Our Lady of Sorrows Church

The Destruction of Jerusalem
by Titus in 70 AD

(Matthew 20:15-21) "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that she will soon be destroyed. Then those who are in Judea must run away to the hills; those who are in the city must leave, and those who are out in the country must not go into the city. For those will be 'The Days of Punishment,' to make come true all that the Scriptures say. How terrible it will be in those days for women who are pregnant and for mothers with little babies! Terrible distress will come upon this land, and God's punishment will fall on this people. Some will be killed by the sword, and others will be taken as prisoners to all countries; and the heathen will trample over Jerusalem until their time is up."

The Fulfillment of Jesus' Prophecy

After several years of Judean uprising, Titus received command of the Roman Army of the East in 69 AD, and in the following year, at the season when the Holy City was crowded with those who had come to the Feast of the Passover, he began to lay siege to it. Titus took up his position on Mount Scopus with the Fifth, Seventh, and Fifteenth Legions, while the Tenth Legion occupied the Mount of Olives. On the Jewish side, John of Giscala held the Temple, the Antonia, and the new town at Bezetha, with 11,000 men, and Simon, the son of Giora, held the upper and lower city, on the southwestern hill, with 10,000 men.

Attacking the third wall, the Roman legions captured that line of defenses after fifteen days' fighting. Once master of the new town, Titus took up a position to the west. An attack upon the second wall immediately followed. Five days later, the Romans gained entrance by a breach, but were repulsed, and mastered it only after five days of fierce and incessant fighting. Titus could then approach the Antonia Fortress, which offered the only way of access to the Temple, and the citadel of Herod, which covered the first wall to the north of Mount Sion. After three days given to repose, the causeways and movable towers were made ready against the Hippicus tower and the Antonia. But the works raised against the Antonia were ruined and destroyed by the soldiers of John of Giscala, and two days later the movable towers which threatened the Hippicus were set on fire by Simon's men, while a heroic struggle was being maintained on both sides. The Roman general then employed his whole army for three days in surrounding the city with an earthwork of circumvallation, designed to cut off all communication with the city, and so to reduce the place by famine. This soon produced terrible results.

After three weeks of fresh preparations, the battering-rams effected a breach in the wall connecting the Antonia Fortress (2) with the Temple (1,3), near the Pool of Struthius, but in vain. Two days later, the wall crumbled to pieces above a mine prepared by John of Giscala, and a handful of Roman soldiers gained entrance to the Antonia Fortress by surprise, at three o'clock in the morning. Titus at once had the fortress demolished, in order to use the materials in constructing mounds against the Temple. For three weeks the Jews desperately defended first the outer porticoes and then the inner, which the Romans entered only at the cost of enormous sacrifices. At last, a Roman soldier flung a blazing torch into one of the halls adjoining the Holy of Holies (1). In the midst of frightful carnage the fire spread to the neighboring buildings, and soon the whole temple platform was one horrible mass of corpses and ruins. The Romans then set fire to the palace in the hollow of El Wad, and to the Ophel; next day they drove the Jews out of the Acra and burned the lower city as far as the Pool of Siloe. There still remained the third rampart, the formidable stronghold of the upper city, where the defenders of the Acra, laden with booty, had joined Simon's men. Eighteen days were devoted to the preparation of the aggeres (mounds) to the northwest and northeast of the fortress, but scarcely had the battering-rams breached the walls when John and Simon fled secretly with their troops. The city was definitively in the power of the Romans, after a siege of 143 days. To those who congratulated him, Titus replied: "It is not I who have conquered. God, in His wrath against the Jews, has made use of my arm".

The walls of the Temple and those of the city were demolished. But Titus wished to preserve the fortress of the upper city, with the three magnificent towers of Herod's palace. Besides, the upper city was needed as a fortified station for the Tenth Legion, which was left to garrison Jerusalem. During this siege, one of the most bloody recorded in history, more than a million, perished by the sword, disease, or famine. The survivors died in gladiatorial combats or were sold into slavery.

The Jews had forged their own destiny; they had filled for themselves the cup of vengeance. In the utter destruction that befell them as a nation, and in all the woes that followed them in their dispersion, they were but reaping the harvest which their own hands had sown. Says the prophet: "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself;" "for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity." (Hosea 13:9; 14:1). Their sufferings are often represented as a punishment visited upon them by the direct decree of God. It is thus that the "great deceiver" seeks to conceal his own work. By stubborn rejection of divine love and mercy, the Jews had caused the protection of God to be withdrawn from them, and Satan was permitted to rule them according to his will. The horrible cruelties enacted in the destruction of Jerusalem are a demonstration of Satan's vindictive power over those who yield to his control.

We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and protection which we enjoy. It is the restraining power of God that prevents mankind from passing fully under the control of Satan. The disobedient and unthankful have great reason for gratitude for God's mercy and long-suffering in holding in check the cruel, malignant power of the evil one. But when men pass the limits of divine forbearance, that restraint is removed. God does not stand toward the sinner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression; but He leaves the rejecters of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have sown. Every ray of light rejected, every warning despised or unheeded, every passion indulged, every transgression of the law of God, is a seed sown which yields its unfailing harvest.

The Spirit of God, persistently resisted, is at last withdrawn from the sinner, and then there is left no power to control the evil passions of the soul, and no protection from the malice and enmity of Satan. The destruction of Jerusalem is a fearful and solemn warning to all who are trifling with the offers of divine grace and resisting the pleadings of divine mercy. Never was there given a more decisive testimony to God's hatred of sin, and to the certain punishment that will ultimately fall upon the guilty.

The Savior's prophecy (Luke 21:20-24, Matthew 24:15-21, Mark 13:14-19) concerning the visitation of judgements upon Jerusalem is to have another fulfillment, of which that terrible desolation was but a faint shadow. In the fate of the chosen city we may behold the doom of a world that has rejected God's mercy and trampled upon His Law. Dark are the records of human misery that earth has witnessed during its long centuries of disobedience to God. The heart sickens, and the mind grows faint in contemplation.

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