Chapter V
THE GREAT DISTRESS THE JEWS WERE IN UPON THE CONFLAGRATION
OF THE HOLY HOUSE CONCERNING A FALSE PROPHET, AND THE SIGNS THAT PRECEDED
THIS DESTRUCTION
1. While the holy house was on fire, everything was plundered
that came to hand, and ten thousand of those that were caught were slain;
nor was there a commiseration of any age, or any reverence of gravity;
but children, and old men, and profane persons, and priests, were all
slain in the same manner; so that this war went round all sorts of men,
and brought them to destruction, and as well those that made supplication
for their lives, as those that defended themselves by fighting. The flame
was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans
of those that were slain; and because this hill was high, and the works
at the temple were very great, one would have thought that the whole city
had been on fire. Nor can one imagine anything either greater or more
terrible than this noise; for there was at once a shout of the Roman legions,
who were marching all together, and a sad clamour of the seditious, who
were now surrounded with fire and sword. The people also that were left
above were beaten back upon the enemy, and under a great consternation,
and made sad moans at the calamity they were under; the multitude also
that was in the city joined in this outcry with those that were upon the
hill; and besides many of those that were worn away by the famine, and
their mouths almost closed when they saw the fire of the holy house, they
exerted their utmost strength, and brake out into groans and outcries
again: Perea did also return the echo, as well as the mountains round
about, [the city,] and augmented the force of the entire noise. Yet was
the misery itself more terrible than this disorder; for one would have
thought that the hill itself, on which the temple stood, was seething-hot,
as full of fire on every part of it, that the blood was larger in quantity
than the fire, and those that were slain more in number than those that
s1ew them; for the ground did nowhere appear visible, for the dead bodies
that lay on it; but the soldiers went over heaps of these bodies, as they
ran upon such as fled from them. And now it was that the multitude of
the robbers were thrust out [of the inner court of the temple] by the
Romans, and had much ado to get into the outer court, and from thence
into the city, while the remainder of the populace fled into the cloister
of that outer court. As for the priests, some of them plucked up from
the holy house the spikes that were upon it, with their bases, which were
made of lead, and shot them at the Romans instead of darts. But then as
they gained nothing by so doing, and as the fire burst out upon them,
they retired to the wall that was eight cubits broad, and there they tarried;
yet did two of these of eminence among them, who might have saved themselves
by going over to the Romans, or have borne up with courage, and taken
their fortune with the others, throw themselves into the fire, and were
burnt together with the holy house; their names were Meirus the son of
Belgas, and Joseph the son of Daleus.
2. And now the Romans, judging that it was in vain to spare what was round
about the holy house, burnt all those places, as also the remains of the
cloisters and the gates, two excepted; the one on the east side, and the
other on the south; both which, however, they burnt afterward. They also
burnt down the treasury-chambers, in which was an immense quantity of
money, and an immense number of garments, and other precious goods, there
reposited; and, to speak all in a few words, there it was that the entire
riches of the Jews were heaped up together, while the rich people had
there built themselves chambers, [to contain such furniture.] The soldiers
also came to the rest of the cloisters that were in the outer [court of
the] temple, whither the women and children and a great mixed multitude
of the people fled, in number about six thousand. But before Caesar had
determined anything about these people, or given the commanders any orders
relating to them, the soldiers were in such a rage, that they set the
cloister on fire; by which means it came to pass that some of these were
destroyed by throwing themselves down headlong, and some were burnt in
the cloisters themselves. Nor did anyone of these escape with his life.
A false prophet was the occasion of these people's destruction, who had
made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that God commanded
them to get up upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous
signs of their deliverance. Now, there was then a great number of false
prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose upon the people, who denounced
this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God; and this
was in order to keep them from deserting, and that they might be buoyed
up above fear and care by such hopes. Now, a man that is in adversity
does easily comply with such promises; for when such a seducer makes him
believe that he shall be delivered from those miseries which oppress him,
then it is that the patient is full of hopes of such deliverance.
Source: Josephus Flavius, Wars of the Jews, from The Complete
Works of Josephus, translated by William Whiston, Kregel Publications.