Destruction of Jerusalem
27
Great numbers of the people would steal out at night to gather wild
plants growing outside the city walls, though many were seized and
put to death with cruel torture, and often those who returned in safety
were robbed of what they had gleaned at so great peril. The most
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.
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?” [
Isaiah 49:15
.] 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.” [
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
[33]
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