formerly called Jebus, or Salem, Joshua xviii, 28; Heb. vii,
2, the capital of Judea, situated partly in the tribe of Benjamin, and
partly in that of Judah. It was not completely reduced by the Israelites
till the reign of David, 2 Sam. v, 6–9. As Jerusalem was the centre of
the true worship, Psalm cxxii, 4, and the place where God did in a
peculiar manner dwell, first in the tabernacle, 2 Sam. vi, 7, 12; 1
Chron. xv, 1; xvi, 1; Psalm cxxxii, 13; cxxxv, 2, and afterward in the
temple, 1 Kings vi, 13; so it is used figuratively to denote the church,
or the celestial society, to which all that believe, both Jews and
Gentiles, are come, and in which they are initiated, Gal. iv, 26; Heb.
xii, 22; Rev. iii, 12; xxi, 2, 10. Jerusalem was situated in a stony and
barren soil, and was about sixty furlongs in length, according to
Strabo. The territory and places adjacent were well watered, having the
fountains of Gihon and Siloam, and the brook Kidron, at the foot of its
walls; and, beside these, there were the waters of Ethan, which Pilate
had conveyed through aqueducts into the city. The ancient city of
Jerusalem, or Jebus, which David took from the Jebusites, was not very
large. It was seated upon a mountain southward of the temple. The
opposite mountain, situated to the north, is Sion, where David built a
new city, which he called the city of David, wherein was the royal
palace, and the temple of the Lord. The temple was built upon Mount
Moriah, which was one of the little hills belonging to Mount Sion.
Through the reigns of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was the metropolis of
the whole Jewish kingdom, and continued to increase in wealth and
splendour. It was resorted to at the festivals by the whole population
of the country; and the power and commercial spirit of Solomon,
improving the advantages acquired by his father David, centred in it
most of the eastern trade, both by sea, through the ports of Elath and
Ezion-Geber, and over land, by the way of Tadmor or Palmyra. Or, at
least, though Jerusalem might not have been made a depot of merchandise,
the quantity of precious metals flowing into it by direct importation,
and by duties imposed on goods passing to the ports of the
Mediterranean, and in other directions, was unbounded. Some idea of the
prodigious wealth of Jerusalem at this time may be formed by stating,
that the quantity of gold left by David for the use of the temple
amounted to £21,600,000 sterling, beside £3,150,000 in silver; and
Solomon obtained £3,240,000 in gold by one voyage to Ophir, while silver
was so abundant, “that it was not any thing accounted of.” These were
the days of Jerusalem’s glory. Universal peace, unmeasured wealth, the
wisdom and clemency of the prince, and the worship of the true God,
marked Jerusalem, above every city, as enjoying the presence and the
especial favour of the Almighty. But these days were not to last long:
intestine divisions and foreign wars, wicked and tyrannical princes,
and, last of all, the crime most offensive to Heaven, and the one least
to be expected among so favoured a people, led to a series of
calamities, through the long period of nine hundred years, with which no
other city or nation can furnish a parallel. After the death of Solomon,
ten of the twelve tribes revolted from his successor Rehoboam, and,
under Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, established a separate kingdom: so
that Jerusalem, no longer the capital of the whole empire, and its
temple frequented only by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, must have
experienced a mournful declension. Four years after this, the city and
temple were taken and plundered by Shishak, king of Egypt, 1 Kings xiv,
26, 27; 2 Chron. xii, 2–9. One hundred and forty-five years after, under
Amaziah, they sustained the same fate from Joash, king of Israel, 2
Kings xiv; 2 Chron. xxv. One hundred and sixty years from this period,
the city was again taken, by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria; and Manasseh,
the king, carried a prisoner to Babylon, 2 Chron. xxxiii. Within the
space of sixty-six years more it was taken by Pharaoh-Necho, king of
Egypt, whom Josiah, king of Judah, had opposed in his expedition to
Carchemish; and who, in consequence, was killed at the battle of
Megiddo, and his son Eliakim placed on the throne in his stead by Necho,
who changed his name to Jehoiakim, and imposed a heavy tribute upon him,
having sent his elder brother, Jehoahaz, who had been proclaimed king at
Jerusalem, a prisoner to Egypt, where he died, 2 Kings xxiii; 2 Chron.
xxxv. Jerusalem was three times besieged and taken by Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, within a very few years. The first, in the reign of the
last mentioned king, Jehoiakim, who was sent a prisoner to Babylon, and
the vessels of the temple transported to the same city, 2 Chron. xxxvi.
The second, in that of his son Jehoiachin; when all the treasures of the
palace and the temple, and the remainder of the vessels of the latter
which had been hidden or spared in the first capture, were carried away
or destroyed, and the best of the inhabitants, with the king, led into
captivity, 2 Kings xxiv; 2 Chron. xxxvi. And the third, in the reign of
Zedekiah, the successor of Jehoiachin; in whose ninth year the most
formidable siege which this ill fated city ever sustained, except that
of Titus, was commenced. It continued two years; during a great part of
which the inhabitants suffered all the horrors of famine: when, on the
ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, which
answers to July in the year B. C. 588, the garrison, with the king,
endeavoured to make their escape from the city, but were pursued and
defeated by the Chaldeans in the plains of Jericho; Zedekiah taken
prisoner; his sons killed before his face at Riblah, whither he was
taken to the king of Babylon; and he himself, after his eyes were put
out, was bound with fetters of brass, and carried prisoner to Babylon,
where he died: thus fulfilling the prophecy of Ezekiel, which declared
that he should be carried to Babylon, but should not see the place,
though he should die there, Ezekiel xii, 13. In the following month, the
Chaldean army, under their general, Nebuzaradan, entered the city, took
away every thing that was valuable, and then burned and utterly
destroyed it, with its temple and walls, and left the whole razed to the
ground. The entire population of the city and country, with the
exception of a few husbandmen, were then carried captive to Babylon.
During seventy years, the city and temple lay in ruins: when those Jews
who chose to take immediate advantage of the proclamation of Cyrus,
under the conduct of Zerubbabel, returned to Jerusalem, and began to
build the temple; all the vessels of gold and silver belonging to which,
that had been taken away by Nebuchadnezzar, being restored by Cyrus.
Their work, however, did not proceed far without opposition; for in the
reign of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who in Scripture is called
Ahasuerus, the Samaritans presented a petition to that monarch to put a
stop to the building, Ezra iv, 6. Cambyses appears to have been too
busily engaged in his Egyptian expedition to pay any attention to this
malicious request. His successor, Smerdis, the Magian, however, who in
Scripture is called Artaxerxes, to whom a similar petition was sent,
representing the Jews as a factious and dangerous people, listened to
it, and, in the true spirit of a usurper, issued a decree putting a stop
to the farther building of the temple, Ezra iv, 7, &c; which, in
consequence, remained in an unfinished state till the second year,
according to the Jewish, and third, according to the Babylonian and
Persian account, of Darius Hystaspes, who is called simply Darius in
Scripture. To him also a representation hostile to the Jews was made by
their inveterate enemies, the Samaritans; but this noble prince refused
to listen to it, and having searched the rolls of the kingdom, and found
in the palace at Acmetha the decree of Cyrus, issued a similar one,
which reached Jerusalem in the subsequent year, and even ordered these
very Samaritans to assist the Jews in their work; so that it was
completed in the sixth year of the same reign, Ezra iv, 24; v; vi, 1–15.
But the city and walls remained in a ruinous condition until the
twentieth year of Artaxerxes, the Artaxerxes Longimanus of profane
history; by whom Nehemiah was sent to Jerusalem, with a power granted to
him to rebuild them. Accordingly, under the direction of this zealous
servant of God, the walls were speedily raised, but not without the
accustomed opposition on the part of the Samaritans; who, despairing of
the success of an application to the court of Persia, openly attacked
the Jews with arms. But the building, notwithstanding, went steadily on;
the men working with an implement of work in one hand, and a weapon of
war in the other; and the wall, with incredible labour, was finished in
fifty-two days, in the year B. C. 445; after which, the city itself was
gradually rebuilt, Neh. ii, iv, vi. From this time Jerusalem remained
attached to the Persian empire, but under the local jurisdiction of the
high priests, until the subversion of that empire by Alexander, fourteen
years after. See ALEXANDER.
At the death of Alexander, and the partition of his empire by his
generals, Jerusalem, with Judea, fell to the kings of Syria. But in the
frequent wars which followed between the kings of Syria and those of
Egypt, called by Daniel, the kings of the north and south, it belonged
sometimes to one and sometimes to the other,--an unsettled and unhappy
state, highly favourable to disorder and corruption,--the high
priesthood was openly sold to the highest bidder; and numbers of the
Jews deserted their religion for the idolatries of the Greeks. At
length, in the year B. C. 170, Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria,
enraged at hearing that the Jews had rejoiced at a false report of his
death, plundered Jerusalem, and killed eighty thousand men. Not more
than two years afterward, this cruel tyrant, who had seized every
opportunity to exercise his barbarity on the Jews, sent Apollonius with
an army to Jerusalem; who pulled down the walls, grievously oppressed
the people, and built a citadel on a rock adjoining the temple, which
commanded that building, and had the effect of completely overawing the
seditious. Having thus reduced this unfortunate city into entire
submission, and rendered resistance useless, the next step of Antiochus
was to abolish the Jewish religion altogether, by publishing an edict
which commanded all the people of his dominions to conform to the
religion of the Greeks: in consequence of which, the service of the
temple ceased, and a statue of Jupiter Olympus was set up on the altar.
But this extremity of ignominy and oppression led, as might have been
expected, to rebellion; and those Jews who still held their insulted
religion in reverence, fled to the mountains, with Mattathias and Judas
Maccabeus; the latter of whom, after the death of Mattathias, who with
his followers and successors, are known by the name of Maccabees, waged
successful war with the Syrians; defeated Apollonius, Nicanor, and
Lysias, generals of Antiochus; obtained possession of Jerusalem,
purified the temple, and restored the service, after three years’
defilement by the Gentile idolatries.
From this time, during several succeeding Maccabean rulers, who were at
once high priests and sovereigns of the Jews, but without the title of
king, Jerusalem was able to preserve itself from Syrian violence. It
was, however, twice besieged, first by Antiochus Eupator, in the year
163, and afterward by Antiochus Sidetes, in the year B. C. 134. But the
Jews had caused themselves to be sufficiently respected to obtain
conditions of peace on both occasions, and to save their city; till, at
length, Hyrcanus, in the year 130 B. C., shook off the Syrian yoke, and
reigned, after this event, twenty-one years in independence and
prosperity. His successor, Judas, made an important change in the Jewish
government, by taking the title of king, which dignity was enjoyed by
his successors forty-seven years, when a dispute having arisen between
Hyrcanus II. and his brother Aristobulus, and the latter having overcome
the former, and made himself king, was, in his turn, conquered by the
Romans under Pompey, by whom the city and temple were taken, Aristobulus
made prisoner, and Hyrcanus created high priest and prince of the Jews,
but without the title of king. By this event Judea was reduced to the
condition of a Roman province, in the year 63 B. C. Nor did Jerusalem
long after enjoy the dignity of a metropolis, that honour being
transferred to Cæsarea. Julius Cæsar, having defeated Pompey, continued
Hyrcanus in the high priesthood, but bestowed the government of Judea
upon Antipater, an Idumæan by birth, but a Jewish proselyte, and father
of Herod the Great. For the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans, see JEWS.
Jerusalem lay in ruins about forty-seven years, when the Emperor Ælius
Adrian began to build it anew, and erected a Heathen temple, which he
dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus. The city was finished in the twentieth
year of his reign, and called, after its founder, Ælia, or Ælia
Capitolina, from the Heathen deity who presided over it. In this state
Jerusalem continued, under the name of Ælia, and inhabited more by
Christians and Pagans than by Jews, till the time of the Emperor
Constantine, styled the Great; who, about the year 323, having made
Christianity the religion of the empire, began to improve it, adorned it
with many new edifices and churches, and restored its ancient name.
About thirty-five years afterward, Julian, named the Apostate, not from
any love he bore the Jews, but out of hatred to the Christians, whose
faith he had abjured, and with the avowed design of defeating the
prophecies, which had declared that the temple should not be rebuilt,
wrote to the Jews, inviting them to their city, and promising to restore
their temple and nation. He accordingly employed great numbers of
workmen to clear the foundations; but balls of fire bursting from the
earth, soon put a stop to their proceeding. This miraculous
interposition of Providence is attested by many credible witnesses and
historians; and, in particular, by Ammianus Marcellinus, a Heathen, and
friend of Julian; Zemuch David, a Jew; Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Ambrose
Ruffinus, Theodoret, Sozomen, and Socrates, who wrote his account within
fifty years after the transaction, and while many eye-witnesses of it
were still living. So stubborn, indeed, is the proof of this miracle,
that even Gibbon, who strives to invalidate it, is obliged to
acknowledge the general fact.
Jerusalem continued in nearly the same condition till the beginning of
the seventh century, when it was taken and plundered by the celebrated
Chosroes, king of Persia, by whom many thousands of the Christian
inhabitants were killed, or sold for slaves. The Persians, however, did
not hold it long, as they were soon after entirely defeated by the
Emperor Heraclius, who rescued Jerusalem, and restored it, not to the
unhappy Jews, who were forbidden to come within three miles of it, but
to the Christians. A worse calamity was, however, speedily to befall
this ill fated city. The Mohammedan imposture arose about this time; and
the fanatics who had adopted its creed carried their arms and their
religion with unprecedented rapidity over the greater part of the east.
The Caliph Omar, the third from Mohammed, invested the city, which,
after once more suffering the horrors of a protracted siege, surrendered
on terms of capitulation in the year 637; and has ever since, with the
exception of the short period that it was occupied by the crusaders,
been trodden under foot by the followers of the false prophet.
2. The accounts of modern Jerusalem by travellers are very numerous. Mr.
Conder, in his “Palestine,” has abridged them with judgment; and we give
the following extract: The approach to Jerusalem from Jaffa is not the
direction in which to see the city to the best effect. Dr. E. D. Clarke
entered it by the Damascus gate: and he describes the view of Jerusalem,
when first descried from the summit of a hill, at about an hour’s
distance, as most impressive. He confesses, at the same time, that there
is no other point of view in which it is seen to so much advantage. In
the celebrated prospect from the Mount of Olives, the city lies too low,
is too near the eye, and has too much the character of a bird’s eye
view, with the formality of a topographical plan. “We had not been
prepared,” says this lively traveller, “for the grandeur of the
spectacle which the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and
ruined town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusalem, we
beheld, as it were, a flourishing and stately metropolis, presenting a
magnificent assemblage of domes, towers, palaces, churches, and
monasteries; all of which, glittering in the sun’s rays, shone with
inconceivable splendour. As we drew nearer, our whole attention was
engrossed by its noble and interesting appearance. The lofty hills
surrounding it give the city itself an appearance of elevation less than
it really has.” Dr. Clarke was fortunate in catching this first view of
Jerusalem under the illusion of a brilliant evening sunshine; but his
description is decidedly overcharged. M. Chateaubriand, Mr. Buckingham,
Mr. Brown, Mr. Jolliffe, Sir F. Henniker, and almost every other modern
traveller, confirm the representation of Dr. Richardson. Mr. Buckingham
says, “The appearance of this celebrated city, independent of the
feelings and recollections which the approach to it cannot fail to
awaken, was greatly inferior to my expectations, and had certainly
nothing of grandeur or beauty, of stateliness or magnificence, about it.
It appeared like a walled town of the third or fourth class, having
neither towers, nor domes, nor minarets within it, in sufficient numbers
to give even a character to its impressions on the beholder; but showing
chiefly large flat-roofed buildings of the most unornamented kind,
seated amid rugged hills, on a stony and forbidding soil, with scarcely
a picturesque object in the whole compass of the surrounding view.”
Chateaubriand’s description is very striking and graphical. After citing
the language of the Prophet Jeremiah, in his lamentations on the
desolation of the ancient city, as accurately portraying its present
state, Lam. i, 1–6; ii, 1–9, 15, he thus proceeds: “When seen from the
Mount of Olives, on the other side of the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from west to east. An
embattled wall, fortified with towers, and a Gothic castle, encompasses
the city all round; excluding, however, part of Mount Zion, which it
formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of the
city, the houses stand very close; but, in the eastern part, along the
brook Kedron, you perceive vacant spaces; among the rest, that which
surrounds the mosque erected on the ruins of the temple, and the nearly
deserted spot where once stood the castle of Antonia and the second
palace of Herod. The houses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses, very
low, without chimneys or windows: they have flat terraces or domes on
the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would appear to
the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches,
the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cypresses, and the
clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan. On beholding these
stone buildings, encompassed by a stony country, you are ready to
inquire if they are not the confused monuments of a cemetry in the midst
of a desert. Enter the city, but nothing will you there find to make
amends for the dulness of its exterior. You lose yourself among narrow,
unpaved streets, here going up hill, there down, from the inequality of
the ground; and you walk among clouds of dust or loose stones. Canvas
stretched from house to house increases the gloom of this labyrinth.
Bazaars, roofed over, and fraught with infection, completely exclude the
light from the desolate city. A few paltry shops expose nothing but
wretchedness to view; and even these are frequently shut, from
apprehension of the passage of a cadi. Not a creature is to be seen in
the streets, not a creature at the gates, except now and then a peasant
gliding through the gloom, concealing under his garments the fruits of
his labour, lest he should be robbed of his hard earnings by the
rapacious soldier. Aside, in a corner, the Arab butcher is slaughtering
some animal, suspended by the legs from a wall in ruins: from his
haggard and ferocious look, and his bloody hands, you would suppose that
he had been cutting the throat of a fellow creature, rather than killing
a lamb. The only noise heard from time to time in the city is the
galloping of the steed of the desert: it is the janissary who brings the
head of the Bedouin, or who returns from plundering the unhappy Fellah.
Amid this extraordinary desolation, you must pause a moment to
contemplate two circumstances still more extraordinary. Among the ruins
of Jerusalem, two classes of independent people find in their religion
sufficient fortitude to enable them to surmount such complicated horrors
and wretchedness. Here reside communities of Christian monks, whom
nothing can compel to forsake the tomb of Christ; neither plunder, nor
personal ill treatment, nor menaces of death itself. Night and day they
chant their hymns around the holy sepulchre. Driven by the cudgel and
the sabre, women, children, flocks, and herds, seek refuge in the
cloisters of these recluses. What prevents the armed oppressor from
pursuing his prey, and overthrowing such feeble ramparts? The charity of
the monks: they deprive themselves of the last resources of life to
ransom their suppliants. Cast your eyes between the temple and Mount
Zion; behold another petty tribe cut off from the rest of the
inhabitants of this city. The particular objects of every species of
degradation, these people bow their heads without murmuring; they endure
every kind of insult without demanding justice; they sink beneath
repeated blows without sighing; if their head be required, they present
it to the scimitar. On the death of any member of this proscribed
community, his companion goes at night, and inters him by stealth in the
Valley of Jehoshaphat, in the shadow of Solomon’s temple. Enter the
abodes of these people, you will find them, amid the most abject
wretchedness, instructing their children to read a mysterious book,
which they in their turn will teach their offspring to read. What they
did five thousand years ago, these people still continue to do.
Seventeen times have they witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, yet
nothing can discourage them, nothing can prevent them from turning their
faces toward Sion. To see the Jews scattered over the whole world,
according to the word of God, must doubtless excite surprise. But to be
struck with supernatural astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem;
you must behold these rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and
strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under
all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them. Crushed by the cross
that condemns them, skulking near the temple, of which not one stone is
left upon another, they continue in their deplorable infatuation. The
Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, are swept from the earth; and a petty
tribe, whose origin preceded that of those great nations, still exists
unmixed among the ruins of its native land.” To the same effect are the
remarks of Dr. Richardson: “In passing up to the synagogue, I was
particularly struck with the mean and wretched appearance of the houses
on both sides of the streets, as well as with the poverty of their
inhabitants. The sight of a poor Jew in Jerusalem has in it something
peculiarly affecting. The heart of this wonderful people, in whatever
clime they roam, still turns to it as the city of their promised rest.
They take pleasure in her ruins, and would kiss the very dust for her
sake. Jerusalem is the centre around which the exiled sons of Judah
build, in imagination, the mansions of their future greatness. In
whatever part of the world he may live, the heart’s desire of a Jew is
to be buried in Jerusalem. Thither they return from Spain and Portugal,
from Egypt and Barbary, and other countries among which they have been
scattered: and when, after all their longings, and all their struggles
up the steeps of life, we see them poor, and blind, and naked, in the
streets of their once happy Zion, he must have a cold heart that can
remain untouched by their sufferings, without uttering a prayer that God
would have mercy on the darkness of Judah; and that the Day Star of
Bethlehem might arise in their hearts.”
“Jerusalem,” remarks Sir Frederick Henniker, “is called, even by
Mohammedans, the Blessed City (_El Gootz, El Koudes_.) The streets of it
are narrow and deserted, the houses dirty and ragged, the shops few and
forsaken; and throughout the whole there is not one symptom of either
commerce, comfort, or happiness. The best view of it is from the Mount
of Olives: it commands the exact shape and nearly every particular;
namely, the church of the holy sepulchre, the Armenian convent, the
mosque of Omar, St. Stephen’s gate, the round-topped houses, and the
barren vacancies of the city. Without the walls are a Turkish burial
ground, the tomb of David, a small grove near the tombs of the kings,
and all the rest is a surface of rock, on which are a few numbered
trees. The mosque of Omar is the St. Peter’s of Turkey, and the
respective saints are held respectively by their own faithful in equal
veneration. The building itself has a light pagoda appearance; the
garden in which it stands occupies a considerable part of the city, and,
contrasted with the surrounding desert, is beautiful. The burial place
of the Jews is over the valley of Kedron, and the fees for breaking the
soil afford a considerable revenue to the governor. The burial place of
the Turks is under the walls, near St. Stephen’s gate. From the opposite
side of the valley, I was witness to the ceremony of parading a corpse
round the mosque of Omar, and then bringing it forth for burial. I
hastened to the grave, but was soon driven away: as far as my _on dit_
tells me, it would have been worth seeing. The grave is strown with red
earth, supposed to be of the _Ager Damascenus_ of which Adam was made;
by the side of the corpse is placed a stick, and the priest tells him
that the devil will tempt him to become a Christian, but that he must
make good use of his stick; that his trial will last three days, and
that he will then find himself in a mansion of glory,” &c.
The Jerusalem of sacred history is, in fact, no more. Not a vestige
remains of the capital of David and Solomon; not a monument of Jewish
times is standing. The very course of the walls is changed, and the
boundaries of the ancient city are become doubtful. The monks pretend to
show the sites of the sacred places; but neither Calvary, nor the holy
sepulchre, much less the Dolorous Way, the house of Caiaphas, &c, have
the slightest pretensions to even a probable identity with the real
places to which the tradition refers. Dr. E. D. Clarke has the merit of
being the first modern traveller who ventured to speak of the
preposterous legends and clumsy forgeries of the priests with the
contempt which they merit. “To men interested in tracing, within its
walls, antiquities referred to by the documents of sacred history, no
spectacle,” remarks the learned traveller, “can be more mortifying than
the city in its present state. The mistaken piety of the early
Christians, in attempting to preserve, has either confused or
annihilated the memorials it was anxious to render conspicuous. Viewing
the havoc thus made, it may now be regretted that the Holy Land was ever
rescued from the dominion of Saracens, who were far less barbarous than
their conquerors. The absurdity, for example, of hewing the rocks of
Judea into shrines and chapels, and of disguising the face of nature
with painted domes and guilded marble coverings, by way of commemorating
the scenes of our Saviour’s life and death, is so evident and so
lamentable, that even Sandys, with all his credulity, could not avoid a
happy application of the reproof conveyed by the Roman satirist against
a similar violation of the Egerian fountain.” Dr. Richardson remarks,
“It is a tantalizing circumstance for the traveller who wishes to
recognise in his walks the site of particular buildings, or the scenes
of memorable events, that the greater part of the objects mentioned in
the description both of the inspired and the Jewish historian, are
entirely removed, and razed from their foundation, without leaving a
single trace or name behind to point out where they stood. Not an
ancient tower, or gate, or wall, or hardly even a stone, remains. The
foundations are not only broken up, but every fragment of which they
were composed is swept away, and the spectator looks upon the bare rock
with hardly a sprinkling of earth to point out her gardens of pleasure,
or groves of idolatrous devotion. And when we consider the palaces, and
towers, and walls about Jerusalem, and that the stones of which some of
them were constructed were thirty feet long, fifteen feet broad, and
seven and a half feet thick, we are not more astonished at the strength,
and skill, and perseverance, by which they were constructed, than
shocked by the relentless and brutal hostility by which they were
shattered and overthrown, and utterly removed from our sight. A few
gardens still remain on the sloping base of Mount Zion, watered from the
pool of Siloam; the gardens of Gethsemane are still in a sort of ruined
cultivation; the fences are broken down, and the olive trees decaying,
as if the hand that dressed and fed them were withdrawn; the Mount of
Olives still retains a languishing verdure, and nourishes a few of those
trees from which it derives its name; but all round about Jerusalem the
general aspect is blighted and barren; the grass is withered; the bare
rock looks through the scanty sward; and the grain itself, like the
staring progeny of famine, seems in doubt whether to come to maturity,
or die in the ear. The vine that was brought from Egypt is cut off from
the midst of the land; the vineyards are wasted; the hedges are taken
away; and the graves of the ancient dead are open and tenantless.”
3. On the accomplishment of prophecy in the condition in which this
celebrated city has lain for ages, Keith well remarks:--It formed the
theme of prophecy from the death bed of Jacob; and, as the seat of the
government of the children of Judah, the sceptre departed not from it
till the Messiah appeared, on the expiration of seventeen hundred years
after the death of the patriarch, and till the period of its desolation,
prophesied of by Daniel, had arrived. It was to be trodden down of the
Gentiles, till the time of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. The time of
the Gentiles is not yet fulfilled, and Jerusalem is still trodden down
of the Gentiles. The Jews have often attempted to recover it: no
distance of space or of time can separate it from their affections: they
perform their devotions with their faces toward it, as if it were the
object of their worship as well as of their love; and, although their
desire to return be so strong, indelible, and innate, that every Jew, in
every generation, counts himself an exile, yet they have never been able
to rebuild their temple, nor to recover Jerusalem from the hands of the
Gentiles. But greater power than that of a proscribed and exiled race
has been added to their own, in attempting to frustrate the counsel that
professed to be of God. Julian, the emperor of the Romans, not only
permitted but invited the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem and their temple;
and promised to reëstablish them in their paternal city. By that single
act, more than by all his writings, he might have destroyed the
credibility of the Gospel, and restored his beloved but deserted
Paganism. The zeal of the Jews was equal to his own; and the work was
begun by laying again the foundations of the temple. It was never
accomplished, and the prophecy stands fulfilled. But even if the attempt
of Julian had never been made, the truth of the prophecy itself is
unassailable. The Jews have never been reinstated in Judea. Jerusalem
has ever been trodden down of the Gentiles. The edict of Adrian was
renewed by the successors of Julian; and no Jews could approach unto
Jerusalem but by bribery or by stealth. It was a spot unlawful for them
to touch. In the crusades, all the power of Europe was employed to
rescue Jerusalem from the Heathens, but equally in vain. It has been
trodden down for nearly eighteen centuries by its successive masters; by
Romans, Grecians, Persians, Saracens, Mamelukes, Turks, Christians, and
again by the worst of rulers, the Arabs and the Turks. And could any
thing be more improbable to have happened, or more impossible to have
been foreseen by man, than that any people should be banished from their
own capital and country, and remain expelled and expatriated for nearly
eighteen hundred years? Did the same fate ever befall any nation, though
no prophecy existed respecting it? Is there any doctrine in Scripture so
hard to be believed as was this single fact at the period of its
prediction? And even with the example of the Jews before us, is it
likely, or is it credible, or who can foretel, that the present
inhabitants of any country upon earth shall be banished into all
nations, retain their distinctive character, meet with an unparalleled
fate, continue a people, without a government and without a country, and
remain for an indefinite period, exceeding seventeen hundred years, till
the fulfilment of a prescribed event which has yet to be accomplished?
Must not the knowledge of such truths be derived from that prescience
alone which scans alike the will and the ways of mortals, the actions of
future nations, and the history of the latest generations?
2, the capital of Judea, situated partly in the tribe of Benjamin, and
partly in that of Judah. It was not completely reduced by the Israelites
till the reign of David, 2 Sam. v, 6–9. As Jerusalem was the centre of
the true worship, Psalm cxxii, 4, and the place where God did in a
peculiar manner dwell, first in the tabernacle, 2 Sam. vi, 7, 12; 1
Chron. xv, 1; xvi, 1; Psalm cxxxii, 13; cxxxv, 2, and afterward in the
temple, 1 Kings vi, 13; so it is used figuratively to denote the church,
or the celestial society, to which all that believe, both Jews and
Gentiles, are come, and in which they are initiated, Gal. iv, 26; Heb.
xii, 22; Rev. iii, 12; xxi, 2, 10. Jerusalem was situated in a stony and
barren soil, and was about sixty furlongs in length, according to
Strabo. The territory and places adjacent were well watered, having the
fountains of Gihon and Siloam, and the brook Kidron, at the foot of its
walls; and, beside these, there were the waters of Ethan, which Pilate
had conveyed through aqueducts into the city. The ancient city of
Jerusalem, or Jebus, which David took from the Jebusites, was not very
large. It was seated upon a mountain southward of the temple. The
opposite mountain, situated to the north, is Sion, where David built a
new city, which he called the city of David, wherein was the royal
palace, and the temple of the Lord. The temple was built upon Mount
Moriah, which was one of the little hills belonging to Mount Sion.
Through the reigns of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was the metropolis of
the whole Jewish kingdom, and continued to increase in wealth and
splendour. It was resorted to at the festivals by the whole population
of the country; and the power and commercial spirit of Solomon,
improving the advantages acquired by his father David, centred in it
most of the eastern trade, both by sea, through the ports of Elath and
Ezion-Geber, and over land, by the way of Tadmor or Palmyra. Or, at
least, though Jerusalem might not have been made a depot of merchandise,
the quantity of precious metals flowing into it by direct importation,
and by duties imposed on goods passing to the ports of the
Mediterranean, and in other directions, was unbounded. Some idea of the
prodigious wealth of Jerusalem at this time may be formed by stating,
that the quantity of gold left by David for the use of the temple
amounted to £21,600,000 sterling, beside £3,150,000 in silver; and
Solomon obtained £3,240,000 in gold by one voyage to Ophir, while silver
was so abundant, “that it was not any thing accounted of.” These were
the days of Jerusalem’s glory. Universal peace, unmeasured wealth, the
wisdom and clemency of the prince, and the worship of the true God,
marked Jerusalem, above every city, as enjoying the presence and the
especial favour of the Almighty. But these days were not to last long:
intestine divisions and foreign wars, wicked and tyrannical princes,
and, last of all, the crime most offensive to Heaven, and the one least
to be expected among so favoured a people, led to a series of
calamities, through the long period of nine hundred years, with which no
other city or nation can furnish a parallel. After the death of Solomon,
ten of the twelve tribes revolted from his successor Rehoboam, and,
under Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, established a separate kingdom: so
that Jerusalem, no longer the capital of the whole empire, and its
temple frequented only by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, must have
experienced a mournful declension. Four years after this, the city and
temple were taken and plundered by Shishak, king of Egypt, 1 Kings xiv,
26, 27; 2 Chron. xii, 2–9. One hundred and forty-five years after, under
Amaziah, they sustained the same fate from Joash, king of Israel, 2
Kings xiv; 2 Chron. xxv. One hundred and sixty years from this period,
the city was again taken, by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria; and Manasseh,
the king, carried a prisoner to Babylon, 2 Chron. xxxiii. Within the
space of sixty-six years more it was taken by Pharaoh-Necho, king of
Egypt, whom Josiah, king of Judah, had opposed in his expedition to
Carchemish; and who, in consequence, was killed at the battle of
Megiddo, and his son Eliakim placed on the throne in his stead by Necho,
who changed his name to Jehoiakim, and imposed a heavy tribute upon him,
having sent his elder brother, Jehoahaz, who had been proclaimed king at
Jerusalem, a prisoner to Egypt, where he died, 2 Kings xxiii; 2 Chron.
xxxv. Jerusalem was three times besieged and taken by Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, within a very few years. The first, in the reign of the
last mentioned king, Jehoiakim, who was sent a prisoner to Babylon, and
the vessels of the temple transported to the same city, 2 Chron. xxxvi.
The second, in that of his son Jehoiachin; when all the treasures of the
palace and the temple, and the remainder of the vessels of the latter
which had been hidden or spared in the first capture, were carried away
or destroyed, and the best of the inhabitants, with the king, led into
captivity, 2 Kings xxiv; 2 Chron. xxxvi. And the third, in the reign of
Zedekiah, the successor of Jehoiachin; in whose ninth year the most
formidable siege which this ill fated city ever sustained, except that
of Titus, was commenced. It continued two years; during a great part of
which the inhabitants suffered all the horrors of famine: when, on the
ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, which
answers to July in the year B. C. 588, the garrison, with the king,
endeavoured to make their escape from the city, but were pursued and
defeated by the Chaldeans in the plains of Jericho; Zedekiah taken
prisoner; his sons killed before his face at Riblah, whither he was
taken to the king of Babylon; and he himself, after his eyes were put
out, was bound with fetters of brass, and carried prisoner to Babylon,
where he died: thus fulfilling the prophecy of Ezekiel, which declared
that he should be carried to Babylon, but should not see the place,
though he should die there, Ezekiel xii, 13. In the following month, the
Chaldean army, under their general, Nebuzaradan, entered the city, took
away every thing that was valuable, and then burned and utterly
destroyed it, with its temple and walls, and left the whole razed to the
ground. The entire population of the city and country, with the
exception of a few husbandmen, were then carried captive to Babylon.
During seventy years, the city and temple lay in ruins: when those Jews
who chose to take immediate advantage of the proclamation of Cyrus,
under the conduct of Zerubbabel, returned to Jerusalem, and began to
build the temple; all the vessels of gold and silver belonging to which,
that had been taken away by Nebuchadnezzar, being restored by Cyrus.
Their work, however, did not proceed far without opposition; for in the
reign of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who in Scripture is called
Ahasuerus, the Samaritans presented a petition to that monarch to put a
stop to the building, Ezra iv, 6. Cambyses appears to have been too
busily engaged in his Egyptian expedition to pay any attention to this
malicious request. His successor, Smerdis, the Magian, however, who in
Scripture is called Artaxerxes, to whom a similar petition was sent,
representing the Jews as a factious and dangerous people, listened to
it, and, in the true spirit of a usurper, issued a decree putting a stop
to the farther building of the temple, Ezra iv, 7, &c; which, in
consequence, remained in an unfinished state till the second year,
according to the Jewish, and third, according to the Babylonian and
Persian account, of Darius Hystaspes, who is called simply Darius in
Scripture. To him also a representation hostile to the Jews was made by
their inveterate enemies, the Samaritans; but this noble prince refused
to listen to it, and having searched the rolls of the kingdom, and found
in the palace at Acmetha the decree of Cyrus, issued a similar one,
which reached Jerusalem in the subsequent year, and even ordered these
very Samaritans to assist the Jews in their work; so that it was
completed in the sixth year of the same reign, Ezra iv, 24; v; vi, 1–15.
But the city and walls remained in a ruinous condition until the
twentieth year of Artaxerxes, the Artaxerxes Longimanus of profane
history; by whom Nehemiah was sent to Jerusalem, with a power granted to
him to rebuild them. Accordingly, under the direction of this zealous
servant of God, the walls were speedily raised, but not without the
accustomed opposition on the part of the Samaritans; who, despairing of
the success of an application to the court of Persia, openly attacked
the Jews with arms. But the building, notwithstanding, went steadily on;
the men working with an implement of work in one hand, and a weapon of
war in the other; and the wall, with incredible labour, was finished in
fifty-two days, in the year B. C. 445; after which, the city itself was
gradually rebuilt, Neh. ii, iv, vi. From this time Jerusalem remained
attached to the Persian empire, but under the local jurisdiction of the
high priests, until the subversion of that empire by Alexander, fourteen
years after. See ALEXANDER.
At the death of Alexander, and the partition of his empire by his
generals, Jerusalem, with Judea, fell to the kings of Syria. But in the
frequent wars which followed between the kings of Syria and those of
Egypt, called by Daniel, the kings of the north and south, it belonged
sometimes to one and sometimes to the other,--an unsettled and unhappy
state, highly favourable to disorder and corruption,--the high
priesthood was openly sold to the highest bidder; and numbers of the
Jews deserted their religion for the idolatries of the Greeks. At
length, in the year B. C. 170, Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria,
enraged at hearing that the Jews had rejoiced at a false report of his
death, plundered Jerusalem, and killed eighty thousand men. Not more
than two years afterward, this cruel tyrant, who had seized every
opportunity to exercise his barbarity on the Jews, sent Apollonius with
an army to Jerusalem; who pulled down the walls, grievously oppressed
the people, and built a citadel on a rock adjoining the temple, which
commanded that building, and had the effect of completely overawing the
seditious. Having thus reduced this unfortunate city into entire
submission, and rendered resistance useless, the next step of Antiochus
was to abolish the Jewish religion altogether, by publishing an edict
which commanded all the people of his dominions to conform to the
religion of the Greeks: in consequence of which, the service of the
temple ceased, and a statue of Jupiter Olympus was set up on the altar.
But this extremity of ignominy and oppression led, as might have been
expected, to rebellion; and those Jews who still held their insulted
religion in reverence, fled to the mountains, with Mattathias and Judas
Maccabeus; the latter of whom, after the death of Mattathias, who with
his followers and successors, are known by the name of Maccabees, waged
successful war with the Syrians; defeated Apollonius, Nicanor, and
Lysias, generals of Antiochus; obtained possession of Jerusalem,
purified the temple, and restored the service, after three years’
defilement by the Gentile idolatries.
From this time, during several succeeding Maccabean rulers, who were at
once high priests and sovereigns of the Jews, but without the title of
king, Jerusalem was able to preserve itself from Syrian violence. It
was, however, twice besieged, first by Antiochus Eupator, in the year
163, and afterward by Antiochus Sidetes, in the year B. C. 134. But the
Jews had caused themselves to be sufficiently respected to obtain
conditions of peace on both occasions, and to save their city; till, at
length, Hyrcanus, in the year 130 B. C., shook off the Syrian yoke, and
reigned, after this event, twenty-one years in independence and
prosperity. His successor, Judas, made an important change in the Jewish
government, by taking the title of king, which dignity was enjoyed by
his successors forty-seven years, when a dispute having arisen between
Hyrcanus II. and his brother Aristobulus, and the latter having overcome
the former, and made himself king, was, in his turn, conquered by the
Romans under Pompey, by whom the city and temple were taken, Aristobulus
made prisoner, and Hyrcanus created high priest and prince of the Jews,
but without the title of king. By this event Judea was reduced to the
condition of a Roman province, in the year 63 B. C. Nor did Jerusalem
long after enjoy the dignity of a metropolis, that honour being
transferred to Cæsarea. Julius Cæsar, having defeated Pompey, continued
Hyrcanus in the high priesthood, but bestowed the government of Judea
upon Antipater, an Idumæan by birth, but a Jewish proselyte, and father
of Herod the Great. For the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans, see JEWS.
Jerusalem lay in ruins about forty-seven years, when the Emperor Ælius
Adrian began to build it anew, and erected a Heathen temple, which he
dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus. The city was finished in the twentieth
year of his reign, and called, after its founder, Ælia, or Ælia
Capitolina, from the Heathen deity who presided over it. In this state
Jerusalem continued, under the name of Ælia, and inhabited more by
Christians and Pagans than by Jews, till the time of the Emperor
Constantine, styled the Great; who, about the year 323, having made
Christianity the religion of the empire, began to improve it, adorned it
with many new edifices and churches, and restored its ancient name.
About thirty-five years afterward, Julian, named the Apostate, not from
any love he bore the Jews, but out of hatred to the Christians, whose
faith he had abjured, and with the avowed design of defeating the
prophecies, which had declared that the temple should not be rebuilt,
wrote to the Jews, inviting them to their city, and promising to restore
their temple and nation. He accordingly employed great numbers of
workmen to clear the foundations; but balls of fire bursting from the
earth, soon put a stop to their proceeding. This miraculous
interposition of Providence is attested by many credible witnesses and
historians; and, in particular, by Ammianus Marcellinus, a Heathen, and
friend of Julian; Zemuch David, a Jew; Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Ambrose
Ruffinus, Theodoret, Sozomen, and Socrates, who wrote his account within
fifty years after the transaction, and while many eye-witnesses of it
were still living. So stubborn, indeed, is the proof of this miracle,
that even Gibbon, who strives to invalidate it, is obliged to
acknowledge the general fact.
Jerusalem continued in nearly the same condition till the beginning of
the seventh century, when it was taken and plundered by the celebrated
Chosroes, king of Persia, by whom many thousands of the Christian
inhabitants were killed, or sold for slaves. The Persians, however, did
not hold it long, as they were soon after entirely defeated by the
Emperor Heraclius, who rescued Jerusalem, and restored it, not to the
unhappy Jews, who were forbidden to come within three miles of it, but
to the Christians. A worse calamity was, however, speedily to befall
this ill fated city. The Mohammedan imposture arose about this time; and
the fanatics who had adopted its creed carried their arms and their
religion with unprecedented rapidity over the greater part of the east.
The Caliph Omar, the third from Mohammed, invested the city, which,
after once more suffering the horrors of a protracted siege, surrendered
on terms of capitulation in the year 637; and has ever since, with the
exception of the short period that it was occupied by the crusaders,
been trodden under foot by the followers of the false prophet.
2. The accounts of modern Jerusalem by travellers are very numerous. Mr.
Conder, in his “Palestine,” has abridged them with judgment; and we give
the following extract: The approach to Jerusalem from Jaffa is not the
direction in which to see the city to the best effect. Dr. E. D. Clarke
entered it by the Damascus gate: and he describes the view of Jerusalem,
when first descried from the summit of a hill, at about an hour’s
distance, as most impressive. He confesses, at the same time, that there
is no other point of view in which it is seen to so much advantage. In
the celebrated prospect from the Mount of Olives, the city lies too low,
is too near the eye, and has too much the character of a bird’s eye
view, with the formality of a topographical plan. “We had not been
prepared,” says this lively traveller, “for the grandeur of the
spectacle which the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and
ruined town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusalem, we
beheld, as it were, a flourishing and stately metropolis, presenting a
magnificent assemblage of domes, towers, palaces, churches, and
monasteries; all of which, glittering in the sun’s rays, shone with
inconceivable splendour. As we drew nearer, our whole attention was
engrossed by its noble and interesting appearance. The lofty hills
surrounding it give the city itself an appearance of elevation less than
it really has.” Dr. Clarke was fortunate in catching this first view of
Jerusalem under the illusion of a brilliant evening sunshine; but his
description is decidedly overcharged. M. Chateaubriand, Mr. Buckingham,
Mr. Brown, Mr. Jolliffe, Sir F. Henniker, and almost every other modern
traveller, confirm the representation of Dr. Richardson. Mr. Buckingham
says, “The appearance of this celebrated city, independent of the
feelings and recollections which the approach to it cannot fail to
awaken, was greatly inferior to my expectations, and had certainly
nothing of grandeur or beauty, of stateliness or magnificence, about it.
It appeared like a walled town of the third or fourth class, having
neither towers, nor domes, nor minarets within it, in sufficient numbers
to give even a character to its impressions on the beholder; but showing
chiefly large flat-roofed buildings of the most unornamented kind,
seated amid rugged hills, on a stony and forbidding soil, with scarcely
a picturesque object in the whole compass of the surrounding view.”
Chateaubriand’s description is very striking and graphical. After citing
the language of the Prophet Jeremiah, in his lamentations on the
desolation of the ancient city, as accurately portraying its present
state, Lam. i, 1–6; ii, 1–9, 15, he thus proceeds: “When seen from the
Mount of Olives, on the other side of the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from west to east. An
embattled wall, fortified with towers, and a Gothic castle, encompasses
the city all round; excluding, however, part of Mount Zion, which it
formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of the
city, the houses stand very close; but, in the eastern part, along the
brook Kedron, you perceive vacant spaces; among the rest, that which
surrounds the mosque erected on the ruins of the temple, and the nearly
deserted spot where once stood the castle of Antonia and the second
palace of Herod. The houses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses, very
low, without chimneys or windows: they have flat terraces or domes on
the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would appear to
the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches,
the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cypresses, and the
clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan. On beholding these
stone buildings, encompassed by a stony country, you are ready to
inquire if they are not the confused monuments of a cemetry in the midst
of a desert. Enter the city, but nothing will you there find to make
amends for the dulness of its exterior. You lose yourself among narrow,
unpaved streets, here going up hill, there down, from the inequality of
the ground; and you walk among clouds of dust or loose stones. Canvas
stretched from house to house increases the gloom of this labyrinth.
Bazaars, roofed over, and fraught with infection, completely exclude the
light from the desolate city. A few paltry shops expose nothing but
wretchedness to view; and even these are frequently shut, from
apprehension of the passage of a cadi. Not a creature is to be seen in
the streets, not a creature at the gates, except now and then a peasant
gliding through the gloom, concealing under his garments the fruits of
his labour, lest he should be robbed of his hard earnings by the
rapacious soldier. Aside, in a corner, the Arab butcher is slaughtering
some animal, suspended by the legs from a wall in ruins: from his
haggard and ferocious look, and his bloody hands, you would suppose that
he had been cutting the throat of a fellow creature, rather than killing
a lamb. The only noise heard from time to time in the city is the
galloping of the steed of the desert: it is the janissary who brings the
head of the Bedouin, or who returns from plundering the unhappy Fellah.
Amid this extraordinary desolation, you must pause a moment to
contemplate two circumstances still more extraordinary. Among the ruins
of Jerusalem, two classes of independent people find in their religion
sufficient fortitude to enable them to surmount such complicated horrors
and wretchedness. Here reside communities of Christian monks, whom
nothing can compel to forsake the tomb of Christ; neither plunder, nor
personal ill treatment, nor menaces of death itself. Night and day they
chant their hymns around the holy sepulchre. Driven by the cudgel and
the sabre, women, children, flocks, and herds, seek refuge in the
cloisters of these recluses. What prevents the armed oppressor from
pursuing his prey, and overthrowing such feeble ramparts? The charity of
the monks: they deprive themselves of the last resources of life to
ransom their suppliants. Cast your eyes between the temple and Mount
Zion; behold another petty tribe cut off from the rest of the
inhabitants of this city. The particular objects of every species of
degradation, these people bow their heads without murmuring; they endure
every kind of insult without demanding justice; they sink beneath
repeated blows without sighing; if their head be required, they present
it to the scimitar. On the death of any member of this proscribed
community, his companion goes at night, and inters him by stealth in the
Valley of Jehoshaphat, in the shadow of Solomon’s temple. Enter the
abodes of these people, you will find them, amid the most abject
wretchedness, instructing their children to read a mysterious book,
which they in their turn will teach their offspring to read. What they
did five thousand years ago, these people still continue to do.
Seventeen times have they witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, yet
nothing can discourage them, nothing can prevent them from turning their
faces toward Sion. To see the Jews scattered over the whole world,
according to the word of God, must doubtless excite surprise. But to be
struck with supernatural astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem;
you must behold these rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and
strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under
all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them. Crushed by the cross
that condemns them, skulking near the temple, of which not one stone is
left upon another, they continue in their deplorable infatuation. The
Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, are swept from the earth; and a petty
tribe, whose origin preceded that of those great nations, still exists
unmixed among the ruins of its native land.” To the same effect are the
remarks of Dr. Richardson: “In passing up to the synagogue, I was
particularly struck with the mean and wretched appearance of the houses
on both sides of the streets, as well as with the poverty of their
inhabitants. The sight of a poor Jew in Jerusalem has in it something
peculiarly affecting. The heart of this wonderful people, in whatever
clime they roam, still turns to it as the city of their promised rest.
They take pleasure in her ruins, and would kiss the very dust for her
sake. Jerusalem is the centre around which the exiled sons of Judah
build, in imagination, the mansions of their future greatness. In
whatever part of the world he may live, the heart’s desire of a Jew is
to be buried in Jerusalem. Thither they return from Spain and Portugal,
from Egypt and Barbary, and other countries among which they have been
scattered: and when, after all their longings, and all their struggles
up the steeps of life, we see them poor, and blind, and naked, in the
streets of their once happy Zion, he must have a cold heart that can
remain untouched by their sufferings, without uttering a prayer that God
would have mercy on the darkness of Judah; and that the Day Star of
Bethlehem might arise in their hearts.”
“Jerusalem,” remarks Sir Frederick Henniker, “is called, even by
Mohammedans, the Blessed City (_El Gootz, El Koudes_.) The streets of it
are narrow and deserted, the houses dirty and ragged, the shops few and
forsaken; and throughout the whole there is not one symptom of either
commerce, comfort, or happiness. The best view of it is from the Mount
of Olives: it commands the exact shape and nearly every particular;
namely, the church of the holy sepulchre, the Armenian convent, the
mosque of Omar, St. Stephen’s gate, the round-topped houses, and the
barren vacancies of the city. Without the walls are a Turkish burial
ground, the tomb of David, a small grove near the tombs of the kings,
and all the rest is a surface of rock, on which are a few numbered
trees. The mosque of Omar is the St. Peter’s of Turkey, and the
respective saints are held respectively by their own faithful in equal
veneration. The building itself has a light pagoda appearance; the
garden in which it stands occupies a considerable part of the city, and,
contrasted with the surrounding desert, is beautiful. The burial place
of the Jews is over the valley of Kedron, and the fees for breaking the
soil afford a considerable revenue to the governor. The burial place of
the Turks is under the walls, near St. Stephen’s gate. From the opposite
side of the valley, I was witness to the ceremony of parading a corpse
round the mosque of Omar, and then bringing it forth for burial. I
hastened to the grave, but was soon driven away: as far as my _on dit_
tells me, it would have been worth seeing. The grave is strown with red
earth, supposed to be of the _Ager Damascenus_ of which Adam was made;
by the side of the corpse is placed a stick, and the priest tells him
that the devil will tempt him to become a Christian, but that he must
make good use of his stick; that his trial will last three days, and
that he will then find himself in a mansion of glory,” &c.
The Jerusalem of sacred history is, in fact, no more. Not a vestige
remains of the capital of David and Solomon; not a monument of Jewish
times is standing. The very course of the walls is changed, and the
boundaries of the ancient city are become doubtful. The monks pretend to
show the sites of the sacred places; but neither Calvary, nor the holy
sepulchre, much less the Dolorous Way, the house of Caiaphas, &c, have
the slightest pretensions to even a probable identity with the real
places to which the tradition refers. Dr. E. D. Clarke has the merit of
being the first modern traveller who ventured to speak of the
preposterous legends and clumsy forgeries of the priests with the
contempt which they merit. “To men interested in tracing, within its
walls, antiquities referred to by the documents of sacred history, no
spectacle,” remarks the learned traveller, “can be more mortifying than
the city in its present state. The mistaken piety of the early
Christians, in attempting to preserve, has either confused or
annihilated the memorials it was anxious to render conspicuous. Viewing
the havoc thus made, it may now be regretted that the Holy Land was ever
rescued from the dominion of Saracens, who were far less barbarous than
their conquerors. The absurdity, for example, of hewing the rocks of
Judea into shrines and chapels, and of disguising the face of nature
with painted domes and guilded marble coverings, by way of commemorating
the scenes of our Saviour’s life and death, is so evident and so
lamentable, that even Sandys, with all his credulity, could not avoid a
happy application of the reproof conveyed by the Roman satirist against
a similar violation of the Egerian fountain.” Dr. Richardson remarks,
“It is a tantalizing circumstance for the traveller who wishes to
recognise in his walks the site of particular buildings, or the scenes
of memorable events, that the greater part of the objects mentioned in
the description both of the inspired and the Jewish historian, are
entirely removed, and razed from their foundation, without leaving a
single trace or name behind to point out where they stood. Not an
ancient tower, or gate, or wall, or hardly even a stone, remains. The
foundations are not only broken up, but every fragment of which they
were composed is swept away, and the spectator looks upon the bare rock
with hardly a sprinkling of earth to point out her gardens of pleasure,
or groves of idolatrous devotion. And when we consider the palaces, and
towers, and walls about Jerusalem, and that the stones of which some of
them were constructed were thirty feet long, fifteen feet broad, and
seven and a half feet thick, we are not more astonished at the strength,
and skill, and perseverance, by which they were constructed, than
shocked by the relentless and brutal hostility by which they were
shattered and overthrown, and utterly removed from our sight. A few
gardens still remain on the sloping base of Mount Zion, watered from the
pool of Siloam; the gardens of Gethsemane are still in a sort of ruined
cultivation; the fences are broken down, and the olive trees decaying,
as if the hand that dressed and fed them were withdrawn; the Mount of
Olives still retains a languishing verdure, and nourishes a few of those
trees from which it derives its name; but all round about Jerusalem the
general aspect is blighted and barren; the grass is withered; the bare
rock looks through the scanty sward; and the grain itself, like the
staring progeny of famine, seems in doubt whether to come to maturity,
or die in the ear. The vine that was brought from Egypt is cut off from
the midst of the land; the vineyards are wasted; the hedges are taken
away; and the graves of the ancient dead are open and tenantless.”
3. On the accomplishment of prophecy in the condition in which this
celebrated city has lain for ages, Keith well remarks:--It formed the
theme of prophecy from the death bed of Jacob; and, as the seat of the
government of the children of Judah, the sceptre departed not from it
till the Messiah appeared, on the expiration of seventeen hundred years
after the death of the patriarch, and till the period of its desolation,
prophesied of by Daniel, had arrived. It was to be trodden down of the
Gentiles, till the time of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. The time of
the Gentiles is not yet fulfilled, and Jerusalem is still trodden down
of the Gentiles. The Jews have often attempted to recover it: no
distance of space or of time can separate it from their affections: they
perform their devotions with their faces toward it, as if it were the
object of their worship as well as of their love; and, although their
desire to return be so strong, indelible, and innate, that every Jew, in
every generation, counts himself an exile, yet they have never been able
to rebuild their temple, nor to recover Jerusalem from the hands of the
Gentiles. But greater power than that of a proscribed and exiled race
has been added to their own, in attempting to frustrate the counsel that
professed to be of God. Julian, the emperor of the Romans, not only
permitted but invited the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem and their temple;
and promised to reëstablish them in their paternal city. By that single
act, more than by all his writings, he might have destroyed the
credibility of the Gospel, and restored his beloved but deserted
Paganism. The zeal of the Jews was equal to his own; and the work was
begun by laying again the foundations of the temple. It was never
accomplished, and the prophecy stands fulfilled. But even if the attempt
of Julian had never been made, the truth of the prophecy itself is
unassailable. The Jews have never been reinstated in Judea. Jerusalem
has ever been trodden down of the Gentiles. The edict of Adrian was
renewed by the successors of Julian; and no Jews could approach unto
Jerusalem but by bribery or by stealth. It was a spot unlawful for them
to touch. In the crusades, all the power of Europe was employed to
rescue Jerusalem from the Heathens, but equally in vain. It has been
trodden down for nearly eighteen centuries by its successive masters; by
Romans, Grecians, Persians, Saracens, Mamelukes, Turks, Christians, and
again by the worst of rulers, the Arabs and the Turks. And could any
thing be more improbable to have happened, or more impossible to have
been foreseen by man, than that any people should be banished from their
own capital and country, and remain expelled and expatriated for nearly
eighteen hundred years? Did the same fate ever befall any nation, though
no prophecy existed respecting it? Is there any doctrine in Scripture so
hard to be believed as was this single fact at the period of its
prediction? And even with the example of the Jews before us, is it
likely, or is it credible, or who can foretel, that the present
inhabitants of any country upon earth shall be banished into all
nations, retain their distinctive character, meet with an unparalleled
fate, continue a people, without a government and without a country, and
remain for an indefinite period, exceeding seventeen hundred years, till
the fulfilment of a prescribed event which has yet to be accomplished?
Must not the knowledge of such truths be derived from that prescience
alone which scans alike the will and the ways of mortals, the actions of
future nations, and the history of the latest generations?