The Summary of the Destruction of Jerusalem

Rise up now, Moses, and see your nation and the inheritance of the people entrusted to you perishing by their own hands: behold that people of God, for whom, as it walked, the sea lay open as a passage, for whom, as it hungered, heaven furnished food, without the sea closing it in, without Pharaoh besieging it, without the barrenness of the earth starving it. Rise up, Aaron, you who once, on account of an offense against God, when death was devouring very many of the people, stood between the living and the dead, and death stood still, and by the interposing of your body the plague was stayed, nor could it pass over to the contagion of the living. Rise up also, you, Joshua son of Nun, who leveled the unconquerable walls of Jericho with the sounding of trumpets; and see the people whom you once subjected foreigners to, now itself subjected and oppressed.

Rise up, David, who used to drive away the tormenting spirit by the sweetness of the harp, and see how rage now holds dominion, and has washed away all the sweetness of your psalms from the senses of the lost, and how each one of the leaders brings the whole people to death, in order to wring out liberty, for which you offered up your very self to death. Rise up, Elisha, who brought the enemy into Samaria, and made him a friend. Through you in the camps of Syria the din of chariots resounded, and the voice of horsemen and of might: the enemy fled, the Jew escaped the siege. Where now are these merits, and where now are these workings of the saints? No wonder, if the works of the prophets have failed, since they denied the judge of the prophets. Therefore, O Judaea, arms are turned against you, your prayers profit you nothing, because your faith works nothing: therefore your own people has been made against you, because your own faithlessness has been turned against you.

What remedy is sought, where the author of the remedy is not reconciled? What did you think would happen, when with your own hands you extinguished your own life, when with your own voices you banished your own advocate, except that you would lay hands upon yourself also? You have what you asked for. You snatched away from yourself the Prince of peace, you asked that the arbiter of your life be killed, that Barabbas be granted to you; who on account of sedition raised in the city and murder had been cast into prison: therefore salvation has withdrawn from you, peace has gone away, quiet has ceased: sedition has been given to you, destruction has been given. Acknowledge that today Barabbas lives for you, and Jesus is dead. Therefore sedition reigns in you, peace is buried, so that you might perish more cruelly by your own, and before you could perish by strangers.

How much, O wretched city, did the Roman bring upon you with his arms, compared to the evils your own people brought upon you? For that you should fight with the Romans, your own people brought it about: the Romans wanted peace, you declared war. What cause was there for you to provoke those stronger than yourself? It was harsh indeed, that against the sacred law a Gentile entered the temple: but by then it was no longer the temple of God. You were not the city of God, nor could you be, you who were the sepulcher of the dead: especially of your own, whom you yourself had slain, not whom you had lost to the enemy. For how could you be a dwelling of life, you who were a habitation of death, an inn of crimes, a den of robbers? In you lay Ananus and John, the chief priests, unburied; and they who had once been clothed in priestly robes, who had been objects of veneration even to foreigners, lay disfigured.

Their bodies became food for birds and the devouring of dogs, their limbs torn apart and scattered throughout the whole city, so that the appearance of ancient sanctity might seem to bewail so great an insult to the sacred name, and the disfigurement of an office once so glorious. But you yourself made for yourself the beginning of this indignity, you who in your own bosom killed the prophets, who stoned the saints of the Lord. Before the temple Zachariah lay lifeless, lay unburied: therefore your own blood washes him. And what was the cause of Ananus's death, but that he rebuked your people, because it would not rise up in defense of the temple, because he demanded back the liberty that had been lost, the courage that had been abandoned, the trampled remains of the ancient sacred rites, the defiled altars: was he not asserting that the people ought to be forsaken, being defiled through the use of insensible idols and become like statues that feel nothing?

For dumb animals are wont to show even a kind of retribution, to feel an injury, to be roused by a goad, to shrink from blows. He therefore who is neither roused, nor knows how to avoid what harms him, is like those who feel nothing.

And indeed, where is your liberty, for the zeal of which you once thought you must yield neither to the Egyptians, nor to the Palestinians, nor to the Assyrians, nor later to the Medes? Where is that faith of the Maccabees, which once with a few men routed the Babylonians, put the Persians to flight, struck down Demetrius; and at last in mere children and women overcame the arms, swords and fires of Antiochus, and preferred to die for the observance of the fatherland rather than to obey royal commands? Where is that devotion of the fathers, the most beautiful of all sufferings, who offered themselves to death not so much for their children, not so much for their wives, as for the temple of God? Before, even the priestly rod flourished, cut from a wild root: now faith withers, and piety is buried, and every rivalry of virtue has departed. No wonder, if a people that has withdrawn from God, and follows the wicked spirit of contradiction, is divided against itself.

For how could it keep its own peace, having rejected the peace of God? The peace of God is Christ, who made both one. Rightly, therefore, out of one people many have been made against themselves, because they were unwilling to follow Jesus who joins together what is divided, but followed instead the spirit of fury that divides what is joined.

You were paying, then, Jerusalem, the wages of your own faithlessness, when with your own hands you destroyed your own fortifications, when with your own blades you pierced your own vitals, so that the enemy pitied you, so that he spared you, and you raged. For you saw that God was fighting against you, and was performing the part of the Romans, so that you might bring voluntary ruin upon yourself: therefore the Romans preferred to be spectators rather than strikers, lest, while your own vitals raged against one another, they should be thought to lay hand to it more for contagion's sake than for valor's. To this was added, along with the punishments of unspeakable slaughter, an impious enormity of cruelty, in that they denied burial to all who had been slain either in the temple or about the streets of the city: nor was anyone free to bury, while they were occupied with wars among themselves, and the care of striking down rather than of burying held everyone.

Thus in a kind of madness the offices of piety had perished, the ministries of impiety grew savage; and nothing had perished more in such great calamities than mercy, which alone is wont to relieve miseries, to console distresses. For those who had lost their own did not dare to bury them for fear, since heavy terror pressed upon them from the leaders of the opposing faction: and those who had killed others were wary of strangers, lest someone should snatch them away for burial. And so it was necessary for all to fear, lest what they wished to grant to another they should take upon themselves; or what is worse, lest they themselves should not obtain the use of the grave which they had prepared for others.

In the temple, therefore, instead of sweet-smelling ointments, instead of fragrant censers, instead of the scents of various flowers, there was the heavy stench of unburied corpses, which the rain had dissolved, which flame had burned, which the sun had heated. All the limbs of the slaughtered citizens reeked with a dire odor. On one side the putrescence of decomposing entrails, on the other the reek of the burned filled all the senses and mouths of the living, so that not long after they themselves were consumed by a more grievous disease, and, surviving, groaned that they were perishing by a harsher punishment, and were preserved for this, that they might see, along with their fatherland, the laws of nature likewise dissolved, the right of the living denied, peace to citizens, burial to the dead; things human and divine alike stained and polluted, all things mingled together.

That mercy was accounted criminal, that cruelty was held in the place of religion, a camp in the temple, war on the threshold, funeral on the altars: that they saw with their own eyes what they would not have believed would come to pass, though the prophets foretold it. For of these things David had said: "They have polluted your holy temple, they have made the dead bodies of your servants food for the birds of heaven: they have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them". For at that time the nations came together into the inheritance of God, to carry off everything, and the temple was polluted by the funerals of its own people, and the corpses of the slain lay unburied, food for birds and the voracity of beasts, and the blood poured out so as to form a pool in the temple, and there was no one to bury it: because fury passed from the living against the dead, and from the dead to those who still lived.

If someone wished to bury the dead, he himself was destroyed. And he who had killed the dead man transferred his wrath onto the one who would bury him, so as to deny him burial too: and this one in turn was destroyed by another who killed the burier, and exercised even greater cruelty toward the dead, so as to rob one already owed no hatred, feeling no punishments, of nature's supreme due.

What else could happen to them, who would not receive the divine oracles? They mocked the announcements of the prophets, they trampled every law, and by their own actions hastened the fulfillment of what was to come. For there was an old and frequent saying, that Jerusalem and her holy places would then perish and be burned, when sedition should assail the law of war, and domestic hands should defile the temple of God. Nor did they even understand this: for how many times was the house of God cut down! How many times was there sedition! How many times war! And yet that city never perished, until the time when they crucified the Lord, who was truly the Temple of God, with domestic hands. On account of which they also hear this: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up". For what else was it but sacrilege, when they stretched out impious hands against the Author of salvation, when they stoned him, when they scourged him, when they seized him, when they killed him?

Then indeed did divine fire consume their holy places. For, burned by the Babylonians, it was rebuilt. Later, destroyed by Pompey, it was reformed again. But it was utterly burned when Jesus came, and the bonds of the divine spirit were dissolved and vanished. It was fitting that we should precede with some more abundant lamentation a certain funeral of the paternal solemnity, and follow it as it were with certain funeral rites, and dissolve it according to the custom of our forefathers.

But let us come to the sum of the overthrow of Jerusalem, and to the casting down of the Jews. Deservedly indeed were they to be cast down and held cheap, who had bought Jesus, more precious than all prices, for a price of thirty denarii from a disciple: not that they might have him as Lord, but that they might remove him from the land of the living as an unjust man. Wherefore justly, out of their own inheritance, viler than chaff, they were scattered into every land by the nations, whom they had feared lest they should take away their place and nation. And they who had bought Jesus for thirty pieces of silver in order to destroy him, justly afterward saw thirty heads of their own sold for one denarius apiece for that very field.

Since, therefore, almost all the Jews unanimously consented to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, when vengeance was imminent, almost all, gathered from all the regions for the feast of Unleavened Bread, were suddenly surrounded by war: so that first indeed a pestilential plague arose among them from the narrowness of the place, and then famine more quickly still. That the city could hold so great a multitude of men was certain from those who had been under Cestius. For when the men of the city had been numbered at that time by Florus, wishing to report to Nero, who despised the nation, he had asked of the priests that they should number the multitude, if they could by any means.

They, then, when the feast day which is called Passover was at hand, when from the ninth hour even to the eleventh they slay the victims, and for every company, of not fewer than ten men,—for it is not lawful to feast alone, for many gather together with their neighbors,—they numbered two hundred fifty-six thousand five hundred victims. And if we reckon ten feasters for each, there come to be two million seven hundred thousand, all holy and pure. For neither the lepers, nor those with skin diseases, nor those with a flow of seed, whom they call "gynaikoi," nor women polluted with monthly blood, nor others unclean, were permitted to partake of the sacrifices; nor even foreigners, unless they had come for the sake of religion.

This great multitude was indeed gathered from outsiders. Yet then the whole nation was shut up as if in a prison by fate, and the city, stuffed with people, was besieged by war. And so the number of those slain surpassed every human and divinely-sent pestilence, whom the Romans partly killed openly and partly captured. For searching the sewers and digging out the tombs, they killed whomever they found. There were found there more than two thousand, of whom some killed themselves by their own hand, but more killed each other with mutual wounds, when famine had seized upon others. For they were paying the penalties of their crimes, who, after they had crucified Jesus, the arbiter of divine matters, afterward also persecuted His disciples: yet most of the Jews, and very many of the Gentiles, believed in Him, being drawn by His moral precepts and works flowing forth beyond human capacity; to whom not even His death set a limit either of faith or of grace—indeed it even increased their devotion.

They also laid parricidal hands upon Him and led the author of life to Pilate to be killed; and, though he resisted, they began to press the judge: in which matter, however, Pilate is not excused, but the madness of the Jews is made the more bitter; because he ought not to have condemned one whom he had found in no way guilty, nor ought they to have doubled sacrilege with parricide, so that He who had offered Himself to redeem and heal them should be condemned by them. For although this same Pilate washed his hands, saying, "I am innocent of the blood of this just man; see you to it", nevertheless he who, acknowledging the glory of the Lord's resurrection, strove unwillingly to preach it, but in his faithlessness scorned to believe, is no less guilty, as the letter of the same man, sent to Caesar in this manner, testifies.

Pontius Pilate to Claudius, greeting. It recently happened, and I myself have verified it, that the Jews, through envy, punished themselves and their descendants with cruel condemnation.

For their fathers had a promise that their God would send to them from heaven His Holy One, who might rightly be called their King, and that He promised to send Him to the earth through a Virgin: and so, when the God of the Hebrews had sent Him into Judea in my time as governor, and they had seen Him give sight to the blind, cleanse lepers, cure paralytics, drive demons out of 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 saying that He was the Son of God, the princes of the Jews were seized with envy against Him, and they took hold of Him and handed Him over to me, and told me one lie after another about Him, asserting that He was a magician and was acting against their law. But I believed it to be so, and, having had Him scourged, delivered Him to their judgment.

And they crucified Him, and having buried Him, set guards over Him. But while my soldiers were guarding Him, He rose again on the third day: and the wickedness of the Jews blazed up to such a degree that they gave money to the guards, and said: "Say that His disciples stole His body". But when they had taken the money, they could not keep silent about what had happened. For they also testified that they had seen Him rise, and that they had received money from the Jews.

I have introduced these things for this reason, lest anyone should lie otherwise, and think that the falsehoods of the Jews ought to be believed. Concerning this the faithless themselves bear witness, Josephus, the writer of histories, saying that there was at that time a wise man (if indeed, he says, he ought to be called a man), a worker of wonderful deeds, who appeared to His disciples, living after three days from His death, according to the writings of the prophets: who also prophesied this and countless other things about Him full of miracles; from whom began the gathering of Christians, which has penetrated into every race of men: nor has any nation of the Roman world remained without a share in His worship. If the Jews do not believe us, let them at least believe their own—this Josephus said, whom they themselves consider the greatest.

And yet, in that he spoke the truth for the sake of the fidelity of history, because he thought it wicked to deceive, and did not believe because of hardness of heart and the intent of faithlessness—he does not thereby prejudice the truth by not believing, but rather adds more to the testimony, because, though unbelieving, he did not deny even unwillingly. In this the eternal power of Christ Jesus shone forth, that even the princes of the synagogue who had seized Him for death confessed Him to be God. And truly, as if God, speaking without exception of persons or any fear of death, He also announced the coming destruction of the temple; but the injury to the temple did not move them. But because they were being rebuked by Him for their crimes and sacrileges, hence anger blazed up, that they killed Him whom no age had ever produced. For while others have merited to do what they did by preaching, He had it in His power to obtain whatever He willed to be done.

On the eighth day of the month of September, therefore, the city was burned: slain throughout that whole time, a number of ten hundred thousand, that is, of myriads, as most assert: of all the Jews indeed, but not of all of that same region or place, because they had gathered there from everywhere at the time of the paschal solemnity: ninety-seven thousand were led away captive. Indeed, so great was the abundance of captives that thirty were sold by the Romans under the crown for one coin. The siege thus completed, Caesar Titus ordered the city and the temple to be utterly overthrown, that the word of the Lord Jesus, foretelling, might be fulfilled: "Amen I say to you, there shall not be left a stone upon a stone that shall not be thrown down": such indeed was the end of the siege of Jerusalem.

Now this same city of Jerusalem was founded by a certain powerful man of the Canaanites, who in his native tongue was called the Righteous King, who first named it Solyma, and afterward added a temple: whence the city was called Jerusalem. From the beginning it had inhabitants of the race of the Canaanites. David, the first man of the Hebrews, expelled the Canaanites, established his own people there, and built for himself a royal house in it. He wished also to build a temple to God, but, forbidden by the oracle, left Solomon as heir, that he might build the temple which he himself had vowed. Solomon therefore founded the temple. The other kings also added very much to the adornment of the city; envy arose from its magnificence.

Among all the works, however, the temple excelled in vastness of construction and gleaming marble, with a costly and very large veil, woven of scarlet, hyacinth, and fine linen, of purple—a material not idle in such diversity, but whose appearance signified the mystery of hidden things: because it was the temple of Him who ruled over heaven and air, earth and sea, as creator of the elements, and alone ruled and governed all things. For by scarlet the fiery heaven is figured, by hyacinth the air, by fine linen the earth, by purple the sea, which is dyed by marine shellfish: so that you may gather two from color, two from origin. Indeed the high priest was accustomed to express these four things in his vestment, when the greatest celebration of feast days occurred; as though he clothed himself with the whole world, about to supplicate on behalf of the people, in the figure of Him who was to come, Jesus, the high priest, that He might take away the sin of the world.

The high priest covered his thighs inwardly with a linen covering, because in a priest, above all else, is required faith of mind and chastity of body, which ought to gird up the intemperance of the flesh. There were two sacred tabernacles, one inner, the other outer: into the outer the priests always entered; into that inner one, which was called the Holy, the high priest entered once, not without blood which he offered for himself and for the ignorance and offense of the people. By this the Holy Spirit signified that Jesus would come, who alone would truly enter into the inner recesses of the divine mysteries, and, alone knowing all things, the hidden things of the heavenly substance; and would also reconcile the Father to the whole world by His blood, that He might have mercy on both heavenly and earthly things. Indeed, after He came, He made peace through the blood of His cross for all things, whether in heaven or on earth.

Within was the censer, within the table, within the lamp. The censer, because thus, as incense, the priestly prayer is directed especially to God the Father. The table, because in it is the passion of Christ and the mysteries of the sacraments. Whence David says: "Thou hast prepared a table before me", of which, as it were, the twelve loaves are the twelve Apostles, witnesses of His passion and resurrection. The lamp, which is placed under the lampstand, was formerly under a bushel, that is, under the measure of the law: now it is in the fullness of grace, pouring forth abundant light through seven mouths, because the Holy Spirit illumines the temple of God with the powers of the seven greatest graces. The knowledge of the Trinity, therefore, was in the inner parts of the temple, which were called the Holy of Holies, where once the rod of Aaron, laid up, flourished: because the priestly grace in Christ would work still more abundantly after the death by which He redeemed the world.

If the Jews had wished to believe, they had evident signs of the impending destruction, by which they were warned, as it were by clear voices, that the end was near for them. For nearly a whole year a comet blazed over the temple itself, having a certain likeness to a hanging sword, foretelling also, by iron and by fire, the future devastation of the nation, the kingdom, and the city itself. For what does the likeness of a sword foretell but war, what does fire foretell but conflagration? It was seen, however, before the people separated themselves from the Romans. But in the very days of the Passover, on the eighth day of the eleventh month, on each night at about the ninth hour, the temple and its altar shone with light as though it were day, remaining so for nearly half an hour every day: which the common people interpreted as seeming to indicate an increase of the nation, and by this they were driven on, as though the time for recovering liberty were at hand.

The more prudent, on the contrary, supposed that this kind of star was accustomed to foretell war.

Lest anyone should think that we have spoken things foreign to our own worship and discipline, first we set forth not what seems good to us, but what happened, and what opinions there were at that time, what the prudent felt, what the imprudent; nor, when something is said concerning the sect of the Jews, should it seem to be written by us as though in the truth of their worship, rather than as we have woven it in as a shadow and figure set forth beforehand, that we might follow the perfection. For concerning the signs of the stars we are also taught in the Gospel, that there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars. They also asserted that a heifer, when it stood to be sacrificed at the altars in the midst of the temple, brought forth in birth a lamb, in the very celebrations of the sacred rites which we mentioned above.

Also that the eastern inner gate, heavy with solid bronze, which was accustomed to be closed at evening by the labor of twenty men, with iron bars fastened, was for several nights spontaneously unlocked, and afterward was scarcely closed by the guards. This too very many judged to be a sign of good things to come, for those who were to enter when the gate was opened: but the more discerning said that the guard of the temple seemed to be dissolved, so that whatever was within might be plundered by enemies, that the inner worship might depart and be emptied out by devastation, that the celebration of sacrifices might be destroyed—which even before they crucified Christ Jesus, the reading clearly teaches was signified.

After many days also a certain figure of inestimable size appeared, which very many looked upon all around (as the books of the Jews have made manifest), and before the setting of the sun there were suddenly seen in the clouds chariots and armed battle-lines, by which the cities of all Judea and its region would be assailed: and at the very feast of Pentecost, as the priests were entering the inner parts of the temple by night to celebrate the accustomed sacrifices, they reported that they first felt a certain movement, and heard a sound given forth; afterward also that they heard a sudden voice crying out: "Let us depart hence."

Jesus also, son of Ananias, a countryman, four years before the Jewish people entered upon the war, when the city was in the greatest peace and abundance, while the Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated with solemn sacrifices, going up into the temple began to cry out: A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice upon Jerusalem, upon the temple, a voice upon the bridegrooms and brides, a voice upon all the people. This he kept shouting night and day. The chief men of the place, disturbed and dreading the terrible portent of his voice, seized him and inflicted many punishments upon him, that afflicted at least by pain he might cease from announcing terrible things full of portents. But he, terrified neither by fear nor by scourgings nor by graver threats, changed neither his manner nor his voice, but remained in the same persistence of announcement, in the same continuity of words, without any interruption of entreaty, heedless of the injury, unmoved in feeling.

Since they judged this to be by no means a mere pretense, but, as it seemed, uttered in an ecstasy of mind, they brought him before the judge of the place, who at that time was administering public business there on behalf of the Romans. He, for the sake of searching out the truth, tore him with the most savage punishments. The more the man persisted, the more vehemently he ordered him to be scourged, so that if he had learned any more secret indications of a coming disturbance, he might reveal them. But the man neither wept nor begged, but at every stroke tearfully lamented not his own destruction but that of his fatherland, saying: Woe to Jerusalem. Nor, when asked who he was, or whence, or why he said these things, did he give any answer; but only continued that lamentation for his fatherland with a pitiable wailing. Wearied then, Albinus (for that was the man’s name) dismissed him as one out of his mind with madness, not aware of what he was saying.

But he held converse with no one, nor was he heard to say anything else for the rest of the time; but singing this, as it were, mournful and funereal chant, he continually resounded it day and night, Woe to Jerusalem: he neither reviled the one scourging him, nor gave thanks to the one giving him food: to all alike he had one and the same answer, full of funereal wailing, and especially at the celebrations of the sacrifices. For seven years and five months, then, the same succession of words, the same sound of voice. He remained thus unwearied for so long a time: when the siege began, he ceased from that shouting, as though the announcement ought to cease when what had been announced was now present. But when the flame began to envelop the city together with the temple, going about the wall he began again to cry out: Woe to the city and the people and the temple.

And at the last he added, Woe also to me; and by the blow of a sling-stone, in the midst of that same cry, he gave up his spirit.

It was also written in ancient writings that the city, together with the temple, would then perish, when the temple should have been made four-square. And so, whether forgetful, or stupefied by the pressing necessity of evils, when Antonia was seized, they made it four-square in the circuit of the temple. Among these things was that most notable one, which stood written in writings equally ancient (which they called sacred), that according to that time there would be a man who from their region would assume dominion over the whole world. This matter put them into such a frenzy that they promised themselves not only liberty but even a kingdom. Some thought this ought to be referred to Vespasian, the wiser to the Lord Jesus, who, born according to the flesh of Mary, spread his kingdom throughout the whole world. Since things remained thus, they could not guard against what was divinely decreed.

For, recognizing the manifest wrath of God upon themselves, they refused to reach for any remedy of consolation: so great a darkening of crime had covered over the eyes of their minds.

Since indeed their affairs were desperate, Eleazar, the author of the disturbances, among his other words of dissension, lamented thus over their rejection by God: O wretched men, to what hope of this life do we reserve ourselves? Suppose the enemy pardons—what will it profit, when the offense of God is manifest? Fires turned back upon us by the enemy, the blasts of the winds changed, the flames turned back, so that our defenses might be taken from us. Who can live with God as adversary? There is no place for pardon, but a manifest command of voluntary death. For why did the night intervene, except that the enemy might not forestall us, nor, once the defense of the wall was burned, immediately break in; but that time might be reserved for us to practice mutual slaughter, and that we might be allowed to die with our children and our kin, lest we should see gasping old men and old women dragged off by the Romans, our dearest wives seized for the victor’s lust?

Let us die together with our fatherland, lest we survive as a reproach to so great a disgrace. Whither, then, shall we flee from the face of God, or whither shall we go from the Lord of heaven who is hostile to us? If mountains should fall upon us and hollow caverns hide us, how nevertheless could we escape the indignation of so great a power? For to what place shall we go forth where God is not, since he himself is everywhere? Or are these but slight examples by which we are taught, that already for a long time he who formerly presided over us has been hostile to our people for our sins? Who could doubt this, seeing that our hands have been turned against ourselves, and domestic sedition has destroyed more than war?

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 rather by our own arms than by those of others: and the Jews dwelling in Caesarea have seen the arms of the Romans, whose multitude of Gentile Caesareans, on the feast day of the Sabbath, in the midst of the solemn worship of our sacred rites, kindled by some sudden onslaught and by fury sent from above, destroyed twenty thousand, and put all to flight, so that they emptied the whole city. Did not madness fill all Syria, so that Jews and Gentiles, situated in the same cities, and previously bound to one another by the bond of dwelling together, afterward clashed with one another in arms, so that a ford for the Romans’ future victory should be established? For why should I speak of Scythopolis?

Whither the Jews first hastened, that they might get ahead of the Gentile people, lest something be contrived against our own after the example of the other cities? And so those who ought rightly to have been joined together with their strength to fight against foreigners, the Jews on the contrary fought against themselves; so that a part of them warred against their own kinsmen and neighbors. Then they themselves, as the price of their labor and of the blood they had spent, were destroyed by the Gentiles, for that which they themselves had forbidden to be done among the Gentiles. The people of Damascus, 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.

At Alexandria indeed there was an old hatred between the Jews and the Gentile peoples, ever since the great Alexander made use of the zeal of the Jews to subject the Egyptians: whence, the city having been founded, privileges and separate dwellings were equally assigned to Jews and Egyptians, lest the worship of those be mingled who wished to keep their purifications without any contamination. Hence frequent conflicts arose between them, quarrels sprang up, judgment was sought. Nothing, however, is clear to have been violated of the benefits of so great a king, but afterward, a tumult having arisen from the Gentiles, when some of the Jews were slain, others were held for punishment: the Jewish people, moved by the injury, rose up against the authors of the injury: and when they wished more stubbornly to avenge themselves upon the citizens, the Roman army was brought in, which poured out sixty thousand Jews within the city.

But why do I linger over lighter things, when the destruction of the whole world is to be lamented by us in the ruin of a single city? Where is the greatest city, Jerusalem? Where is fair Sion? Where is the wonderful temple? Where is that inner sanctuary, after the pattern of the holy tabernacle, into which alone the high priest was wont to enter once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sin of the people? Profaned to the Gentiles: those who destroyed it now dwell among the remains of the city. Where, I ask, art thou, city thronged with peoples, venerable to kings, acceptable to God, seat of grace? Thy pavements were of marble, thy walls gleaming with marble, thy roofs shone with precious marble; thy gates glittered with gold, others gleaming with silver. All are slain, both those who continually dwelt in thee, and those who came to thee from all parts of the whole world, so that there is no doubt that the whole world perished in thee.

All things stripped bare, burned from the roofs, torn down from the foundations: thy dwelling has become desolate; nor is there one to dwell in thy tabernacles, and does anyone still wish to live, and not repent of having lived? Hard are the eyes that can behold these things: unfeeling the souls that can wish to survive such griefs, not because the calamity has ceased, but because there is now no rest. For whither shall we turn our eyes, or what does it please us to determine? The whole city is a sepulcher of the dead: to those who look upon the sun, ashes meet the sight; the streets are empty of the living, filled with corpses. Wretched old men, with ash-strewn white hair, and garments torn, sit upon the remains of the dead, covering their bare bones, to defend them from birds and beasts. A few women survive unharmed, whom the impious soldier has preserved for shame, not for life.

Who, seeing these things and thinking of the postponement of living, would dare to lift his eyes to heaven? Who is so forgetful of his fatherland, so alien to his own, so estranged from piety, so devoid of sweetness, whose spirit is so effeminately soft? Who is so timorous that he would not be ashamed to be reserved for these things? Would that we had perished long ago, or, if life remained, that the light of our eyes had perished before we beheld the holy city destroyed by the hands of the enemy, and this temple, consecrated to God by our forefathers, so impiously burned with flames, or that we should see the priests lying slain in the temple!

Let us therefore amend the fact that we have survived these evils, so that we may seem not to have deferred death out of desire for life, but out of intent of virtue. The enemy has surrounded every fortification. Nothing remains, save either ourselves, or our wives; already they are setting up our sons at auction, and they contend among themselves as to who shall carry off whose wife, whether they are to be distributed according to the merits of rank or the orders of persons, or whether the wretched women are to be compelled to submit to lots; for us too are prepared monstrous punishments, the most exquisite torments: not only burning flames, or various deaths by the stroke of the victor’s axe—harsh indeed after chains, after prison, after the yoke, yet more tolerable for men, if it be free from mockery; but also limbs torn from the living, and especially hands cut off. And not undeservedly, since they failed in their duty, when they could have come to our aid.

We must also undergo the bites of wild beasts for the spectacle of the victors, which is now celebrated in the various arenas of the cities: either it ought to be a shameful example to us, or a marvel to behold, that we should be reserved either to fight against beasts, or against our brothers.

And many other things of this kind, full of despair and desperation, Eleazar brought forth publicly. From all these things, and from the very outcomes of events, when the Jews had manifestly recognized that God was angry with them; they did not glorify Him as God, or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings; and their foolish heart was darkened; and Him who had come only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel they hated, and hating, crucified, and strove to make void the glory of His resurrection. For if they had not known, they would by no means have been so guilty. Whence the Lord Himself says of them: If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin: but now they have both seen, and hated both me and my Father.

For they knew from the Father, just as the demons too, saying: We know that thou art the Son of God: seeing wonders, hearing yet more wonderful things; but they did not recognize the truth of the matter, because, hard of heart, they refused to believe. For if, believing, they had truly known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, as Paul says. Whence the Prophet: The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel has not known me. What is meant by the ox, but every holy preacher, laboring in the seed of the word of God? What is meant by the ass, but the brute people of the Gentiles is signified? Who, hearing the preaching of any shepherd whatsoever, straightway ran to the crib of the Lord, that he might cling to the fodder of the word of God.

Fittingly, however, after forty-two years of his visitation, Israel is exterminated from the land of promise, because after forty years from the departure out of Egypt he is recorded to have been brought into it; in which years he received a second time the two stone tables of the decalogue, by which is prefigured the two-year period appointed for the number of the overthrow; in which also is especially to be noted the exaltation of the bronze serpent, by looking upon which whoever was dying was restored to life.

For just as in that space of time they were fed with manna, and through the mediator Moses received the law written upon stone tables, and those who at the point of death did not look upon the exalted serpent perished: so within this time of the overthrow, those who refused to drink wholesomely of the true manna (of which it had been said: I am the living bread which came down from heaven), and the true mediator Christ Jesus, of whom it was foretold: The Lord your God will raise up unto you a prophet from among your brethren; him shall you hear as myself, and whoever shall not hear him shall be exterminated from his people; and who, disdaining to follow his legal ordinances written in themselves upon the true rock, and refusing to believe, under the circumstance of that most wretched overthrow, that he was exalted on the cross and rose again from the dead, were exterminated from the land of promise and perished: so that that people which sat in darkness and dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, seeing the eternal light of resurrection, might enter into it with its own fulness; and thus the remnant of Israel might be saved, insofar as, out of two walls, one Church may be joined together in the resurrection upon that cornerstone which shall make both one, our Lord Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen.