on the contrary, thought that this kind of star usually heralds war. CHAPTER 15. Lest anyone think that we are introducing matters foreign to our own worship and discipline, we first set forth not what seems to us, but what happened, what opinions existed at that time, what the prudent thought, what the imprudent thought; and when something is said about the sect of the Jews, it is not written by us as if in the truth of their worship, but as if we have woven together what was set forth in shadow and figure, so that we might follow more perfect things. For concerning signs of the stars, we are also taught in the Gospel that there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars (Luke 21:25). Also, heifers are said to have given birth, when standing before the altars about to be sacrificed, in the middle of the temple, a lamb having been born during the very celebrations of the sacred rites which we mentioned above. Also, the inner eastern gate, heavy with solid bronze, which at evening was customarily closed with the labor of twenty men, with iron bars bolted, was spontaneously opened for several nights, and was afterwards closed with difficulty by the guards. This too they thought.

Most interpreted it as a sign of future blessings, for which the gate would be opened to those entering; but the more prudent said that the temple’s guard seemed to be loosened, so that whatever was inside would be plundered by enemies, the inner worship would depart and be emptied by devastation, and the celebration of sacrifices would be destroyed—which, even before they crucified Jesus Christ, the reading clearly shows was signified. Many days later, a certain figure of inestimable magnitude appeared, which many observed (as the books of the Jews revealed), and before the selis pecasum suddenly on the eighth day, chariots and armed lines in the ships, by which the cities of all Judea and its region would be attacked. Moreover, at the very solemnity of Pentecost, when the priests entered the inner temple at night to celebrate the customary sacrifices, they first reported feeling a certain movement and hearing a sound emitted; afterward they also heard a sudden voice crying out: “Let us depart from here.

CHAPTER XVI. Jesus also, son of Ananias, a rustic man, four years before the Jewish people undertook the war, when the city was in complete peace and abundance, as the Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated with solemn sacrifices, ascended the temple and began to shout: A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice over Jerusalem, over the temple, a voice over bridegrooms and brides, a voice over all the people. This he cried out night and day. The leading citizens, disturbed, seized the man, shuddering at the terrible omen of his voice, and afflicted him with many tortures, so that at least, pained by suffering, he would cease to announce terrible and portentous things. But he, neither frightened by any fear nor by beatings or more severe threats, changed neither his manner nor his voice, but persisted in the same proclamation, in the same context of his words, without any interruption of entreaty, heedless of injury, unmoved in feeling. Considering this by no means superficial, but as an excess of mind, as it was, they brought him to the local governor, who at that time was conducting public business in that place for the Romans. He, for the sake of examining the truth, lacerated him with the most savage punishments. The more he persisted, the more vehemently he ordered the man to be seized with whips, so that if he had discovered any more secret indications of the future uprising, he would reveal them. But he neither yielded nor begged, but at each blow, he wept not for himself, but for the destruction of his fatherland.

He wept, saying: "Woe to Jerusalem." Nor, when asked who he was, or whence he came, or why he kept saying the same thing, did he give any answer; but he only continued that lamentation for his fatherland with a pitiful wail. And so Albinus (for that was the man's name), being weary, dismissed him as one in a mad frenzy, not knowing what he said. But he had no conversation with anyone, nor was he heard to speak anything else for the rest of the time; but, singing this as a mournful and funereal song, he resounded day and night continually, "Woe to Jerusalem": he did not revile the one who beat him, nor did he thank the one who gave him food; his one and same response to all was full of funeral wailing, and especially at the celebrations of the sacrifices. And so for seven years and five months the same series of words, the same sound of the voice. He remained thus untiring for so long a time; when the siege began, he ceased that same outcry, as if the announcement ought to cease when what had been announced was at hand. But when the flame began to envelop the city and the temple alike, he began to go around the wall crying out again: "Woe to the city and the people and the temple." And at last he added, "Woe also to me," and by a blow from a sling he breathed out his spirit in the same cry.

CHAPTER 17. It had also been written, in ancient writings as well, that the city together with the temple would perish at the time when the square temple had collapsed. And so, whether forgetful or stupefied by the necessity of the impending evils, when the Antonia was captured, they made a square around the temple. Among these things, the most outstanding was that which remained impressed in equally ancient writings (which they called sacred), that according to that time, there would be a man who would assume command of the whole world from their region. This matter drove them into such madness that they promised themselves not only liberty but also a kingdom. Some thought this referred to Vespasian, but the more prudent referred it to the Lord Jesus, who, born in the flesh from Mary, spread his kingdom throughout the whole world. With so many things thus remaining, they could not avoid what was being divinely decreed. For recognizing the manifest wrath of God against themselves, they refused to reach for any remedy of consolation: such a clouding of their minds by crime had covered their eyes.

CHAPTER 18. Since, indeed, all hope for them and their affairs was lost, Eleazarus, the instigator of the mob, among other words of despair, lamented his own abandonment by God in this way: "Wretched ones, for what hope in this life are we reserving ourselves? Granted, the enemy may forgive, but what will it avail when the offense against God is manifest? Fires turned against us by the enemy, the shifting blasts of the winds, the flames driven back, so that our supports were taken away. Who can live with this adversary? There is no place to go, but the command of voluntary death is clear. For what did the night interpose, except that the enemy might not forestall us, nor, with the wall's defense consumed, immediately break through; but that time might be reserved for us to carry out mutual slaughter, and it might be permitted for us to die with our children and our kin, so that we might not see gasping old men and old women dragged off by the Romans, and our dearest wives seized for the victor's lust? Let us die together with our fatherland, lest we survive as a reproach of such great disgrace. Where, then, shall we flee from the face of God, or where shall we go, with the Lord of heaven hostile to us? If mountains fall upon us and we hide in hollow caves, how, nevertheless, will we be able to avoid the indignation of such great power? For where shall we go, so that God is not there, since He Himself is everywhere? Or are the examples trivial, by which we are taught that He who formerly presided over our nation has long since been hostile to it because of our sins? Who doubts this, when he sees that our hands have been turned against ourselves, and that more have been destroyed by domestic sedition than by war?

CHAPTER 19. I will not grant to the Romans that they have conquered, nor do they themselves claim this for themselves, who know that almost all of us have perished by our own arms rather than by those of others: and those Jews who inhabit Caesarea saw the arms of the Romans, on whose festal day of the Sabbath, amid the solemn rites of our sacred worship, a multitude of the Caesarean Gentiles, inflamed by some sudden impulse and a madness sent from above, destroyed twenty thousand, put all to flight, so that they emptied the entire city. Did not madness fill the whole of Syria, so that Jews and Gentiles, settled in the same cities and formerly bound to each other by the grace of cohabitation, later clashed in arms among themselves, whereby a ford for future victory was established for the Romans? For what shall I say of Scythopolis? to which the Jews had first hastened, to forestall the Gentile people, lest they should plot something against our people after the example of other cities? And so those whom it was fitting to join together against foreigners to decide the war by force, these, on the contrary, fought against each other, Jews against Jews; so that part of them fought against their own kinsmen and relatives. Then, for the price of their labor and the blood they had spent, they were slain by the Gentiles, because they themselves had forbidden the Senate among the Gentiles. The Damascenes, with no cause existing, laid low eight thousand Jews. The Ascalonites, two thousand five hundred. In the city also called Ptolemais, two thousand were slain.

But there was an ancient hatred between the Jews and the peoples of the nations in Alexandria, from the time when Alexander the Great used the zeal of the Jews to subdue the Egyptians. Hence, when the city was founded, equal privileges and separate habitations were granted to Jews and Egyptians alike, so that their cults would not be mixed, since the Jews wished to preserve their purifications without any contamination. From this, frequent conflicts arose between them, quarrels broke out, and judgment was sought. Nevertheless, nothing is known to have been violated from the benefits of so great a king, but later, when a tumult arose from the Gentiles, with some of the Jews killed and others handed over for punishment, the Jewish people, moved by the injury, rose up against the authors of the injury. And when they wished to avenge themselves more stubbornly on the citizens, a Roman army was brought in which slaughtered sixty thousand Jews within the city. CHAPTER 20. But why do I linger on lesser matters, when the destruction of the whole world is to be lamented by us in the ruin of a single city? Where is the great city of Jerusalem? Where is beautiful Zion? Where is the wondrous temple? Where is that second sanctuary of holiness, the inner shrine, which only the high priest was accustomed to enter once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sin of the people? Profaned by the Gentiles: those who destroyed it dwell in the remnants of the city. Where, I ask, are you, a city filled with peoples, venerable to kings, acceptable to God, seat of grace?

Your pavements of marble, your walls gleaming with marble, your roofs shone with precious marble; your gates glittering with gold, others resplendent with silver. All were slain—both those who dwelt in you continually and those who came to you from every part of the world—so that there is no doubt that the whole world perished in you. All was laid bare, burned from the rooftops, razed from the foundations; your habitation lies deserted; there is no one to dwell in your tents, and does it please anyone still to live, and does it not repent that he has lived? Hard are the eyes that can behold these things; cruel are the minds that can wish to survive such sorrows—not because the calamity has ceased, but because there is now no rest. For whither shall we turn our eyes, or what is it pleasant to decide? The whole city is a tomb of the dead; ashes meet the gaze of those who look at the sun; the streets, empty of the living, are filled with corpses. Wretched elders, with ashen gray hair and torn garments, sit upon the remains of the dead, covering their bare bones, which they defend from birds and beasts. A few women are unharmed, whom the impious soldier has preserved for shame, not for life. Who, seeing this and thinking of prolonging life, dares to lift his eyes to heaven? Who is so forgetful of his fatherland, so hostile to his own, so alien to piety, so devoid of sweetness, whose spirit is so soft and half-manly? Who is so fearful that he is not ashamed to have been spared for this?

Would that we had perished long ago, or if life remained, that the light of our eyes had failed before we beheld the holy city destroyed by enemy hands, and this temple, consecrated to God by our ancestors, so impiously consumed by flames, or that we saw the priests lying slain within the temple! CHAPTER XXI. Let us therefore amend what we have survived of these evils, so that we may seem to have deferred death not out of love of life, but by intention of virtue. The enemy has surrounded every fortification. Nothing remains but that either we, or our wives, are already being set up for the auction of our sons, and they contend among themselves as to who shall carry off whose wife, whether they are to be distributed according to merits of rank or orders of persons, or compelled to submit to lots, miserable as we are; for us also are prepared portents of punishments, most exquisite torments: not only burning flames or various deaths by the victorious stroke of the axe—harsh indeed after chains, after prison, after the yoke of punishment, but more tolerable for men if there is room for mockery—but also limbs torn from the living, and especially hands cut off. Nor undeservedly, because they failed in their duty, when they could have helped themselves. We must also undergo the bites of wild beasts for the spectacle of the victors, which is already being celebrated on various arenas of cities: either shame must be our example, or wonder our sight, so that we are reserved either for beasts or to fight against brothers.

CHAPTER XXII. And many other things of this kind Eleazar brought forward, full of distrust and despair. From all of which, and from the very outcomes of events, when the Jews had clearly recognized that God was angry with them, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but vanished in their own thoughts; and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom. 1:21); and they hated, hating they crucified, and strove to empty the glory of the resurrection, the one who had come only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 4:?). For if they had not known, they would by no means have been guilty of such a deed. Whence the Lord Himself says of them: If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father (John 15:22-24). For they knew from the Father, just as even demons say: We know that you are the Son of God (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:33), seeing wonders, hearing more wondrous things; but they did not know the truth of the matter, because, hard of heart, they refused to believe. For if they had believed and truly known, they would never, as Paul says, have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). Hence the Prophet: The ox knows its owner, and the ass the manger of its master; but Israel has not known me (Isa. 1:?). What is understood by the ox, if not each holy preacher, laboring in the seed of the word of God? What is signified by the ass, if not the brutish people of the nations?

who, upon hearing the preaching of any shepherd, soon ran to the Lord’s manger, to cling to the fodder of the Word of God. CHAPTER XXIII. Now it is well that Israel is driven out of the Promised Land forty-two years after its visitation, because it is said to have been brought into it forty years after the exodus from Egypt; in which period it received the two stone tablets of the Decalogue a second time, by which a two-year period is prefigured, destined for the number of the Advent; in which also the raising of the bronze serpent is especially to be noted, by whose gaze each dying person was restored to life. For just as in that span of time they were fed with manna, and received the law written on stone tablets through the mediator Moses, and those who at the point of death did not look upon the raised serpent perished; so within this time of destruction, those who refused to drink salubriously of the true manna (concerning which it had been said [John 6:51]: “I am the living bread which came from heaven,” etc.), and the true mediator Christ Jesus, of whom it was foretold: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers; you shall listen to him as to me; whoever does not listen to him shall be cut off from his people” (Deuteronomy 18:15-18), and who, dissembling to follow his legal precepts inscribed on the true rock in himself, and refusing to believe that he was raised on the cross and rose from the dead at the point of the most wretched destruction, were driven out of the Promised Land and perished: as that people who sat in darkness.

and dwelt in the region of the shadow of death (Isa. 9:2), seeing the eternal light of the resurrection, may enter into it with its fullness; and thus the remnant of Israel may be saved (Rom. 9:2), so that from two walls, one Church may be joined together in the resurrection upon that cornerstone which makes both one (Eph. 2:14), our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.