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If the Judeans do not accept the Messiah that John is announcing, even worse woes are coming.
REVELATION 9:13–19
13 And the sixth angel sounded the trumpet: and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, which is before the eyes of God,
14 Saying to the sixth angel, who had the trumpet: Loose the four angels, who are bound in the great river Euphrates.
15 And the four angels were loosed, who were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year: for to kill the third part of men.
16 And the number of the army of horsemen was twenty thousand times ten thousand. And I heard the number of them.
17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision: and they that sat on them, had breastplates of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone, and the
heads of the horses were as the heads of lions: and from their mouths proceeded fire, and smoke and brimstone.
18 And by these three plagues was slain the third part of men, by the fire and by the smoke and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.
19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths, and in their tails. For, their tails are like to serpents, and have heads: and with them they hurt.
These verses describe an angel blowing the sixth trumpet. A voice tells the angel to free four other angels who are bound at the Euphrates River. Those angels gather an army of two hundred million soldiers who kill one-third of humanity. As with the locusts, many authors have tried to find a line-by-line interpretation of these verses. Some authors compare this army to the Chinese followers of Communism. Others point to a future army that the Antichrist will lead against Jesus Christ when Christ returns to establish the millennial kingdom. This vision is symbolic: it would be fruitless looking for a literal fulfillment of it. Instead, look for an historical event involving an army and a disastrous defeat. So far, Revelation appears more relevant to first and second-century Judea than it is to twenty first century Gentile nations.
One need not look far for a logical fulfillment in the first century. The army coming up against the unbelievers is the reorganized army under Titus. When Vespasian put Titus in charge, Titus took steps to insure that he could not fail. Six months, he spent, reorganizing his army. Adding to the three legions that had been under the command of his father: the fifth, the tenth, and the fifteenth, Titus summoned the twelfth legion from Syria. This is the same legion the Judeans defeated when the rebellion started. One can wonder about the legionaries' sentiments as they came in for the kill. Titus also requested troops from the confederate Kings of the East who were allied with Rome. From these sources, he organized a sixty thousand man army. The combined forces of Simon bar Giora and John of Gischala counted twenty-three thousand four hundred fighting men. These fighting men controlled a total population of several hundred thousand, all crowded within the city's walls.
By spring of 70, Titus was ready. By April, he and his army reached Jerusalem. Seeing the Romans setting up camp, Bar Giora and Gischala quit fighting each other. They sent men to raid the closest camp. The Romans retreated at first; but, when reinforcements arrived from their other camps, they forced the Judeans to retreat. Confined again within the city, the Judeans resumed their civil war.
It is now Passover. Instinctively the Judeans stopped their civil war so they could celebrate Passover. Pious people carry wood to the Temple in a traditional ceremony to restock the Temple's supply for the sacrificial fire. Eleazar ben Simon's men, barricaded in the inner courts, allowed the pilgrims to enter. John of Gischala noticed this. He sent some of his men disguised as pilgrims. Once enough of them slipped in, they overpowered Eleazar's men. This occurred on April 14.
Titus by now is ready to attack the city. High walls surround the city, and another, interior set of high walls surround the Temple. The walls to the south and the east are on the crests of steep valleys that run along the city's southern and eastern edge. It would be suicidal to send an army up from the valley to scale the walls. The walls to the north and west are on ground that slopes down toward the city. There is ample room for battering rams and siege equipment. The downward slope makes it easier to shoot arrows and boulders down into the city.
Titus chose the western wall. His men cleared an area and built level ramps that went straight to the wall. These provided level surfaces upon which to roll their heavy war machines. They planned to use their battering ram to knock down the wall, their catapults to hurl boulders into the city, and their siege towers to provide high platforms for archers to shoot down into the city.
They finished the work in late April. When the Judeans heard the battering ram pounding the wall, they finally stopped their civil war and, for the first time, planned a joint offensive against the Romans. They thought a sneak attack might take the Romans by surprise. A group of Judeans opened a gate and ran out. They shouted to the Romans not to fire. They said they were tired of civil war and wanted to surrender. Other Judeans on top the wall flung rocks and arrows at them. The Romans rushed to help the victims. On signal from the leader, all Judeans turned on the Romans and killed many of them.
The Judeans then withdrew into the city and began to reinforce a second, older wall, which was about a quarter mile behind the first wall. The Romans broke through the first wall on May 7 and captured part of the city after heavy fighting. Five more days of pounding opened the second wall, and more of the city fell into Roman hands. A third wall protected the oldest sections of the city and still another wall protected the Temple. The Fortress Antonia also protected the Temple. The fortress was an enlargement of the northwest corner of the Temple wall. Entering it, one could pass through the wall into the Temple courtyard. Titus decided to storm Antonia and, simultaneously, knock an opening in the wall some distance south from Antonia. His men built new ramps to provide a level approach for his equipment: two against Antonia, two against the wall.
While the men worked, Josephus urged the Judeans to surrender. He told them how in the past God had always defended them when they were obedient and let them be punished by their enemies when they were disobedient. The revolutionaries refused to listen, but many other Judeans wanted to surrender. The starving people, crazed with hunger, stalked each other like animals searching for hidden food:
Some of the revolutionaries were the most brutal of all in their quest for food: They also invented terrible methods of torments, to discover where any food was, and they were these: to stop up the passages of the privy parts of the miserable wretches, and to drive sharp stakes up their fundaments; and a man was forced to bear what was terrible even to hear, in order to make him confess that he had but one loaf of bread, or that he might discover a handful of barley meal that was concealed; and this was done when these tormenters were not themselves hungry; for the thing had been less barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but this was done to keep their madness in exercise, and as making preparations of provisions for themselves for the following days (Josephus, II, pp. 400–1[WARS V, X, 3]).
John of Gischala sent some of his men to dig tunnels under the ramps by Antonia and shore up the tunnels with wood pillars and beams. On May 29, when the Roman equipment was on the ramps, John's men set the wood supports on fire. The tunnels collapsed. The fire spread to the equipment and destroyed all of it. Two days later Simon bar Giora sent his men to torch the Roman equipment on the other ramps south of Antonia. Titus' hope for a quick victory was gone. He ordered a siege wall around the city to prevent access to any kind of food. The Judeans had been foraging for food at night, especially along the southern and eastern valleys. With the siege wall completed—it was five miles long and circled the entire city—Titus concentrated on Antonia. His men built new ramps and new war machines. This took twenty-one days. The logs for rebuilding were hauled nine miles. All nearby lumber had been used or destroyed during the war.
During this construction, the people within the city suffered terribly. Most were sick; many were dying. Those who had strength fought for whatever food they could find. Those who could snuck out of the city to surrender, even climbing over the siege wall:
So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; . . . As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies, . . . Nor was there any lamentation made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints; . . . A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves; for they brake open those houses . . . and plundered them of what they had; and . . . went out laughing, and tried the points of their swords on the dead bodies; and in order to prove what mettle they were made of, they thrust some of those through that still lay alive upon the ground . . . Now every one of these died with their eyes fixed upon the temple, and left the seditious alive behind them. Now the seditious at first gave orders that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of the dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath (Josephus, II, pp. 406–7[WARS V, XII, 3]).
Somehow the Romans found out that rich Judeans swallow their gold and jewels before they left the city. Just when these Judeans thought they had escaped the miseries of the city, they wound up butchered by Roman soldiers in search of gold:
Yet did another plague seize upon those that were thus preserved; for there was found among the Syrian deserters a certain person who was caught gathering pieces of gold out of the excrements of the Jews' bellies; for the deserters used to swallow such pieces of gold, as we told you before, when they came out; and for these did the seditious search them all; for there was a great quantity of gold in the city, insomuch that as much was now sold (in the Roman camp) for twelve Attic (drams) was sold before for twenty-five. But when this contrivance was discovered in one instance, the fame of it filled their several camps, that the deserters came to them filled with gold. So the multitude of the Arabians, with the Syrians, cut up those that came out as supplicants, and searched their bellies. Nor does it seem to me that any misery befell the Jews that was more terrible than this, since in one night's time about two thousand of these deserters were thus dissected (Josephus, II, p. 409 [WARS V, XIII, 4]).
Antonia fell on July 1. Two weeks later, amid fierce counterattacks, the Romans demolished it. The Judeans no longer had sufficient able-bodied men to maintain the daily sacrifice. When Josephus heard that the sacrifice had ceased, he again encouraged surrender. He pleaded with John of Gischala who was watching him from the wall, but John refused to surrender.
Titus next chose to attack the Zealots within the Temple. There were huge wooden doors in the Temple wall next to the ruins of Antonia. The Romans built two ramps leveling out the approach to the doors. For a second front, they built two additional ramps leading to the wall some distance from Antonia. So many trees had already been felled that the Romans had to travel eleven miles to find lumber. While the Romans built the ramps, Jerusalem remained under siege. Terrible tales of woe came out of the city:
Now of those that perished by famine in the city the number was prodigious, and the miseries they underwent were unspeakable; for if so much as the shadow of any kind of food did any where appear, a war commenced presently, and the dearest friends fell a fighting one with another about it, snatching from each other the most miserable supports of life. Nor would men believe that those who were dying had no food, but the robbers would search them when they were expiring, lest any one should have concealed food in their bosoms, and counterfeited dying: nay, these robbers gaped for want, and ran about stumbling and staggering along like mad dogs, and reeling against the doors of the houses like drunken men; they would also, in the great distress they were in, rush into the very same houses two or three times in one and the same day. Moreover, their hunger was so intolerable, that it obliged them to chew everything, while they gathered such things as the most sordid animals would not touch, and endured to eat them; nor did they, at length, abstain from girdles and shoes, and the very leather which belonged to their shields they pulled off and gnawed: the very wisps of old hay became food to some, and some gathered up fibres, [of hay] and sold a very small weight of them for four Attic (Josephus, II, p. 424 [WARS VI, III, 3]).
One woman, a daughter of the wealthy Nakdinion ben Gorion, ate barley grains out of horse manure. Another woman killed her infant son, roasted him, and ate him:
There was a certain woman . . . eminent for her family and her wealth . . . [when] . . . it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food . . . attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said—'Oh thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? . . . Come on: be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a byword to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.' As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one-half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed (Josephus, II, pp. 424–5 [WARS VI, III, 4]).
These horrifying tales shock a person into recognizing the magnitude of the tragedy that has come upon the city. They horrified even battle-hardened Roman soldiers. But Moses predicted exactly such a tragedy when he warned Israel, more than a thousand years earlier, the curses that would come upon their descendants who do not serve the Lord their God:
But if thou wilt not hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep and do all his commandments and ceremonies, which I command thee this day, all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee . . . The Lord will bring upon thee a nation from afar, and from the uttermost ends of the earth, like an eagle that flyeth swiftly, whose tongue thou canst not understand. A most insolent nation, that will show no regard to the ancients, nor have pity on the infant. And will devour the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruits of thy land: until thou be destroyed, and will leave thee no wheat, nor wine, nor oil, nor herds of oxen, nor flocks of sheep: until he destroy thee. And consume thee in all thy cities, and thy strong and high walls be brought down, wherein thou trusted in all thy land. Thou shall be besieged within thy gates in all thy land which the Lord thy God will give thee: And thou shall eat the fruit of thy womb, and the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters, which the Lord thy God shall give thee, in the distress and extremity wherewith thy enemy shall oppress thee (Deut. 28:15–53).
With the ramps completed, the Romans moved in their battering ram. The doors proved too heavy to be knocked down, so on August 8, the Romans stacked wood against the doors and set them ablaze. The fire burned all night. It spread to the roofs of structures within the Temple complex. The next morning, August 9, the same date the Temple fell to the Babylonians; the Romans burst through the smoldering doors and stormed the Temple courtyard (Josephus, II, pp. 426–7 [WARS VI, IV, 1]).
During the battle, some Romans torched the Temple. Titus had given prior orders not to harm the Temple. When Titus saw it burning, he tried in vain to quench the fire. Meanwhile, other Romans, seeing the Temple ablaze, torched everything in sight. The whole Temple complex with all its buildings lay in ruins. Everything that could burn perished in the fire: the wood interiors, the Temple curtains, the candles, the wood brought in for the fire, the scrolls, everything. Except, while the fire was spreading, the Romans looted whatever valuables they could carry away. Besides the gold and silver utensils and the Temple treasury, they took the master copies of the Torah scrolls. These were later presented to Vespasian at his palace in Rome. During their looting, the Romans slaughtered every Judean that fell into their hands:
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 the 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 that 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 any one of these escape with his life (Josephus, II, p. 430 [WARS VI, V, 2]).
The Romans then attacked the lower section of the old city. This part of the city lay on the south slope of Mt. Moriah and on the summit of Mt. Ophel. Mt. Ophel was seventy-five feet lower than Mt. Moriah. After four weeks of heavy fighting, the Romans captured the lower section. It fell on September 8. Those who survived fled to the upper section and barricaded themselves inside King Herod's heavily-walled palace. The upper section lay west of the lower section and on top of Mt. Zion. The tops of these mountains are not high compared to the lowest valleys in Jerusalem; they are more like hills, but the mountain range itself is several thousand feet higher than the surrounding plains.
Jerusalem lies on the upper levels of the mountain range. The summits of the two main mountains are half-a-mile from each other. The area of each summit is not much larger than several city blocks. The summit of Mt. Zion is about two hundred and seventy-five feet higher than Mt. Ophel in the city's lower section. Because of this uphill climb, the Romans decided not to attack Mt. Zion from the lower city.
Titus, therefore, moved his troops to the opposite side of Mt. Zion where they could attack from level ground. They attacked the wall at a point next to Herod's palace. They broke through and stormed the palace on September 26. Simon bar Giora and some of his men escaped into ancient tunnels under the city, but John of Gischala was captured. John asked the Romans for mercy, so Titus sentenced him to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, Simon and his men vainly tried to find an underground passage that led away from the city. They even dug tunnels of their own. The best they could do was wend their way underground from Herod's palace to the Temple on Mt. Moriah. Not many days later, before the startled eyes of Roman guards, Simon emerged through the Temple ruins. The guards arrested him. The rest of his men surrendered as they came out of the tunnels.
The Roman army then demolished every building in Jerusalem except a few saved to house a small occupying force. According to Josephus, 97,000 Judeans were captured and 1,100,000 died during the four years of war (Josephus, II, p. 440 [WARS VI, IX, 3]). The Romans crucified some on the spot as a warning against future rebellions. They set other prisoners aside to be executed in the sports arena in combat with wild animals or in gladiatorial contests. They executed some prisoners this way during the trip back to Rome. Titus held a victory celebration in Caesarea early in October. He held two more to honor his brother, Domitian, and his father, Vespasian on October 24 and November 17. During these three celebrations, gladiators killed prisoners in combat contests. Most of the prisoners, however, were sold into slavery.
Sometime in A.D. 71, Titus led a "triumph," a formal procession of his army past cheering crowds in Rome. The soldiers wore their best uniforms. They held the loot from the Temple high over their heads so all could see it. They marched their prisoners so the people of Rome could see them also. Complying with a long established tradition, Simon bar Giora, the conquered chieftain, walked past the spectators with his hands tied and a noose around his neck. When the procession reached Jupiter's temple, it halted and, according to custom, Simon, while being whipped, was pulled by the noose to a nearby traditional spot where he was strangled. The crowd applauded his death while Jupiter was honored with sacrifices. The procession then continued its triumphant march past the Emperor.
Over the next two years (A.D. 71 and 72), the Romans crushed the last Judean resistance at Herodion and Machaerus. Eleazar ben Jairi and his 960 followers held out for another year at Masada. Faced with certain defeat, they all committed suicide. A few aftershocks of resistance by Judeans rocked Alexandria and Cyrene and a few other large cities in the Empire, but, by A.D. 79, the rebellion had ended.
REVELATION 9:20–21
20 And the rest of the men, who were not slain by these plagues, did not do penance from the works of their hands, that
they should not adore devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood, which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
21 Neither did they penance from their murders, nor from their sorceries, nor from their fornication, nor from their thefts.
The Judean defeat was disastrous. Hundreds of thousands perished. But the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple did not destroy the Judean nation. It still remained, ruled by Rome through a procurator, but still a recognizable ethnic community that was predominantly Judean. It will still practice many of its own traditional civic and religious customs. It will still, for example, carry on with the priestly offices it exercised before the war. In spite of the casualties during the civic disorders (first woe) and during the war with Rome (second woe), Judea survived.
The Judeans got into trouble in the first place because, when God's works were performed in their midst, too many Judeans failed to recognize them. The unbelievers had their own ideas of what God's works ought to have been, ideas that were really the works of their own hands, what they expected and what they wanted. They convinced the uncommitted to follow them rather than the apostles. Even though biblical prophecies were fulfilled in front of their eyes, the unbelievers were not moved to change their ways or to repent and embrace the way ordained by God. Instead, they continued recruiting the uncommitted, promising them the political and military triumph of their nation. And they opposed everything that led away from that triumph.
REVELATION 10:1–7
1 And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was on his
head, and his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.
2 And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth.
3 And he cried with a loud voice as when a lion roareth. And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.
4 And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying
to me: Seal up the things which the seven thunders have spoken: and write them not.
5 And the angel, whom I saw standing upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven,
6 And he swore by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things which are therein; and the
earth, and the things which are in it; and the sea, and the things which are therein: that time shall be no longer.
7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound the trumpet, the mystery of God
shall be finished, as he hath declared by his servants the prophets.
A mighty angel clothed with God's majesty, stands with one foot on land, the other on the sea. Later, two powerful beasts will rise, one from the land, the other from the sea. Both beasts will cause much trouble. This mighty angel is more powerful than both beasts. The angel stands with both their domains underfoot. The angel shouts in a voice sounding like a lion's roar and is answered by seven thunders. John understands what the thunders say, but he is not allowed to record it. Then the angel, with right hand lifted to heaven, swears that there will be no more delay. When the seventh angel sounds the trumpet, the mysterious working of God shall be finished: "as he hath declared by his servants, the prophets."
The mystery declared to the prophets was the messianic kingdom of God's chosen one. Through that mystery, the entire world will be offered salvation. This messianic kingdom is exactly the kingdom foretold by John when he said: "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 3:2). It is the same kingdom described by Jesus when he told how it would arrive: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say: Behold here, or behold there. For lo, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20–1).
REVELATION 10:8–11
8 And I heard a voice from heaven again speaking to me, and saying: Go, and take the book that is open, from the hand
of the angel who standeth upon the sea, and upon the earth.
9 And I went to the angel, saying unto him, that he should give me the book. And he said to me: Take the book, and
eat it up: and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey.
10 And I took the book from the hand of the angel, and ate it up: and it was in my mouth, sweet as honey: and when
I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.
11 And he said to me: Thou must prophesy again to many nations, and peoples, and tongues, and kings.
Now that the unbelieving Judeans have suffered the second woe, defeat by an overwhelming army, John is told to continue the prophecies. More is yet to come to those who try to defeat God’s chosen Messiah.
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