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(50) Portents and Oracles^[316]

Thus it happened that the wretched people were deluded at that time by charlatans and pretended messengers of God;^[317] while they paid no heed to or discredited the manifest portents that foretold the coming desolation, but, as if thunderstruck and bereft of eyes and mind, disregarded God’s plain proclamations (of disaster). So it was when a star, resembling a sword, stood over the city, and a comet which continued for a year. So again when, before the revolt and the outbreak of war, at the time when the people were assembling for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the eighth of the month Xanthicus,^[318] at the ninth hour of the night, so brilliant a light shone round the altar and the sanctuary that it seemed to be broad daylight; and this continued for half an hour. By the inexperienced this was regarded as a good omen, but by the sacred scribes it was at once interpreted in accordance with after events.

At that same feast a cow that had been led by some one^[319] to the sacrifice gave birth to a lamb in the midst of the Temple. Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court, which it took twenty men to close with difficulty at even—it was of brass and very massive, and was secured by bars shod with iron, and had bolts which were sunk to a great depth into a threshold consisting of a solid block of stone—this gate was observed at the sixth hour of the night to have opened of its own accord. The watchmen of the Temple ran and reported the matter to the captain,^[320] and he came up and with difficulty succeeded in shutting it. This again to the uninitiated seemed the best of omens, as they supposed that God had opened to them the gate of blessings; but the learned understood that the security of the Temple was dissolving of its own accord and that the opening of the gate indicated a present to the enemy, interpreting the portent in their own minds^[321] as a symbol of desolation.

Again, not many days after the festival, on the twenty-first of the month Artemisium,^[322] there appeared a phenomenon so miraculous as to surpass belief. Indeed, what I am about to relate might well, I suppose, be regarded as fictitious, were it not for the narratives of eyewitnesses and for the subsequent calamities which deserved to be so signalized. In all parts of the country before sunset chariots were observed in the air and armed battalions rushing through the clouds and closing in round the cities. Also, at the feast which is called Pentecost, the priests on entering the inner court of the Temple by night, as their custom was, for the discharge of their ministrations, reported that they first became aware of a movement and a resounding noise and afterwards heard a voice as of a crowd, “We are departing hence.”^[323]

But a further portent was even more alarming. Four years before the war, when the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity, there came to the feast at which it is the custom of all Jews to erect tabernacles to God,^[324] one Jesus, son of Ananias, a rude peasant, who suddenly began to cry out in the Temple, “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds; a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against all the people.” Day and night he went about all the alleys with this cry on his lips. Some of the leading citizens, incensed at the fellow’s ill-omened words, laid hands on him and severely chastised him. But he, without uttering a word on his own behalf or for the private ear of those who smote him, continued his cries as before. Thereupon, the rulers, supposing, as was indeed the case, that the man was under some supernatural impulse, brought him before the Roman governor, where, although flayed to the bone with scourges, he neither begged for mercy nor shed a tear, but, merely introducing the most mournful of variations into his ejaculation, responded to each stroke with “Woe to Jerusalem!” When Albinus, the governor, asked him who and whence he was and why he uttered these words, he made no reply whatever to his questions, but never ceased reiterating his dirge over the city, until Albinus pronounced him a maniac and let him go.

During all that period up to the outbreak of war he neither approached nor was seen talking to any of the citizens, but, as if it were a prayer on which he had pondered, daily repeated his lament, “Woe to Jerusalem!” He neither cursed any of those who beat him day after day nor blessed those who offered him food; to all that melancholy and ominous refrain was his one reply. At the festivals his cries were loudest. So for seven years and five months he continued his wail, his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausted, until during the siege, after witnessing the verification of his presage, he ceased. For, while going his round on the wall, shouting in piercing tones “Woe once more to the city and to the people and to the Temple,” as he added a last word, “And woe to myself also,” a stone shot from the military engine^[325] struck and killed him instantaneously. So with those ominous words still on his lips he passed away.

If we reflect on these things, we shall find that God shows care for men, and by all kinds of premonitory signs indicates to His people the means of salvation, and that they owe their destruction to folly and calamities of their own choosing. For example, the Jews, after the demolition of the (tower of) Antonia, reduced the Temple to a square, although they had it recorded in their oracles that the city and the sanctuary would be taken when the Temple should become four-square. But what more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred writings, to the effect that about that time some one from their country should become ruler of the world. This they understood to mean some one of their own race, and many of their wise men went astray in their interpretation of it. The oracle, however, in reality signified the sovereignty of Vespasian, who was proclaimed Emperor on Jewish soil.

For all that, it is impossible for men to avoid Fate, even though they foresee it. For some of these portents, then, the Jews found agreeable meanings, others they treated with contempt, until the ruin of their country and their own destruction convicted them of their folly.—B.J. VI. 5. 3 f. (288-315).