26
The Great Controversy
inhuman tortures were inflicted by those in power, to force from the
want-stricken people the last scanty supplies which they might have
concealed. And these cruelties were not infrequently practiced by
men who were themselves well fed, and who were merely desirous of
laying up a store of provision for the future.
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Thousands perished from famine and pestilence. Natural affection
seemed to have been destroyed. Husbands robbed their wives, and
wives their husbands. Children would be seen snatching the food from
the mouths of their aged parents. The question of the prophet, “Can a
woman forget her sucking child?” received the answer within the walls
of that doomed city: “The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their
own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter
of my people.”
Isaiah 49:15
;
Lamentations 4:10
. Again was fulfilled
the warning prophecy given fourteen centuries before: “The tender
and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the
sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her
eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son,
and toward her daughter, ... and toward her children which she shall
bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege
and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.”
Deuteronomy 28:56, 57
.
The Roman leaders endeavored to strike terror to the Jews and
thus cause them to surrender. Those prisoners who resisted when
taken, were scourged, tortured, and crucified before the wall of the
city. Hundreds were daily put to death in this manner, and the dreadful
work continued until, along the Valley of Jehoshaphat and at Calvary,
crosses were erected in so great numbers that there was scarcely room
to move among them. So terribly was visited that awful imprecation
uttered before the judgment seat of Pilate: “His blood be on us, and
on our children.”
Matthew 27:25
.
Titus would willingly have put an end to the fearful scene, and
thus have spared Jerusalem the full measure of her doom. He was
filled with horror as he saw the bodies of the dead lying in heaps in
the valleys. Like one entranced, he looked from the crest of Olivet
upon the magnificent temple and gave command that not one stone of
it be touched. Before attempting to gain possession of this stronghold,
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he made an earnest appeal to the Jewish leaders not to force him to
defile the sacred place with blood. If they would come forth and