From the seacoast of Palestine we now pass over to the land of Israel. We have some remarkable prophecies regarding Judea, as well as regarding the Jews, in the Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. They are predictions the fulfillment of which was to be contingent on the prolonged disobedience, the persistent rebellion, or the Israelites. After having spoken of milder chastisements the Scripture proceeds: “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto Me, but walk contrary unto Me, then I will walk contrary unto you in fury, and I will also chastise you seven times for your sins.... And I will destroy your high places.... And I will make your cities a waste, and will bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors, and I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And you, will I scatter among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation and your cities shall be a waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate and ye be in your enemies’ land, even then shall the land have rest and enjoy her sabbaths” (Lev. 26:27-3427And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; 28Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. 29And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat. 30And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. 31And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. 32And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. 33And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. 34Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. (Leviticus 26:27‑34)).
These words were written before the Israelites entered Palestine. There were partial and temporary fulfillments before the Christian era, such as the removal to Babylon, from the consideration of which we are precluded by the limits which we have assigned ourselves. But if these words ever were to be fulfilled they ought to be fulfilled now. They are a statement of what God is to do in the event of Israel’s stubborn resistance to His will. Their continued unbelief, their persistent disobedience, are to be followed by these judgments which are to mark them as the objects of God’s displeasure. Now, if Christianity is of God and these words are His, this must be beyond every other, the time of their fulfillment. For if Christ is indeed the Saviour promised from of old and the King whom God has anointed over Zion, then there is nothing which Israel has ever done which has equaled the rebellion of these nearly 19 centuries. It has been highhanded and utter. There has not been the slightest attempt, or pretense of an attempt, even to make a compromise. They have wholly rejected God’s covenant. For that covenant, as made with Abraham, spoke of Him in whom all nations of the earth were to be blessed. When it was reinstituted under Moses, it made mention of the Prophet like unto him. When the one King of God’s appointment was set over Israel, they were pointed to David’s son, whose scepter should rule the nations and whose dominion should be everlasting; and this Anointed One was ever more clearly set forth by the prophets who, according to the Jews’ own admission, were the inspired exponents of the Divine will. And yet, when He came, they said “we will not have this man to reign over us.” They crucified Him. They blasphemed His name. They persecuted His followers. They tried to stamp out the acknowledgment, and even the remembrance, of Him, from the earth. And today, though powerless—we may also say unwishful—to injure Christianity, their rejection of it is still sullen and contemptuous. If, in the face of all this, nothing which the servant of God spoke of had been done, I can conceive of no stronger argument against Christianity than those very words of his would supply. It would then be clearly proved either that the words were not true, or that, in rejecting Christ, the Jews were not rejecting anything which could be called the covenant, or the will, of God. But if, on the other hand, the words have all been fulfilled to the letter, are not both claims fully proved? If the punishment has been contemporaneous with the rebellion; if the punishment has been as prolonged as the rebellion has been enduring; what then? Shall we not read there that these are God’s words and that Jesus is God’s gift to us?
Let us see, then, whether the prophecy has been made good. We confine ourselves at present to what is said of the land—the story of the people will come before us again. We notice first of all that there was to be
A CESSATION OF JEWISH WORSHIP AND THE DESOLATION OF THEIR SANCTUARIES.
“I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors,” “I will destroy your high places... and will bring your sanctuaries unto desolation” (Levit. 26:30, 31). We know what Jewish worship was in the time of our Lord. The prescribed service of the law was celebrated with pomp and splendor by a fully equipped and richly-sustained priesthood. The temple tax of two drachmae was paid not only by the Jews in Judea and Galilee. Wherever the Jew was found throughout the known world the tax was collected and forwarded to Jerusalem. The Temple itself was one of the wonders of the world. “High above the whole city rose the Temple, uniting the commanding strength of a citadel with the splendor of a sacred edifice. According to Josephus the esplanade on which it stood had been considerably enlarged by the accumulation of fresh soil since the days of Solomon, particularly on the north side. It now covered a square of a furlong each side.” Of the internal splendors of the edifice, the beauty and magnificence of the colonnades and courts and gates, we need not speak. “The outward face of the Temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely to surprise either men’s minds or their eyes, for at the first rising of the sun it reflected back a very fiery splendor, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it, to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays. It appeared to strangers when they were at a distance like a mountain covered with snow, for those parts of it that were not covered with gold were exceeding white.” “Vast and splendid,” says Hosmer, “the Temple certainly was. The Romans were then at the height of power, and familiar with all the magnificence of the earth, yet it seemed to them one of the wonders of the world. No doubt it far surpassed in greatness and beauty the structure of Solomon, upon whose foundations it was reared. The Herods had lavished upon it vast treasures.”
Such then was the worship, and the “Holy Place” of the Jew at the time of our Lord. But, as we have seen, it stood written from the time they passed out of Egypt that, if they consummated their sin and completed their rebellion by the rejection of God’s covenant, their Holy Places would be brought into desolation and their worship should cease. About the year 26 of our era Jesus the Messiah, was manifested. After three-and-a-half years of opposition and persecution the Roman Governor was compelled by the Jewish Rulers to do their will, and Jesus was crucified. Then the Gospel of a crucified and risen Redeemer was preached. And now in their turn the heralds or the Cross were rejected, maligned, imprisoned, scourged, and slain. Then in the year 70 the blow fell. The Roman armies swept the land with fire and sword, the bitter opposition they met with fanning their rage to tenfold fierceness. The priesthood perished. The Holy Places were literally brought into desolation. The Temple was burned and ruthlessly demolished. Jerusalem was dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus, and the figure of a sow was placed over the gate leading to Bethlehem, so that under its polluting shadow no Jew might pass. Never since then has the Jew offered a single sacrifice prescribed by the Law. From that day to this the multitudes who from every quarter under heaven went up to keep holy day have ceased. To this hour the doom of desolation remains, and these i8 centuries are the witnesses to the truth of the words, “I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. I will destroy your high places... and will bring your sanctuaries into desolation.”
But terrible as this punishment was, there were to be still other tokens of the Divine displeasure.
THE ISRAELITES WERE TO BE DRIVEN FROM THEIR LAND.
“You, will I scatter among the nations” (Levit. 26:33). Men were to say of them, “The Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land as at this day” (Deut. 29:2828And the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day. (Deuteronomy 29:28)). The dispersion of the Jews is one of the common places of history. Their story is one more proof how the words of Scripture are filled to the brim, so to speak, with meaning. Not only was the race cut down like a tree and its branches scattered abroad: it was literally “rooted out.” The work was not wholly done in the first conquest under Vespasian and Titus, when Jerusalem was taken, and one stronghold after another went down, and all resistance was trampled underfoot. It is true that multitudes perished then, and that many more were carried away to be slain in Roman amphitheaters or to spend their lives in slavery. But it would appear that many of the dwellers in the villages and in the cities were allowed to remain in the land. It was not till 60 years afterward (135 A. D.) that the ruin of the people was completed. A false Messiah, named Barcochebas (the soli of a star), inflamed their desire for vengeance, and their hope that God would regard them in their misery. The remnant left in the land was now strong enough to garrison 50 castles and 985 villages. Their first efforts seem to have been attended with success. The Romans were defeated, and Julius Severus, the most distinguished general of the time, was summoned from Britain to take command of the Roman forces. The suppression of the rebellion was a work of time and skill, and was attended with losses so severe that that war was ever afterward remembered as one of the most disastrous in which the Romans had ever engaged. Terrible stories are told by the Rabbins of the carnage which marked the final triumph of Rome, and a Roman historian records that during the war 580,000 fell by the sword, not including those who perished by famine, disease, or fire. The people who remained were gathered together in droves, driven to markets, and sold as slaves. The land was wholly depopulated: the people were “rooted out,” and have never been planted again in the land promised to their fathers. Nearly 6,000 are found in Jerusalem, and about 5,000 in other parts of their ancient territory. That the Jews will eventually return to Palestine, we know. The fulfillment of the predictions which foretold judgment are the pledge that those also will be accomplished which promise mercy. But meanwhile the doom remains. Rabbinowitz, who went in 1882 to Palestine with the view of determining whether the “tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast” might not find a refuge in their ancient home, had to abandon the idea. He was compelled to admit that the poverty of the soil and the oppression of the Turkish government make return an impossibility.
But, though deprived of her ancient masters, the land was not to be without inhabitant.
THEIR ENEMIES WERE TO DWELL IN IT.
“I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell therein shall be astonished at it” (Levit. 26:32). The Israelites were to be rooted out, but others were to be planted in their stead. And the words were fulfilled. After the suppression of the outbreak in 135 A.D., the whole of the land was put up to sale by command of the Emperor Hadrian, and was bought by Gentiles, who flocked in to settle in the country from which the Jews had been swept out. From that time to this their enemies have dwelt therein. The races who originally purchased the land have long ago been supplanted by others, but all have been alike in this that they were and are aliens and hostile to the Jew.
Then
THE CITIES WERE TO BE A WASTE.
This was largely fulfilled in 70, and still more fully in 135. We are told that then “the whole of Judea was a desert: wolves and hyenas went howling along the streets of the desolate cities.” It might be supposed, however, that, if the preceding prediction were fulfilled and the land were inhabited by the enemies of the Jews, this desolation could not be a permanent feature of the country. And yet this was to be one of the enduring marks of the Divine indignation— “Your cities shall be a waste” (Levit. 26:33). For a time the doom seemed to be successfully withstood. The fulfillment of the one prophecy appeared to prevent the fulfillment of the other. The ruined cities were peopled and re-built by the new settlers. And, when Christianity had triumphed in its long warfare with the heathenism of the Roman Empire, and Constantine sat upon the throne of the Caesars, Palestine was made to feel the change. Magnificent churches were reared on every spot hallowed by Old or New Testament story. It became a holy land to the whole Roman Empire. When the Persians under Chosroes II. invaded the country in the beginning of the seventh century, Galilee and the district on the other side of the Jordan were so full of strong cities that the progress of the Persian hosts was seriously delayed. A few years afterward the Arab invaders were occupied four months in the siege of Jerusalem, and the siege then ended only because the Christians capitulated upon their own terms. Four centuries later the Crusaders found Palestine still possessed of strong cities—so long did the word of God wait, or rather so slow are the harvests of judgment. But the word did not wait in vain. The threat, “Your cities shall be a waste,” has long since been abundantly fulfilled. Travelers speak of its desolation with positive amazement. Captain Conder refers to Judea as “this ruined land.” Of the Shephelah, or western lowlands, the most fertile and thickly populated district of the land of Israel, he says: “The ruins are so thickly spread over hill and valley that in some parts there are as many as three ancient sites to two square miles.” Dean Stanley speaks of “the countless ruins of Palestine.” He elsewhere draws attention to the “peculiarity of the present aspect of Palestine, which though not, properly speaking, a physical feature, is so closely connected both with its outward imagery and with its general situation that it cannot be omitted. Above all other countries in the world it is a Land of Ruins.” “It is not that the particular ruins are on a scale equal to those of Greece or Italy, still less to those of Egypt. But there is no country in which they are so numerous, none in which they bear so large a proportion to the villages and towns still in existence. In Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that whilst for miles an miles there is no appearance of present life or habitation, except the occasional goatherd on the hillside, or gathering of women at the wells, there is yet hardly a hilltop of the many within sight which is not covered by the vestiges of some fortress or city of former ages. Sometimes they are fragments of ancient walls, sometimes mere foundations and piles of stone, but always enough to indicate signs of human habitation and civilization.” Of Jerusalem, which, according to another prediction, has continued from generation to generation, this is nevertheless also true. The chief of Israel’s cities has not escaped the general doom. Dean Stanley says: “If, as we have before observed, Palestine is a land of ruins, still more emphatically may it be said that Jerusalem is a city of ruins. Here and there a regular street, or a well-built European house emerges from the general crash, but the general appearance is that of a city which has been burnt down in some great conflagration.”
We have now to mark a kindred feature in the prophetic picture.
THE LAND WAS ALSO TO BE DESOLATE.
Here, again, it might be supposed that the possession of the country by the enemies of the Jews would have made the accomplishment of the prophecy impossible. If industrious settlers took the place of those whom God had swept away, why should not the land have remained as fertile and populous under them, as under their predecessors? There is no doubt that for ages its fertility and populousness did remain. But it was written from of old that this should be another mark of God’s displeasure against His people: “I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies who dwell therein shall be astonished at it.... Your land shall be a desolation.... Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest and enjoy her Sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall have rest; even the rest which it had not in your Sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it” (Lev. 26:32-3532And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. 33And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. 34Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. 35As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it. (Leviticus 26:32‑35)).
The reiteration will be marked. The desolation of the land is as prominent a feature in the prophetic picture as the scattering of Israel among the nations. And this judgment too has fallen. Henry Maundrell, who visited the country in 1697, says: “All along this day’s travel from Khan Leban to Beer, and also as far as we could see around, the country discovered a quite different face from what it had before, presenting nothing to the view, in most places, but bare rocks, mountains, and precipices.... Leaving Beer, we proceeded as before in a rude, stony country.” I have already quoted the words of Dean Stanley, that “for miles and miles there is no appearance of present life or habitation, except the occasional goatherd on the hillside, or gathering of women at the wells.” Elsewhere he speaks of “the present depressed and desolate state” of the land. To “the question which Eastern travelers so often ask and are asked, on their return, ‘Can these stony, these deserted valleys, be indeed the Land of Promise, the land flowing with milk and honey?’” he quotes in answer the words of Dr. Olin: “The entire destruction of the woods which once covered the mountains, and the utter neglect of the terraces which supported the soil on steep declivities, have given full scope to the rains which have left many traces of bare rock where formerly were vineyards and cornfields.” And he adds: “The very labor which was expended on these sterile hills in former times has increased their present sterility. The natural vegetation has been swept away, and no human cultivation now occupies the terraces which once took the place of forests and pastures.” Speaking of the district about Lake Huleh, Mark Twain says: “Stirring scenes like these occur in this valley no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent—nor for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. To this region one of the prophecies is applied. ‘I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.’ No man can stand here by deserted Ain Mellahah and say the prophecy has not been fulfilled.” And again: “It is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country, the grass ought to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enriching the air with their fragrance, and the birds singing in the trees. But alas, there is no dew here, nor flowers, nor birds, nor trees. There is a plain and an unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren mountains.”
“The valley (of Shechem),” writes Captain Conde, “is the most luxuriant in Palestine... But as at Damascus the oasis is set in a desert, and the stony, barren mountains contrast strongly with the green orchards below.” The Rev. J. L. Porter says: “I climbed a peak which commands the lake, and the Jordan valley up to the waters of Merom. The principal scene of Christ’s public labors lay around me—a region some thirty miles long by ten wide. When He had His home at Capernaum, the whole country was teeming with life, and bustle, and industry. No less than ten cities, with numerous villages, studded the shores of the lake, and the plains, and the hillsides around. The water was all speckled with the dark boats and white sails of Galilee’s fishermen. Eager multitudes followed the footsteps of Jesus through the city streets, over the flower-strewn fields, along the pebbly beach. What a woeful change has passed over the land since that time! The Angel of destruction has been there. From that commanding height, through the clear Syrian atmosphere, I was able to distinguish, by the aid of my glass, every spot in that wide region celebrated in sacred history or hallowed by sacred association... Not a city, not a village, not a house, not a sign of settled habitation was there except the few huts of Magdala, and the shattered houses of Tiberias. A mournful and solitary silence reigned triumphant. Desolation keeps unbroken Sabbath in Galilee now.”
An equally graphic description is given of another district. “Geba, the ancient city of Canaan, the stronghold of Benjamin, is now represented by a few ruinous huts, in which some half dozen shepherds find a home. A shattered tower, and the foundations of an old church, with heaps of hewn stones and rubbish, are the only vestiges of former greatness. Standing there all solitary on its bare rocky ridge, looking down over barren hills and naked ravines upon the scathed valley of the Jordan, it is the very type of desolation. The curse has fallen heavily upon ‘Geba of Benjamin.’ When Elisha came up the defile from Jericho to Bethel, forests clothed the surrounding heights: now there is not a tree (2 Kings 2:2424And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. (2 Kings 2:24)). Vineyards then covered the terraced sides of glen and hill from base to summit. Cities and fortresses, in the days of Israel’s power, crowned every peak and studded every ridge; shapeless mounds now mark their deserted sites. From the site of Geba no less than nine ruined towns and villages were pointed out to me. How wonderfully have the predictions of Moses been fulfilled! ‘I will destroy your high places... I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries into desolation... And I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it’ (Levit. 26:30, 32).”
But not only was it predicted that the land should be desolate;
THE DURATION OF THE DESOLATION
was also foretold. It is a plain inference from the passages we have referred to in Levit. 26. and Deut. 29 that, so long as the rebellion continued, this mark of God’s anger would remain. But the Scripture has not left us to inferences. The duration, both of the rebellion, and of its punishment, has been distinctly foretold. Isaiah, the Evangelist of prophecy, was sent on a mission which, he was forewarned, would be fruitless of any immediate result. Instead of awaking Israel to repentance, he and those whom he preceded would only deepen their slumber. The prophet asks how long this blindness and death will remain. And he is answered: “Until cities be waste without inhabitant and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and the Lord have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land” (Isa. 6:11, 1211Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, 12And the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. (Isaiah 6:11‑12)). That was the answer to the prophet’s cry “Lord, how long?” Israel should refuse to hear till deepening judgment had brought the land into the condition pictured in those words—the condition in which it lies today.
We have now to notice what seems to me one of the most surprising touches in this prophetic description. The land of Israel, bereft of her ancient people, ruined, desolate, was nevertheless to be
A LAND OF PILGRIMAGES!
The prophecy (Deut. 29:2222So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it; (Deuteronomy 29:22)) foretells that among those who will draw attention to the land and its judgments will be “THE FOREIGNER THAT SHALL COME FROM A FAR LAND.” Let it be noted that the judgments which were to fall were such as should rob Judea of everything which might attract the foreigner from a far land. The cities were to be a waste; the land a desolation. There could be no commerce to allure, nor beauty to attract. And what could it matter to the nations that this had once been the home of the scattered Israelites? Their exclusiveness, their arrogance and turbulence, sowed everywhere a plentiful harvest of hatred and scorn. The fulfillment of this prophecy depended, in short, upon the triumph of Christianity. If the covenant which the Jews rejected were once accepted by the Gentiles, and the God of Israel became the God of the nations, then would Judea be indeed “a holy Land.” A consecration, deeper than priestly rites could give, would then rest on every spot hallowed by Old or New Testament story. But who could have foreseen that the fall of Israel should be “the riches of the world, and their loss their riches of the Gentiles?” When the last remnant of the Jewish nation was swept from the land by Hadrian in 135 A. D. Christianity was still struggling against fearful odds; and, if men were to judge by what they saw, it had not even then the remotest chance of succeeding in the conflict. Rome was at the height of its power. In the days of its comparative weakness it had subdued one mighty nation after another: it had stamped out powerful and widespread conspiracies. What chance had Christianity, devoid of political influence and without so much as Peter’s sword to aid it—what chance had it, where all else had failed, of succeeding or even of existing, in the teeth of the determined hostility of the entire Roman Empire? And yet, right through the heart of these improbabilities, those words advanced to their accomplishment. Christianity has long since triumphed. Osiris, Bel and Baal, Zeus and Jupiter, Thor and Odin, and the entire pantheon of the Roman Empire, as well as of nations on whose neck the Roman yoke was never set, have given place to the God of Israel. The land of Judea has long since become more sacred to the Gentile than it ever was to the Jew, for it has been the scene of the life and ministry and suffering of the Son of God. From the Fourth century to the present hour “the foreigner from a far land” has never ceased to tread its soil and to wonder at the fulfillment of prophecy, perhaps unconscious that his own presence there is as wonderful a fulfillment as any.
Before we pass from the Land of Israel, we may glance at some predictions regarding four of its cities. We notice first
THE DOOM OF BETHEL.
This was one of the most ancient sanctuaries of the land, and its situation within the territory of the ten tribes was taken advantage of by Jeroboam. To prevent the tribes going to worship at Jerusalem he reared a temple around its ancient altar, and that semi-idolatrous worship was instituted which prepared the way for the after service of Baal. When God visited the ten tribes for their iniquity, Bethel was also to bear the mark of His indignation. Its altars were to be smitten (Amos 3:1414That in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him I will also visit the altars of Beth-el: and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground. (Amos 3:14)). Its grandeur was to pass away: “I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end saith the Lord” (3:15).
And the desolation was to be still more complete: “Bethel shall come to naught” (v. 5). This judgment was no doubt partly executed by King Josiah. But the words had not then, nor for ages after, reached their fulfillment. It was still a city in the days of Josephus. In the time of Jerome it existed as a small village. The last notice of it is met with in the sixth century. From that time till the beginning of the nineteenth century we have no further reference to it. In the Middle Ages travelers pass over the site without remark, and it is only in recent times that it has been identified. And now the veil is lifted only to show how fully the word has been fulfilled. “Bethel is at present represented by a hamlet called Beit-in. It is not yet (1851) 20 years since people began to identify it with the ancient Bethel. The latter had fallen quite into oblivion. Its ruins cover a large extent of ground..... The foundations of houses, loose building stones, and fragments of walls, are to be seen in abundance.” It is a “confused mass of prostrate walls and ruins.... We have seen no place in this country whose present condition is in such painful contrast to its past history as poor fallen Bethel.” Dean Stanley says, “Bethel, the ‘House of God,’ has become literally Bethaven, ‘the house of naught.’” One speaks of “the wild and stony desolation that spreads itself over these old mountain heights,” and another describes it as “that dreary field of ruin.”
Such was the doom which hung over the Holy Place of the ten tribes. A similar one rested on
SAMARIA,
which, from the days of Omri, was their capital and one of the chief glories of the country. If we are to judge from the length of the sieges which this city sustained, its position must be reckoned among the very strongest in the land. It was equally marked by beauty and fertility. But what are natural strength and beauty and fertility without righteousness? After speaking of the indignation of God at the “transgression of Jacob” and “the sins of the house of Israel,” the prophet Micah asks: “What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria?... Therefore I will make Samaria as the heap of the field, and as the plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof” Mic. 1:5, 65For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem? 6Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof. (Micah 1:5‑6)).
But here, as elsewhere, the doom lingered and seemed sometimes to be swept back and defied. In 109 B. C. the Jewish High Priest, John Hyrcanus, took Samaria after a year’s siege, and leveled it to the ground. The desolation was not, however, of long duration. It was rebuilt by the orders of Gabinius about 50 years after, and was a few years later restored fully and with great splendor by Herod the Great, who named it Sebaste (Augusta) in honor of his patron the Roman Emperor. Josephus mentions it as a city in 70 A. D. It was the seat of a Roman colony in the third century of our era, and on the conversion of the empire it became an Episcopal See. The names of the Bishops of Sebaste appear from time to time in the records of the Councils—the last notice occurring in connection with the Synod of Jerusalem, held in the year 536. It was taken by the Mohammedans in the beginning of the seventh century, and it figures also in the story of the Crusades. For some time after it retained its position among the cities of Palestine. Sir John Maundeville, who visited the country in 1322, calls it “the chief city” of the district. But the doom has long since fallen, and the prediction which so many ages seemed to mock, has become the most accurate of all descriptions. Henry Maundrell, telling what he saw in 1697, says: “Sebaste is the ancient Samaria, the imperial city of the ten tribes after their revolt from the House of David.... It is situate upon a long mount of an oval figure, having first a fruitful valley and then a ring of hills running round about it. This great city is now wholly converted into gardens, and all the tokens that remain to testify that there has ever been such a place, are only, on the north side, a large square piazza encompassed with pillars, and on the east some poor remains of a great church.”
As it was then found, it has since remained. “The whole hill of Sebastieh,” says Robinson, “consists of fertile soil; it is now cultivated to the top, and has upon it many olive and fig trees. The ground has been plowed for centuries; and hence it is now in vain to look for the foundations and stones of the ancient city.” Van de Velde calls it a “pitiable hamlet, consisting of a few squalid houses, inhabited by a band of plunderers.... The shafts of a few pillars only remain standing to indicate the sites of the colonnades.... Samaria, a huge heap of stones! her foundations discovered, her streets plowed up, and covered with corn fields and olive gardens.... Samaria has been destroyed, but her rubbish has been thrown down into the valley; her foundation stones, those grayish ancient quadrangular stones of the time of Omri and Ahab, are discovered, and lie scattered about on the slope of the hill.” “Ruins everywhere,” writes another, “in the valley, on the hillside, down the mountaintop, amidst the olive groves, the wheat fields, and the vineyards, forcibly bringing before the mind the wrath of God against that city.” Here also the words have been literally fulfilled. The prediction has become a description. The stones of the great city have been taken up by the cultivators and piled together or thrown down the hillsides, that its site might be turned into fields and vineyards. Samaria has been changed into “the heap of the field” and into “the planting of a vineyard.” Its stones are poured down into the valley and its very foundations are laid bare.
Two other cities, the names of which are forever embalmed in the story of our Lord’s life on earth, demand a passing notice. CAPERNAUM “rose under the gentle declivities of hills that encircled an earthly Paradise. There were no such trees, and no such gardens anywhere in Palestine as in the land of Gennesareth... Josephus, in a passage of glowing admiration, after describing the sweetness of its waters, and the delicate temperature of its air, its palms, and vines, and oranges, and figs, and almonds, and pomegranates, and warm springs, says that the seasons seemed to compete for the honor of its possession, and Nature to have created it as a kind of emulative challenge, wherein she had gathered all the elements of her strength.... ‘The cities,’ says Josephus, ‘lie here very thick; and the very numerous villages are so full of people, because of the fertility of the land... that the very smallest of them contain above 15,000 inhabitants.’ No less than four roads communicated with the shores of the Lake.... Through this district passed the great caravans on their way from Egypt to Damascus.”
But Capernaum shared largely in a fuller blessing than trade or earthly fertility and beauty could bestow. It was the home of Jesus during the busy years of His ministry. It was called “His own city.” His was a familiar presence in its streets. The dwellers there had been spectators of many a miracle. They had heard His words. The mere story of what was said and done there, carried to many another place, had touched the heart and changed the life. But Capernaum was content to behold and to listen, and perhaps to admire. But no enduring touch of awe fell on its busy, frivolous, pleasure-seeking life. There was no turning from sin, no seeking after God.
But those who refuse to flee remain to warn. The words of Christ, “And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted unto heaven? Thou shalt go down unto Hades” (Matt. 11:2323And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. (Matthew 11:23)), stood inscribed on the page of the gospel long before Capernaum had ceased to dream of increasing prosperity. After the blow had fallen in the Roman conquests of 70 and 135 A. D., Capernaum, like the rest of Galilee, revived again, and the doom of extinction was for a time averted. We have references to it for ages afterward. It was still a town in the days of Eusebius and Jerome. It was visited by Antoninus Martyr about 600 A. D. Bishop Arculf, who saw it 100 years later, says: “It lies on a narrow piece of ground between the mountain and the lake. On the shore towards the east it extends a long way, having the mountain on the north and the water on the south.” Willibald found it inhabited in 722. Brocardus, writing near the end of the thirteenth century, describes it as “a humble village, containing scarcely seven fishermen’s huts.” Quaresimus, who visited Palestine about 1620, speaks of the site as covered with ruins, but it is open to question whether he did not mistake the site of this ancient city, and since his day all certainty as to the situation of Capernaum has disappeared. Most travelers believe that it is to be found at Tell-Hum, of which Ritter says: “The whole place, taken in connection with the great devastation of the fairest decorations by the tooth of time, dashed by the ripples of the Lake, and left to no other companionship than that of the waters, is calculated to awaken the saddest feelings in the mind of the traveler.” But Robinson, both in his earlier and later researches, contends that the identification with Tell-Hum is a mistake. There are cities in Palestine from whose precincts the tide of life has not yet retired, but from Capernaum it has long since passed away. Capernaum has gone down into Hades, and men are now unable to point with absolute certainty even to its grave.
As might be expected, both Old and New Testaments to point with absolute certainty even to its grave.
JERUSALEM.
To those “who build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity,” Micah declared: “Therefore shall Zion for your sakes be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest” (3:12). The words may have been fulfilled during the Babylonish captivity, though it is most improbable that, in that time, when the remnant fled into Egypt, and the silence of death fell upon the land, any plow was driven over the site of the city of David. But, although there may have been a temporary fulfillment then, the eye which foresaw that, foresaw more. It must have looked on to the time of which that captivity and desolation were but the warning. The description of the rulers, too, as building up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity, never applied to men more fully than to those who shed the blood of the Holy and Just One with the avowed purpose of preserving the state from Roman encroachment, and who are painted on the pages of Josephus as men steeped in intrigue and unscrupulousness, whose almost daily pathway was one of robbery and murder.
Taking the words, then, as prophetic of the great judgment on the Jewish people, is there anything in the present condition of the city to show that we have not mistaken their application? The reply is that they are the best of all possible descriptions. There are three things mentioned.
MOUNT MORIAH.,
“the mountain of the House,” whose top was leveled to make a site for the Temple, was to become as “THE HIGH PLACES OF A FOREST.” This level space is, as will be readily understood, of very limited extent. Yet part of this limited area is covered with trees. “South of the Mosque of Omar there is a space 350 feet in extent filled with lofty cypresses and other trees.” The mountain of the House, once covered with all that gave magnificence, and beauty, and sacredness to Jerusalem, has become like the high places of a forest.
Then JERUSALEM with its homes and palaces
WAS TO BECOME HEAPS.
The Holy City, though still inhabited, has only about one-seventh of its ancient population, and we have already referred to its ruined condition. We are prepared, therefore, for a confirmation of this prediction also; but it is startling to find that Ritter, in his description of the present condition of the city, unconsciously repeats the words of the prediction. He says: “Entering the city, the piles of rubbish and the narrow streets compel us to recognize the fact that it is no longer a royal capital, princely in its magnificence, but a squalid town, which shows only too plainly its humiliation and poverty. As a recent traveler has truly and beautifully said, to him who does not see this city with the eye of faith, and who, amid all the strife which now divides the church, does not look forward to the glorious triumph which awaits it, Jerusalem is only a little eastern city covered with wrecks of past desolation, suffering under want and oppression, and from which the casual traveler hastens as rapidly as possible. But the classic ground, with its history extending over thousands of years, remains, under all its rubbish and ruins, still classic.
The remaining part of the prediction has been as wonderfully accomplished. Zion is even now
PLOWED LIKE A FIELD.
“Only the northern portion of Zion is included in the modern walls; and this is occupied chiefly by the Jewish quarter, and by the great Armenian convent... Without the walls the level part of Zion is occupied by the Christian cemeteries, the house of Caiaphas (now an Armenian Convent), the Cœnaculum, or Muslim tomb of David, and the adjacent convent, formerly a Latin convent. The rest of the surface is now tilled, and the city of David has become a plowed field! The eastern slope is likewise in part cultivated.” “Mount Zion,” says Dr. Thomson, “is now for the most part a rough field... From the tomb of David I passed on through fields of ripe grain. The whole of the hill here is under cultivation, and presents a most literal fulfillment of Micah’s prophecy: ‘Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field.’ It is the only part of Jerusalem ‘that is now, or ever has been, ploughed.’”
There are also predictions regarding the sacred city in the New Testament, and, with a word on these, we shall close our survey of the predictions which refer to the Land of Israel. Pointing to the Temple, our Lord said to His disciples, “See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down” (Matt. 24:22And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. (Matthew 24:2)). And again, “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled” (Luke 21:2424And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. (Luke 21:24)). The first of these prophecies foretells
THE ANNIHILATION OF THE TEMPLE.
It is generally agreed that the Gospel of Matthew was written some time between 50 and 60 A. D. In the year 70 the first stroke of the judgment fell. One of the very last incidents in that terrible siege was the destruction of the Temple by fire. Josephus records that the burning of the sanctuary was contrary to the wishes of Titus, and was carried out in defiance of his express commands. It might have been supposed, then, that a stay would have been put to any further work of destruction. The blackened walls might have been allowed to stand. But the word of the Lord is sure. Orders were issued to raze the entire city, with the exception of one or two towers and a portion of the wall. These were spared to show to after times what the strength of Jerusalem had been, and what the Roman triumph meant. “Terentius Rufus,” says Mil-man, “executed the work of desolation, of which he was left in charge, with unrelenting severity. Of all the stately city, the populous streets, the palaces of the Jewish Kings, the fortresses of her warriors, the Temple of her God, not a ruin remained, except the tall towers of Phasaelis, Mariamne, and Hippicus, and part of the western wall, which was left as a defense for the Roman camp.” The work was completed on the suppression of the last rebellion under Barcochebas in 135 A.D. The very foundations of the Temple seem then to have been torn up and the plow to have been passed over them. Before the Temple to Jupiter Capitolinus was reared upon its site by the Emperor Hadrian, there remained of the buildings to which our Lord that day pointed, not one stone upon another which was not thrown down.
The remaining prophecy depicts the then
FUTURE HISTORY OF JERUSALEM
in one brief sentence. Every one is aware that the city, whose very name is so dear to the heart of the Jew, has been “trodden down.” Nor need we search the pages of history to prove that its lords and possessors have been the Gentiles. Never once, since the days of Hadrian, has the Jew ruled in the city of his fathers. There were times when it was death for him to enter it, or indeed to approach near enough to behold it from a distance. The presence of the Jew is barely tolerated even now, and the voice of one Arab woman is enough to frighten away bearded men from the place of wailing. The prophecy states further that the Gentile oppression will continue till judgment should also visit them, and “the time of the Gentiles” should be fulfilled. This prediction is remarkable for a deliberate and powerful attempt which was made to defeat it, and so to disprove the claims of Jesus. The Emperor Julian, in his attempt to dethrone Christianity and to reinstate the ancient paganism, hit upon the device of restoring the Jews and rebuilding the Temple. We shall let Gibbon tell the story. “He resolved to erect, without delay, on the commanding eminence of Moriah, a stately temple, which might eclipse the splendor of the church of the Resurrection on the adjacent hill of Calvary; to establish an order of priests, whose interested zeal would detect the arts, and resist the ambition of their Christian rivals; and to invite a numerous colony of Jews, whose stern fanaticism would be always prepared to second, and even to anticipate, the hostile measures of the Pagan government. Among the friends of the Emperor (if the names of Emperor and of friend are not incompatible), the first place was assigned by Julian himself to the virtuous and learned Alypius. The humanity of Alypius was tempered by severe justice and manly fortitude; and, while he exercised his abilities in the civil administration of Britain, he imitated, in his poetical compositions, the harmony and softness of the odes of Sappho. This minister, to whom Julian communicated without reserve his most careless levities and his most serious counsels, received an extraordinary commission to restore in its pristine beauty the Temple of Jerusalem; and the diligence of Alypius required and obtained the strenuous support of the governor of Palestine. At the call of their great deliverer the Jews, from all the provinces of the Empire, assembled on the holy mountain of their fathers, and their insolent triumph alarmed and exasperated the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem. The desire of rebuilding the Temple has, in every age, been the ruling passion of the children of Israel. In this propitious moment the men forgot their avarice, and the women their delicacy; spades and pickaxes of silver were provided by the vanity of the rich, and the rubbish was transported in mantles of silk and purple. Every purse was opened in liberal contributions, every hand claimed a share in the pious labor; and the commands of a great monarch were executed by the enthusiasm of a whole people.
“Yet, on this occasion, the joint efforts of power and enthusiasm were unsuccessful; and the ground of the Jewish Temple, which is now covered by a Mahometan Mosque, still continued to exhibit the same edifying spectacle of ruin and desolation... An earthquake, a whirlwind, and a fiery eruption, which overturned and scattered the new foundations of the Temple, are attested, with some variations, by contemporary and respectable evidence. This public event is described by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in an epistle to the Emperor Theodosius, which must provoke the severe animadversion of the Jews; by the eloquent Chrysostom, who might appeal to the memory of the elder part of his congregation at Antioch; and by Gregory Nazianzen, who published his account of the miracle before the expiration of the same year. The last of these writers has boldly declared that this preternatural event was not disputed by the infidels; and his assertion, strange as it may seem, is confirmed by the unexceptionable testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus. The philosophic soldier, who loved the virtues, without adopting the prejudices, of his master, has recorded, in his candid and judicious history of his own times, the extraordinary obstacles which interrupted the restoration of the Temple at Jerusalem. ‘Whilst Alypius, assisted by the governor of the province, urged with vigor and diligence the execution of the work, horrible balls of fire breaking out near the foundations, with frequent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place from time to time inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen; and the victorious element continuing in this manner obstinately and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, the undertaking was abandoned!’”
Gibbon doubts the miracle. “At this important crisis,” he says truly enough, “any singular accident of nature would assume the appearance, and produce the effects, of a real prodigy.” Michaelis ventured the suggestion that the flames may have been due to the ignition of foul air generated in the caverns by which the Temple area is known to be undermined. But, whatever the explanation may be, the fact is undoubted that the attempt was made to defeat the prophecy, and that the attempt failed. Neither the strength and resolute determination of the Roman legions, nor the enthusiasm and outpoured wealth of the Jews were able to bring this “word of the Lord” to naught.
We conclude the present chapter with a glance at the testimony of
BABYLONIA,
the scene not only of the captivity of the Jews, but also of the events which broke the unity of our race, and scattered its fragments over the earth. Of Babylon, the capital,
THE MOST APPALLING DESOLATION
was foretold, “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldæans’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah” (Isa. 13:1919And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. (Isaiah 13:19)). At the beginning of our era the work of destruction had been begun, but was by no means perfected. When captured by Alexander, Babylon was still great, and it is said the conqueror intended to make it the capital of his dominions. Alexander’s successors did not, however, carry out his intention. In 300 B. C. Seleucia was built, and the glory of Babylon was gradually transferred to her rival. About the beginning of the Christian era only a small part of Babylon was inhabited; and that chiefly, if not wholly, by Jews; the rest of the city was under cultivation. About the year 40 A. D. a persecution of the Jews under Caligula still further diminished the number of the inhabitants. Lucian, in the second century, predicts that its very site, like that of Nineveh, would soon be a subject of investigation. A number of notices, by various writers, enables us to trace the history of the desolation. Jerome, writing about the beginning of the fourth century, says that the site of Babylon was made into a hunting-ground for the Persian Kings; and Cyril of Alexandria, about 412, mentions that the canals from the Euphrates had been filled up, and that the city was then little better than a marsh. In 460 Theodoret remarks that it was no longer inhabited by either Assyrians or Chaldæans, and that only a few Jews had their habitations scattered among the ruins.
Ibn Haukal, in 917, speaks of Babel as a small village, and says that scarcely any remains of Babylon were to be seen; and when, in the twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela passed through Chaldæa, the ancient capital was an utter desolation, and the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace were inaccessible, owing to the number of scorpions and serpents by which they were infested.
The desolation, it was foretold, should be
UTTER AND LASTING:
“It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their flocks to lie down there” (Isa. 13:2020It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. (Isaiah 13:20)). We have seen how the ocean of human life gradually receded from this vast city, once the home of countless multitudes. Wave after wave rushed back from the retiring waters, as if resolved to cling to the ancient habitations; but the hand of doom was mightier, and every remnant of its once busy, joyous, life has long since passed away. Hillah, six miles southwest of Babylon, which marks the site of the ancient town where the plebeians dwelt apart, has a population of 6,000; but not one human dwelling rests upon the site of the ancient city—the glory of the Chaldæans’ excellency. The Bedouin, though he pastures his flocks in the immediate neighborhood, regards the ruins themselves with superstitious dread, and the latter part of the prediction is also fulfilled to the very letter. The tents of the Arabs are freely pitched on the Chaldæan plains, but not one of them is pitched amid the ruins of Babylon. Other cities named in prophecy have become folds for flocks; but no shepherd makes his flocks to lie down among the mounds of ancient Babylon. Ruined cities frequently afford in the remnants of their walls protection for flock and shepherd of which advantage is eagerly taken. But “on the actual ruins of Babylon the Arabian neither pitches his tent nor pastures his flocks—in the first place, because the nitrous soil produces no pasture to tempt him; and secondly because an evil reputation attaches to the entire site, which is thought to be the haunt of evil spirits.”
But a deeper humiliation was to be inflicted. Something is said about those who should dwell within its precincts. The
TENANTS
of the ruined city are described. “But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces” (Isa. 13:21, 2221But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. 22And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged. (Isaiah 13:21‑22)). This feature of the desolation has been noted by every traveler. In carrying excavations into the great mound of Babil, Layard came upon some coffins containing skeletons. “A foul and unbearable stench,” he says, “issued from those loathsome remains, and from the passages, which had become the dens of wild beasts, which had worked their way into them from above.” And the “doleful creatures are not wanting.” “Owls start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal skulks through the furrows.” “The mound was full of large holes; we entered some of them, and found them strewed with the carcases and skeletons of animals recently killed.” Speaking of the Birs Nimroud, Heeren says, “Its recesses are inhabited by lions, three being quietly basking on its heights when Porter approached it, and, scarcely intimidated by the cries of the Arabs, gradually and slowly descended into the plain.” Then
THE ASPECT
the place should wear was described while it was yet in its glory: “Babylon shall become heaps” (Jer. 51:3737And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant. (Jeremiah 51:37)). Were it not that we are in the midst of surpassing wonders, it would be in the highest degree astonishing to mark how travelers are here compelled to use the very words of Scripture. “The wide extent,” says one, “of mounds and vestiges of buildings must arrest the attention of every beholder; who, at the same time, will not fail to remark how little the shapeless heaps can suggest in any degree either the nature or object of the structures of which they are the wrecks.” “The ruins,” remarks another, “are mounds formed by the decomposition of buildings, channeled and furrowed by the weather, and strewed with pieces of brick, bitumen, and pottery... I imagined I should have said, ‘Here were the walls, and such must have been the extent of the area; there stood the palace; and this most assuredly was the temple of Belus.’ I was completely deceived; instead of a few insulated mounds, I found the whole face of the country covered with vestiges of buildings, in some places consisting of brick walls surprisingly fresh, in others, merely of a vast succession of mounds of rubbish of such indeterminate figures, variety, and extent, as to involve the person who should have formed any theory in inextricable confusion.” It is impossible to find, in the whole range of language, a term which will more fitly describe the present condition of the city than that which is used in the prophecy. Babylon has become heaps.
Other details are added. “A curious feature in the prophecies,” says Professor Rawlinson, “is the apparent contradiction that exists between two sets of statements contained in them, one of which attributes the desolation of Babylon to the action of water, while the other represents the water as ‘dried up,’ and the site as cursed with drought and barrenness. To the former class belong the statements of Isaiah: ‘I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water’ (14:23); and ‘the cormorant (pelican?), and the bittern shall possess it’ (34:11); together with the following passage of Jeremiah, ‘The sea is come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof’ (51:42); to the latter such declarations as the subjoined, ‘A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up’ (Jer. 1:38), ‘I will dry up her sea’ (51:36); ‘Her cities are a desolation, a dry land and a desert’ (1:12); ‘Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon’” (Isa. 47:11Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. (Isaiah 47:1)).
“But this antithesis, this paradox, is exactly in accordance with the condition of things which travelers note as to this day attaching to the site. The dry, arid aspect of the ruins, of the vast mounds which cover the greater buildings, and even of the lesser elevations which spread far into the plain at their base, receives continual notice. ‘The whole surface of the mounds appears to the eye,’ says Ker Porter, ‘nothing but vast irregular hills of earth... while the foot at every step sinks into the loose dust and rubbish.’ And again, ‘Every spot of ground in sight was totally barren.... It is an old adage that, where a curse has fallen, grass will never grow. In like manner the decomposing materials of a Babylonian structure doom the earth on which they perish to an everlasting sterility.’ ‘On all sides,’ says Sir Austen Layard, ‘fragments of glass, marble, pottery, and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and hideous waste.’
“On the other hand, the neglect of the embankments and canals which anciently controlled the waters of the Euphrates, and made them a defense and not a danger, has consigned great part of what was anciently Babylon to the continual invasion of floods, which, stagnating in the lower grounds, have converted large tracts once included within the walls of the city into lakes, pools, and marshes.”
And, not only have the prophecies pictured the aspect of Babylon, they have also described
THE PROCESS
by which its edifices have been turned into dust. “Cast her up as heaps,” cries the prophet to the men of the then far-distant future— “cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly: let nothing of her be left” (Jer. 1. 26). The tearing down of the ruins has been continued for centuries. The bricks, even at this late date, are so excellent in quality, that the shape of the mounds is being continually altered by the excavations which are made for them. “El Kasr, when visited by Rich, was nearly a square of seven hundred yards in length and breadth. But even in the seven years, which intervened between this visit and that of Porter, the everlasting digging and carrying away of the bricks had been sufficient to change its shape. What then must have been its size twenty centuries before!... About twenty-four hundred feet from Kasr is Amram Hill. The whole of this stupendous heap is broken like that of the Kasr into deep caverned ravines and long winding furrows, from the number of bricks that have been taken away.” “To this day,” says Layard, “there are men who have no other trade than that of gathering bricks from this vast heap, and taking them for sale to the neighboring towns and villages, and even to Baghdad. There is scarcely a house in Hillah which is not built of them.”
And the Scripture takes us further still. It foretells that, while her mounds should be “cast up as heaps” in the search for building material,
STONES SHOULD BE DESTROYED.
“There is one fact,” says Mr. Rassam, “connected with the destruction of Babylon and the marvelous fulfillment of prophecy which struck me more than anything else, which fact seems never to have been noticed by any traveler, and that is the non-existence in the several modern buildings in the neighborhood of Babylon of any sign of stone which had been dug up from its ancient ruins. It seems that, in digging for old materials, the Arabs used the bricks for building purposes, but always burnt the stone thus discovered for lime, which fact wonderfully fulfills the Divine words of Jeremiah, namely: ‘And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations: but thou shalt be desolate forever, saith the Lord’ (Jer. 51:2626And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the Lord. (Jeremiah 51:26)).” When we reflect that these stones were brought from far (for no stone is furnished by the vast plain of Babylonia), and must have been in a special degree the pride of the great city, we understand the significance of the doom. All her beauty and magnificence were to perish without memorial.
We cannot conclude this hurried notice of Babylon, without remarking, what is certainly not the least surprising of its testimonies to the Scripture—the fulfillment of the words: “Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyeth all the earth; and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee
A BURNT MOUNTAIN”
(Jer. 51:2525Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain. (Jeremiah 51:25)). Babylonia is an immense plain in which no natural mountain or hill has ever stood. And yet Babylon must have presented some feature which gave the epithet, “destroying mountain,” propriety and force. If there existed some stupendous structure which was in a peculiar way the confidence of this people, the figure would be explained at once. If around and upon such a height the temples of their deities were placed, and if the height itself was consecrated by the most ancient and sacred traditions, we could understand why the threat against the city and the nation should be addressed to this, and why it should bear some special mark of His displeasure, who will not give His glory to another, nor His praise to graven images. An inscription of Nebuchadnezzar’s has been found which relates how he repaired and splendidly adorned what he names “the Tower of the seven stages, the Eternal House, the Temple of the seven luminaries of the Earth.” “The discovery of this inscription,” says Lenormant, “points out to us, among the ruins still lifting their heads around the site of ancient Babylon, the still gigantic remains of a monument which, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, was believed to be the tower of Babel. It is this that the inhabitants of the country still call ‘Birs Nimrod’ (‘the Tower of Nimrod’), and in the midst of the plains it still looks like a mountain.” It was described by Herodotus. There was, first of all, “a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth.” Upon this, “was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. When one is about half-way up, one finds a resting-place and seats where persons are wont to sit some time on their way to the summit.” This vast structure was dedicated to Bel, the chief deity of the Babylonians, and the supposed favor of this deity gave Babylon a sacredness even in the estimation of the neighboring nations. It is named in Assyrian inscriptions “the dwelling-place of Bel.” “The earth about the hill is now clear, but is again surrounded by walls which form an oblong square, enclosing numerous heaps of rubbish, probably once the dwellings of the inferior deities, or of the priests and officers of the Temple. The appearance of the tower of Nimrod is sublime even in its ruin. Clouds play round its summit.” Recall now the words, “I will roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain,” and place by the side of them these, “It is rent from the top nearly halfway to the bottom; and at its foot lay several unshapen masses of fine brickwork, still bearing traces of a violent fire, which has given them a vitrified appearance, whence it has been conjectured that it has been struck by lightning. The appearance of the hill on the eastern side evidently shows that this enormous mass has been reduced more than half.” It has been rolled down from the rocks, and been made a burnt mountain!
We glance, in conclusion, at Chaldæa, the country of which Babylon was the mighty capital. The Chaldæans had spoiled many nations, and many thrones had gone down before them. But a day of vengeance was to come. She was to be
THE PREY OF MANY NATIONS.
The judgment was recorded: “Many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds” (Jer. 25:1414For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands. (Jeremiah 25:14)). The following brief sketch of their history will show how the words were kept. Babylonia was the prey first of the Medes and the Persians; then, about three hundred years before the time of our Lord, of the Macedonians under Alexander and his successors; then of the Parthians; and afterward, from time to time, of the Romans. For two centuries, from 636 A. D., it was held by the Arabs. In 1218 it was desolated by the Tartars under Zingis. “From the Caspian to the Indus they ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labors of mankind; and five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the ravages of four years.” For a time the country was in the hands of the assassins, who were overthrown and succeeded by Holagou Khan, the grandson of Zingis, in 1258. “I shall not enumerate,” says Gibbon, “the crowd of sultans, emirs, and atabeks whom he trampled into dust.” In 1380 it was conquered by Tamerlane, who erected on the ruins of Baghdad a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. Since then it has passed from the grasp of one fierce race into that of another. The prophecy is simply the summary of Chaldæans history: “Many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds.”
It was also written that all should find
AN ABUNDANT SPOIL.
“All that spoil her shall be satisfied” (Jer. 1:1010See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant. (Jeremiah 1:10)). The teeming riches of the soil and the position of the country, which forced upon it a chief share in the world’s commerce, seemed to bid defiance to the ravages of man. No sooner did a fresh horde of conquerors settle down upon the land than it heaped its treasure upon them till they too were ready for the spoiler. Gibbon has painted the joy of the Arabs at their sudden enrichment here in 636, little thinking how every word he penned was bowing before the prediction, “All that spoil her shall be satisfied.” “The naked robbers of the desert,” he says, “were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure, secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the various wardrobes and precious furniture surpassed (says Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or of numbers; and another historian defines the untold and almost infinite mass by the fabulous computation of three thousands of thousands of thousands of pieces of gold.”
There was, last of all, a prophecy which stood in the most complete contradiction to the character of the country for centuries after the beginning of the Christian era.
The entire
LAND WAS TO BE A DESOLATION.
Among the most fertile and populous of all countries, it was to be among the most barren and desolate. “How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations” (Jer. 1:23)! “Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby” (Jer. 51:4343Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby. (Jeremiah 51:43)). The wealth of the soil may be estimated from the fact that, though Babylonia and Assyria formed only a ninth part of the Persian dominions, they contributed together one-third of the entire revenue of the empire. The country, consisting of one enormous plain, lay in the embrace of two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. By a most elaborate system of canals the enriching waters were spread over the whole land. The result was seen in a fertility so astonishing that Herodotus was afraid to tell all he knew lest he should be accused of exaggeration. The crop of corn ranges, he tells us, between two and three hundredfold. “The blade of the wheat plant and barley plant is often four fingers in breadth. As for the millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within my own knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what I have already written concerning the fruitfulness of Babylonia must seem incredible to those who have never visited the country.”
“Thus favored by nature,” writes Heeren, “this country necessarily became the central point where the merchants of nearly all the nations of the civilized world assembled; and such we are informed by history it remained as long as the international commerce of Asia flourished. Neither the devastating sword of the conquering nations, nor the heavy yoke of Asiatic despotism could tarnish, though for a time they might dim, its splendor. It was only when the Europeans found a new route to India across the ocean and converted the great commerce of the world from a land trade to a sea trade, that the royal city on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates began to decline. Then, deprived of its commerce, it fell a victim to the two-fold oppression of anarchy and despotism, and sank to its original state—a stinking morass and a barren steppe.” “The whole plain is thickly covered with traces of former habitations. Scarcely, indeed, is there a single rood of ground which does not exhibit some fragment of brick, or tile, or glass, or sepulchral urn to tell that man has lived in a region which now presents to the eye but one vast expanse of arid desert; a howling wilderness, where the only evidence that he still exists is afforded by the black Bedouin tent, or the wandering camel which here and there dots its dreary surface.” We have seen how slowly the doom of Babylon was accomplished, and that it is being perfected even now; and it is only within the last six hundred years that this judgment has fallen upon Chaldæa, and that her cities have become “a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness.” What remains as yet unfulfilled will also be accomplished. The time will come when the silence of death will fall and remain unbroken: when no man will dwell there nor any son of man pass thereby.
Place these prophetic pictures, the features of which we have now looked at in detail—place them for a moment in full view. Remember that we are dealing with undoubted predictions, and that there is no room for the supposition that they were written after, and not before, the event. Reflect that Judea and her cities, that Babylon and the land of which she was once the capital and the glory, are fully and minutely described as they were afterward to be, and that the words of the historian and the traveler merely repeat the language of the prophets. Let us deal with this fact as we should with any other, and shall we not own that doubts are dispelled and convictions deepened? God is not a myth, or a dream. He is, and He has spoken with us. His words are remembered and fulfilled; and, if every word spoken in judgment is accomplished, let us rejoice that His covenant is also “remembered forever.” We can trust Him utterly. “The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”