Antiquities of the Jews — Book 14, Chapter 16

1. After the wedding was over, came Sosius through Phoenicia, having
sent out his army before him over the midland parts. He also, who was
their commander, came himself, with a great number of horsemen and
footmen. The king also came himself from Samaria, and brought with him
no small army, besides that which was there before, for they were about
thirty thousand; and they all met together at the walls of Jerusalem,
and encamped at the north wall of the city, being now an army of eleven
legions, armed men on foot, and six thousand horsemen, with other
auxiliaries out of Syria. The generals were two: Sosius, sent by Antony
to assist Herod, and Herod on his own account, in order to take the
government from Antigonus, who was declared all enemy at Rome, and that
he might himself be king, according to the decree of the Senate.

2. Now the Jews that were enclosed within the walls of the city fought
against Herod with great alacrity and zeal [for the whole nation was
gathered together]; they also gave out many prophecies about the temple,
and many things agreeable to the people, as if God would deliver them
out of the dangers they were in; they had also carried off what was out
of the city, that they might not leave any thing to afford sustenance
either for men or for beasts; and by private robberies they made the
want of necessaries greater. When Herod understood this, he opposed
ambushes in the fittest places against their private robberies, and he
sent legions of armed men to bring its provisions, and that from remote
places, so that in a little time they had great plenty of provisions.
Now the three bulwarks were easily erected, because so many hands were
continually at work upon it; for it was summer time, and there was
nothing to hinder them in raising their works, neither from the air nor
from the workmen; so they brought their engines to bear, and shook the
walls of the city, and tried all manner of ways to get it; yet did not
those within discover any fear, but they also contrived not a few
engines to oppose their engines withal. They also sallied out, and burnt
not only those engines that were not yet perfected, but those that were;
and when they came hand to hand, their attempts were not less bold than
those of the Romans, though they were behind them in skill. They also
erected new works when the former were ruined, and making mines
underground, they met each other, and fought there; and making use of
brutish courage rather than of prudent valor, they persisted in this war
to the very last; and this they did while a mighty army lay round about
them, and while they were distressed by famine and the want of
necessaries, for this happened to be a Sabbatic year. The first that
scaled the walls were twenty chosen men, the next were Sosius's
centurions; for the first wall was taken in forty days, and the second
in fifteen more, when some of the cloisters that were about the temple
were burnt, which Herod gave out to have been burnt by Antigonus, in
order to expose him to the hatred of the Jews. And when the outer court
of the temple and the lower city were taken, the Jews fled into the
inner court of the temple, and into the upper city; but now fearing lest
the Romans should hinder them from offering their daily sacrifices to
God, they sent an embassage, and desired that they would only permit
them to bring in beasts for sacrifices, which Herod granted, hoping they
were going to yield; but when he saw that they did nothing of what he
supposed, but bitterly opposed him, in order to preserve the kingdom to
Antigonus, he made an assault upon the city, and took it by storm; and
now all parts were full of those that were slain, by the rage of the
Romans at the long duration of the siege, and by the zeal of the Jews
that were on Herod's side, who were not willing to leave one of their
adversaries alive; so they were murdered continually in the narrow
streets and in the houses by crowds, and as they were flying to the
temple for shelter, and there was no pity taken of either infants or the
aged, nor did they spare so much as the weaker sex; nay, although the
king sent about, and besought them to spare the people, yet nobody
restrained their hand from slaughter, but, as if they were a company of
madmen, they fell upon persons of all ages, without distinction; and
then Antigonus, without regard to either his past or present
circumstances, came down from the citadel, and fell down at the feet of
Sosius, who took no pity of him, in the change of his fortune, but
insulted him beyond measure, and called him Antigone [i.e. a woman, and
not a man;] yet did he not treat him as if he were a woman, by letting
him go at liberty, but put him into bonds, and kept him in close
custody.

3. And now Herod having overcome his enemies, his care was to govern
those foreigners who had been his assistants, for the crowd of strangers
rushed to see the temple, and the sacred things in the temple; but the
king, thinking a victory to be a more severe affliction than a defeat,
if any of those things which it was not lawful to see should be seen by
them, used entreaties and threatenings, and even sometimes force itself,
to restrain them. He also prohibited the ravage that was made in the
city, and many times asked Sosius whether the Romans would empty the
city both of money and men, and leave him king of a desert; and told him
that he esteemed the dominion over the whole habitable earth as by no
means an equivalent satisfaction for such a murder of his citizens'; and
when he said that this plunder was justly to be permitted the soldiers
for the siege they had undergone, he replied, that he would give every
one their reward out of his own money; and by this means be redeemed
what remained of the city from destruction; and he performed what he had
promised him, for he gave a noble present to every soldier, and a
proportionable present to their commanders, but a most royal present to
Sosius himself, till they all went away full of money.

4. This destruction befell the city of Jerusalem when Marcus Agrippa and
Caninius Gallus were consuls of Rome 30 on the hundred eighty and fifth
olympiad, on the third month, on the solemnity of the fast, as if a
periodical revolution of calamities had returned since that which befell
the Jews under Pompey; for the Jews were taken by him on the same day,
and this was after twenty-seven years' time. So when Sosius had
dedicated a crown of gold to God, he marched away from Jerusalem, and
carried Antigonus with him in bonds to Antony; but Herod was afraid lest
Antigonus should be kept in prison [only] by Antony, and that when he
was carried to Rome by him, he might get his cause to be heard by the
senate, and might demonstrate, as he was himself of the royal blood, and
Herod but a private man, that therefore it belonged to his sons however
to have the kingdom, on account of the family they were of, in case he
had himself offended the Romans by what he had done. Out of Herod's fear
of this it was that he, by giving Antony a great deal of money,
endeavored to persuade him to have Antigonus slain, which if it were
once done, he should be free from that fear. And thus did the government
of the Asamoneans cease, a hundred twenty and six years after it was
first set up. This family was a splendid and an illustrious one, both on
account of the nobility of their stock, and of the dignity of the high
priesthood, as also for the glorious actions their ancestors had
performed for our nation; but these men lost the government by their
dissensions one with another, and it came to Herod, the son of
Antipater, who was of no more than a vulgar family, and of no eminent
extraction, but one that was subject to other kings. And this is what
history tells us was the end of the Asamonean family.

FOOTNOTES:

1 (return) [ Reland takes notice here, very justly, how Josephus's
declaration, that it was his great concern not only to write "an
agreeable, an accurate," and "a true" history, but also distinctly not
to omit any thing [of consequence], either through "ignorance or
laziness," implies that he could not, consistently with that resolution,
omit the mention of [so famous a person as] "Jesus Christ."]

2 (return) [ That the famous Antipater's or Antipas's father was also
Antipater or Antipas [which two may justly be esteemed one and the same
frame, the former with a Greek or Gentile, the latter with a Hebrew or
Jewish termination] Josephus here assures us, though Eusebias indeed
says it was Herod.]

3 (return) [ This "golden vine," or "garden," seen by Strabo at Rome,
has its inscription here as if it were the gift of Alexander, the father
of Aristobulus, and not of Aristobulus himself, to whom yet Josephus
ascribes it; and in order to prove the truth of that part of his
history, introduces this testimony of Strabo; so that the ordinary
copies seem to be here either erroneous or defective, and the original
reading seems to have been either Aristobulus, instead of Alexander,
with one Greek copy, or else "Aristobulus the son of Alexander," with
the Latin copies; which last seems to me the most probable. For as to
Archbishop Usher's conjectures, that Alexander made it, and dedicated it
to God in the temple, and that thence Aristobulus took it, and sent it
to Pompey, they are both very improbable, and no way agreeable to
Josephus, who would hardly have avoided the recording both these
uncommon points of history, had he known any thing of them; nor would
either the Jewish nation, or even Pompey himself, then have relished
such a flagrant instance of sacrilege.]

4 (return) [ These express testimonies of Josephus here, and Antiq. B.
VIII. ch. 6. sect. 6, and B. XV. ch. 4. sect. 2, that the only balsam
gardens, and the best palm trees, were, at least in his days, near
Jericho and Kugaddi, about the north part of the Dead Sea, [whereabout
also Alexander the Great saw the balsam drop,] show the mistake of those
that understand Eusebius and Jerom as if one of those gardens were at
the south part of that sea, at Zoar or Segor, whereas they must either
mean another Zoar or Segor, which was between Jericho and Kugaddi,
agreeably to Josephus: which yet they do not appear to do, or else they
directly contradict Josephus, and were therein greatly mistaken: I mean
this, unless that balsam, and the best palm trees, grew much more
southward in Judea in the days of Eusebius and Jerom than they did in
the days of Josephus.]

5 (return) [ The particular depth and breadth of this ditch, whence the
stones for the wall about the temple were probably taken, are omitted in
our copies of Josephus, but set down by Strabo, B. XVI. p. 763; from
whom we learn that this ditch was sixty feet deep, and two hundred and
fifty feet broad. However, its depth is, in the next section, said by
Josephus to be immense, which exactly agrees to Strabo's description,
and which numbers in Strabo are a strong confirmation of the truth of
Josephus's description also.]

6 (return) [ That is, on the 23rd of Sivan, the annual fast for the
defection and idolatry of Jeroboam, "who made Israel to sin;" or
possibly some other fast might fall into that month, before and in the
days of Josephus.]

7 (return) [ It deserves here to be noted, that this Pharisaical,
superstitious notion, that offensive fighting was unlawful to Jews, even
under the utmost necessity, on the Sabbath day, of which we hear nothing
before the times of the Maccabees, was the proper occasion of
Jerusalem's being taken by Pompey, by Sosius, and by Titus, as appears
from the places already quoted in the note on Antiq. B. XIII. ch. 8.
sect. 1; which scrupulous superstition, as to the observation of such a
rigorous rest upon the Sabbath day, our Savior always opposed, when the
Pharisaical Jews insisted on it, as is evident in many places in the New
Testament, though he still intimated how pernicious that superstition
might prove to them in their flight from the Romans, Matthew 25:20.]

8 (return) [ This is fully confirmed by the testimony of Cicero, who:
says, in his oration for Flaecus, that "Cneius Pompeius, when he was
conqueror, and had taken Jerusalem, did not touch any thing belonging to
that temple."]

9 (return) [ Of this destruction of Gadara here presupposed, and its
restoration by Pompey, see the note on the War, B. I. ch. 7. sect. 7.]

10 (return) [ Dean Prideaux well observes, "That notwithstanding the
clamor against Gabinius at Rome, Josephus gives him a able character, as
if he had acquitted himself with honor in the charge committed to him"
[in Judea]. See at the year 55.]

11 (return) [ This history is best illustrated by Dr. Hudson out of
Livy, who says that "A. Gabinius, the proconsul, restored Ptolemy of
Pompey and Gabinius against the Jews, while neither of them say any
thing new which is not in the other to his kingdom of Egypt, and ejected
Archelaus, whom they had set up for king," &c. See Prid. at the years 61
and 65.]

12 (return) [ Dr. Hudson observes, that the name of this wife of
Antipater in Josephus was Cypros, as a Hebrew termination, but not
Cypris, the Greek name for Venus, as some critics were ready to correct
it.]

13 (return) [ Take Dr. Hudson's note upon this place, which I suppose to
be the truth: "Here is some mistake in Josephus; for when he had
promised us a decree for the restoration of Jerusalem he brings in a
decree of far greater antiquity, and that a league of friendship and
union only. One may easily believe that Josephus gave order for one
thing, and his amanuensis performed another, by transposing decrees that
concerned the Hyrcani, and as deluded by the sameness of their names;
for that belongs to the first high priest of this name, [John Hyrcanus,]
which Josephus here ascribes to one that lived later [Hyrcanus, the son
of Alexander Janneus]. However, the decree which he proposes to set down
follows a little lower, in the collection of Raman decrees that
concerned the Jews and is that dated when Cæsar was consul the fifth
time." See ch. 10. sect. 5.]

14 (return) [ Those who will carefully observe the several occasional
numbers and chronological characters in the life and death of this
Herod, and of his children, hereafter noted, will see that twenty-five
years, and not fifteen, must for certain have been here Josephus's own
number for the age of Herod, when he was made governor of Galilee. See
ch. 23. sect. 5, and ch. 24. sect. 7; and particularly Antiq. B. XVII.
ch. 8. sect. 1, where about forty-four years afterwards Herod dies an
old man at about seventy.]

15 (return) [ It is here worth our while to remark, that none could be
put to death in Judea but by the approbation of the Jewish Sanhedrim,
there being an excellent provision in the law of Moses, that even in
criminal causes, and particularly where life was concerned, an appeal
should lie from the lesser councils of seven in the other cities to the
supreme council of seventy-one at Jerusalem; and that is exactly
according to our Savior's words, when he says, "It could not be that a
prophet should perish out of Jerusalem," Luke 13:33.]

16 (return) [ This account, as Reland observes, is confirmed by the
Talmudists, who call this Sameas, "Simeon, the son of Shetach."]

17 (return) [ That Hyrcanus was himself in Egypt, along with Antipater,
at this time, to whom accordingly the bold and prudent actions of his
deputy Antipater are here ascribed, as this decree of Julius Cæsar
supposes, we are further assured by the testimony of Strabo, already
produced by Josephus, ch. 8. sect. 3.]

18 (return) [ Dr. Hudson justly supposes that the Roman imperators, or
generals of armies, meant both here and sect. 2, who gave testimony to
Hyrcanus's and the Jews' faithfulness and goodwill to the Romans before
the senate and people of Rome, were principally Pompey, Scaurus, and
Gabinius; of all whom Josephus had already given us the history, so far
as the Jews were concerned with them.]

19 (return) [ We have here a most remarkable and authentic attestation
of the citizens of Pergamus, that Abraham was the father of all the
Hebrews; that their own ancestors were, in the oldest times, the friends
of those Hebrews; and that the public arts of their city, then extant,
confirmed the same; which evidence is too strong to be evaded by our
present ignorance of the particular occasion of such ancient friendship
and alliance between those people. See the like full evidence of the
kindred of the Lacedemonians and the Jews; and that became they were
both of the posterity of Abraham, by a public epistle of those people to
the Jews, preserved in the First Book of the Maccabees, 12:19-23; and
thence by Josephus, Antiq. B. XII. ch. 4 sect. 10; both which authentic
records are highly valuable. It is also well worthy of observation, what
Moses Chorenensis, the principal Armenian historian, informs us of, p.
83, that Arsaces, who raised the Parthian empire, was of the seed of
Abraham by Chetura; and that thereby was accomplished that prediction
which said, "Kings of nations shall proceed from thee," Genesis 17:6.]

20 (return) [ If we compare Josephus's promise in sect. 1, to produce
all the public decrees of the Romans in favor of the Jews, with his
excuse here for omitting many of them, we may observe, that when he came
to transcribe all those decrees he had collected, he found them so
numerous, that he thought he should too much tire his readers if he had
attempted it, which he thought a sufficient apology for his omitting the
rest of them; yet do those by him produced afford such a strong
confirmation to his history, and give such great light to even the Roman
antiquities themselves, that I believe the curious are not a little
sorry for such his omissions.]

21 (return) [ For Marcus, this president of Syria, sent as successor to
Sextus Cæsar, the Roman historians require us to read "Marcus" in
Josephus, and this perpetually, both in these Antiquities, and in his
History of the Wars, as the learned generally agree.]

22 (return) [ In this and the following chapters the reader will easily
remark, how truly Gronovius observes, in his notes on the Roman decrees
in favor of the Jews, that their rights and privileges were commonly
purchased of the Romans with money. Many examples of this sort, both as
to the Romans and others in authority, will occur in our Josephus, both
now and hereafter, and need not be taken particular notice of on the
several occasions in these notes. Accordingly, the chief captain
confesses to St. Paul that "with a great sum he had obtained his
freedom," Acts 22:28; as had St. Paul's ancestors, very probably,
purchased the like freedom for their family by money, as the same author
justly concludes also.]

23 (return) [ This clause plainly alludes to that well-known but unusual
and very long darkness of the sun which happened upon the murder of
Julius Cæsar by Brutus and Cassius, which is greatly taken notice of by
Virgil, Pliny, and other Roman authors. See Virgil's Georgics, B. I.,
just before the end; and Pliny's Nat. Hist. B. IL ch. 33.]

24 (return) [ We may here take notice that espousals alone were of old
esteemed a sufficient foundation for affinity, Hyrcanus being here
called father-in-law to Herod because his granddaughter Mariamne was
betrothed to him, although the marriage was not completed till four
years afterwards. See Matthew 1:16.]

25 (return) [ This law of Moses, that the priests were to be "without
blemish," as to all the parts of their bodies, is in Leviticus 21:17-24]

26 (return) [ Concerning the chronology of Herod, and the time when he
was first made king at Rome, and concerning the time when he began his
second reign, without a rival, upon the conquest and slaughter of
Antigonus, both principally derived from this and the two next chapters
in Josephus, see the note on sect. 6, and ch. 15. sect. 10.]

27 (return) [ This grievous want of water at Masada, till the place had
like to have been taken by the Parthians, [mentioned both here, and Of
the War, B. I. ch. 15. sect. 1,] is an indication that it was now summer
time.]

28 (return) [ This affirmation of Antigonus, spoken in the days of
Herod, and in a manner to his face, that he was an Idumean, i.e. a half
Jew, seems to me of much greater authority than that pretense of his
favorite and flatterer Nicolaus of Damascus, that he derived his
pedigree from Jews as far backward as the Babylonish captivity, ch. 1.
sect. 3. Accordingly Josephus always esteems him an Idumean, though he
says his father Antipater was of the same people with the Jews, ch.
viii. sect. 1. and by birth a Jew, Antiq. B. XX. ch. 8. sect. 7; as
indeed all such proselytes of justice, as the Idumeans, were in time
esteemed the very same people with the Jews.]

29 (return) [ It may be worth our observation here, that these soldiers
of Herod could not have gotten upon the tops of these houses which were
full of enemies, in order to pull up the upper floors, and destroy them
beneath, but by ladders from the out side; which illustrates some texts
in the New Testament, by which it appears that men used to ascend
thither by ladders on the outsides. See Matthew 24:17; Mark 13:15; Luke
5:19; 17:31.]

30 (return) [ Note here, that Josephus fully and frequently assures us
that there passed above three years between Herod's first obtaining the
kingdom at Rome, and his second obtaining it upon the taking of
Jerusalem and death of Antigonus. The present history of this interval
twice mentions the army going into winter quarters, which perhaps
belonged to two several winters, ch. 15. sect. 3, 4; and though Josephus
says nothing how long they lay in those quarters, yet does he give such
an account of the long and studied delays of Ventidius, Silo, and
Macheras, who were to see Herod settled in his new kingdom, but seem not
to have had sufficient forces for that purpose, and were for certain all
corrupted by Antigonus to make the longest delays possible, and gives us
such particular accounts of the many great actions of Herod during the
same interval, as fairly imply that interval, before Herod went to
Samosata, to have been very considerable. However, what is wanting in
Josephus, is fully supplied by Moses Chorenensis, the Armenian
historian, in his history of that interval, B. II ch. 18., where he
directly assures us that Tigranes, then king of Armenia, and the
principal manager of this Parthian war, reigned two years after Herod
was made king at Rome, and yet Antony did not hear of his death, in that
very neighborhood, at Samosata, till he was come thither to besiege it;
after which Herod brought him an army, which was three hundred and forty
miles' march, and through a difficult country, full of enemies also, and
joined with him in the siege of Samosata till that city was taken; then
Herod and Sosins marched back with their large armies the same number of
three hundred and forty miles; and when, in a little time, they sat down
to besiege Jerusalem, they were not able to take it but by a siege of
five months. All which put together, fully supplies what is wanting in
Josephus, and secures the entire chronology of these times beyond
contradiction.]