Jerusalem's Doom—Prophecy of chastisement fulfilled
What actually happened when Christ's prophecy of Jerusalem's Doom was fulfilled? Father Coleridge explains how initial victory over Rome turned to utter destruction.
Jerusalem’s Doom—Part IV
In this chapter, Fr Coleridge tells us…
What were the actual historic signs that warned Jerusalem’s Christian’s to flee
How Jerusalem’s initial victory against Cestius sealed it’s fate
How the chastisement of the Jews by Rome was terrible, but just.
Over the final Sundays after Pentecost (the spare Sundays, transferred from after Epiphany), the Roman Liturgy presents us with a dual sense of dread and confidence.
On the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, we see the Apostles battered by a terrible storm on the Sea of Galilee—which Our Lord alone can calm
On the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Our Lord’s Parable of the Wheat and the Cockle warns us that his faithful will have to live side by side with heretics and the wicked—until the harvest at the end of the world
On the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Our Lord’s parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven primarily deal with the state of the Church in this world, but St Matthew’s final comment points towards a terrible chastisement of the “Chosen People.”
On the final Sunday of Pentecost—the “24th Sunday” which is delayed, depending on when Easter fell that year—we see what this chastisement was to be.
What’s more, we see that the chastisement of Jerusalem and the Jews is a foreshadowing and a warning of what is to come for the whole world at the end of time.
The Doom of Jerusalem
From
Passiontide—Part I
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1889, Ch. XIII, pp 246-54
St. Matt. xxiv. 1-28; St. Mark xiii. 1-23; St. Luke xxi. 5-24;
Story of the Gospels, § 144.
Sung on the 24th and Last Sunday of Pentecost-tide
Second part of the prophecy—Destruction
We may now proceed to what may be considered the second portion of this great prophecy, which beyond all doubt refers mainly and directly to the destruction of Jerusalem.
Our Lord here warns the faithful to be on the lookout for the signs, by observance of which they may escape that terrible chastisement which is to fall on the nation and city as a vengeance of His murder, and for all the just blood that shall have been shed from the beginning of time. As we shall see, He speaks most plainly and circumstantially.
‘When, therefore, you shall see the abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not (he that readeth, let him understand)…’
… which last clause is repeated both by St. Matthew and St. Mark, while the former, writing for the Jews, has, ‘Which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place,’ etc.
St. Luke does not quote the prophet, and simply says:
‘When you shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an army, then know that the desolation thereof is at hand.’
Reports of the Evangelists
There is no contradiction in the reports of the three Evangelists, for it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that our Lord spoke both the sentence which is given by St. Matthew and St. Mark, and the sentence which is given by St. Luke. For He must have known that His words would be of the utmost value both to the Jewish and Gentile Christians, and He must have had them both in His mind.
It is quite possible, of course, that the words recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark may have required some such explanation as that which is contained in the words related by St. Luke, but it is far more consistent with reverence for the text of Scripture to suppose that both accounts represent accurately the words of our Lord than that one account is an independent explanation of the other. ‘Then let them that are in Judaea flee unto the mountains,’ and the rest, which will be explained presently.
‘Abomination of desolation’
It is not certain that the words quoted by St. Luke are a direct commentary on the words about Daniel the prophet, and therefore, it is not certain that ‘Jerusalem encompassed by an army’ means exactly the same as the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.
But it seems on the whole that the one phrase explains the other. In this case, the abomination of desolation would refer to the idolatrous ensigns of the Roman armies, bearing the images of the Emperors, which were made the objects of worship, and when these were seen displayed all around Jerusalem, as was the case when the army of Cestius Gallus encircled the city, the sign would have been given and understood by the Christians.
‘Then let them that are in Judæa flee unto the mountains, and those who are in the midst thereof, depart out, and those who are in the countries, enter not into it.’
Then St. Luke, St. Matthew, and St. Mark add these words,
‘Let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, nor enter therein to take anything out of the house, and let him that is in the field not turn back to take his garment. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things may be fulfilled that are written.
‘And woe to them that are with child, and that give suck in those days. And pray ye, that your flight be not in the winter, or on the sabbath-day. For there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and they shall be led away captives into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the nations shall be fulfilled.
‘For in those days shall be such tribulations such as were not from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, neither shall be. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved, but for the sake of the elect whom He hath chosen He hath shortened the days.’
History of the first attack on Jerusalem
These verses seem undoubtedly to refer to the terrible tribulations which fell on the Holy City at the time of its siege and destruction by Titus.
It is clear, too, that they cannot refer to any date later than that at which the city was surrounded by the wall which the Romans built during the siege, for after that it would have been impossible to carry out the warning to flee to the mountains, and the other against any entering the city from outside.
The history of the first siege, as it may be called, of Jerusalem, by Cestius Gallus, some years before the final catastrophe of the city, is very interesting, as illustrating the prophecy of our Lord.
The Jews were stung into revolt in the spring of A.D. 66, by the cruelties of Gessius Florus, on which Cestius Gallus, the President of Syria, marched from Antioch in October to punish them. It was about the time of the feast of Tabernacles that he arrived.
He seems to have temporized, whether from fear whether he had with him forces sufficient to put down the revolt, or, as is more probable, because he hoped to reduce it by negotiation with the large party among the Jews who wished for peace. Josephus tells us that at that time the mass of the nation was unprepared for and indisposed to war, and that more than once Cestius seemed to have it in his power to take the city and end the revolt.
Defeat of Cestius
But Cestius ended by several fatal blunders.
He encamped within view of the city (on Scopus) on the 4th of October. After three days he took possession of Bezetha, the northern side of the city, and on the 12th he attacked the Temple, and might have forced his way into it if he had pleased.
On the day that he possessed himself of Bezetha, some offers were made to admit him to the rest of the city, but he delayed, and the war party found out the intrigue, and threw the authors of it from the walls. On the day on which he attacked the Temple, the same party nearly despaired of a successful resistance, and were preparing to evacuate the Temple and seek safety in flight.
Suddenly, Cestius withdrew his forces, retired again to Scopus, and began a formal retreat. In the course of this his forces were almost completely routed by the Jews who pursued him. This unhappy victory over the Roman army gave the war party the predominance, and was in truth, as Josephus says, the ruin of the whole nation.
This unexpected success put the whole city into the power of the war party, and, such was the prejudice with which the Jews regarded the Christians, that the latter would have been in the greatest danger from this cause alone, if they had remained.
But it appears that the Christians understood the appearance of the army of Cestius as the warning sign which our Lord had given, for they took the opportunity to leave the city and take refuge at Pella, which was a part of the dominion of the younger Agrippa, who was an ally of the Romans, and was therefore left in peace.
Escape of the Christians
We have in these undoubted facts of history a Providential arrangement by which the Christian community at Jerusalem was first warned of the coming calamities, and then given an opportunity of making their escape to a place of safety.
It is certainly very natural to look upon the presence of the Roman standards in sight of the city, and even in the precincts of the Temple itself, or its neighbourhood, as a fulfilment of that sign which our Lord had given them, taking it from the well-known prophecy of Daniel.
The destruction of the army of Cestius was followed by a long pause, for the year after this occurrence was spent by Vespasian in the reduction of Galilee, and it was not till the opening of the following year (A.D. 68) that he undertook the siege of Jerusalem, from which, however, at the last moment, he was called away by the news of the revolt in Gaul, and the death of Nero.
It is clear that there could have been no chance of escape either when Vespasian approached the city, or when the siege was afterwards undertaken by Titus. Our Lord tells the disciples that when they see the sign which He gives them in this prophecy, they are to know that the desolation is at hand.
Again, as has been said, the state of things in the city after the retreat of Cestius up to the time of the siege by Titus would have been full of danger to the Christians. As has been said, they retired then, and none of them, it is said, perished.
Terrible fate of the Jews
The description given in the verses which have last been quoted is terrible indeed, but it does not seem too terrible when compared even with the accounts that have come down to us, which must be supposed to be silent as to many details of a chastisement without parallel in the history of the world.
It must be remembered that the Jews were now made the victims of the just severity of God, avenging on them all their national crimes, and especially our Lord’s Death. They had been brought into the Holy Land as the executors of the judgment, which had been accumulating for centuries, against the nations whom they were commissioned to exterminate for the abominable and unnatural crimes of which they had been guilty.
We are told that it was a complaint on the part of God against the Jews that they had not done their work of extermination so completely as it was required by His justice, and yet we know how fearful are the accounts which are given of the slaughter of whole nations in the early historical books of the Old Testament. Now the Jews were, not the executioners, but the victims, and, as St. Paul says of them before this time, ‘The wrath of God was come upon them to the uttermost.’
It would have been according to the justice of God that the whole nation should have perished for the Blood of our Lord, as Caiphas had said when he uttered his unconscious prophecy at the moment when he proposed the death of one man instead of the nation. But St. Paul tells the Romans, when speaking of the rejection of the Jews:
‘As concerning the Gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake, but as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.’1
‘The elect’
And so our Lord here says:
‘In those days there shall be great tribulations, such as were not from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, neither shall be, and unless the Lord had shortened the days, no flesh shall be saved, but for the sake of the elect whom He hath chosen, He hath shortened the days.’
This may be understood in two ways, ‘The elect whom He hath chosen,’ may be the Christian Jews, and it is certain that a provision was made, as we have seen, by which they were enabled to escape.
But it may perhaps appear that this was an exemption from the chastisement, rather a sparing of some of those on whom it actually fell.
And it may be understood that but for the ‘shortening of the days,’ the whole Jewish nation throughout the world would have been exterminated, as they had exterminated the inhabitants of the land before them.
But God, Whose gifts and calling are ‘without repentance,’ had it in His designs once more in the end of time to gather back that guilty nation to Himself, and so He in His judgment remembered His mercy, and left some, in order that the nation might live on, and, when the time of the Gentiles had passed away, be in its turn converted to the Church.
And this seems to be contained in the words which St. Luke has recorded. ‘They shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the nations be fulfilled.’
Slaughter of the Jews by the Romans
The destruction of life in the Jewish war, and the disturbances which preceded it, is reckoned by some calculators at between two and three millions. This, however, was but a portion of the loss of life, for there were massacres of the Jews in various parts of the Empire, and an immense number besides were sold as slaves.
It must also be remembered that the miserable Jews who remained were often breaking out into rebellion and outrages, which provoked most bloody retaliation on the part of their oppressors. In the reign of Trajan they are said to have massacred or caused the death of as many as four hundred and fifty thousand persons in Libya, the neighbourhood of Cyrene, and Egypt, and also in Mesopotamia, and in the suppression which followed we are told that they were nearly exterminated in Egypt, Africa, and Mesopotamia.
Revolt under Barchocab
They rose again in fierce rebellion under Hadrian, under Barchochab. The war which ensued was almost as important as the war of Vespasian and Titus, and lasted as long as nine years.
There was a great siege of Bethar, like that of Jerusalem. Five hundred thousand persons perished by the sword alone, and an unknown number besides by pestilence and fire.
The Rabbis relate that twice the number of persons that came out of Egypt at the Exodus perished in that war, that is, twelve hundred thousand grown persons. The Jews then had a false Christ in whom they believed—their leader Barchochab. It was after the suppression of this great rebellion that the parts of Jerusalem which had been left standing by Titus were levelled with the ground.
The Temple was ploughed up by Annius Rufus, and was so in the time of Eusebius.2 A Roman colony was planted on the spot by Hadrian, but the Jews were forbidden to settle in Judæa, or come within sight of Jerusalem on pain of death.
We need not pursue the history further.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, Passiontide—Part I
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Romans xi. 28, 29.
Demonstratio Evangelica, v. 13, 273.