Christians were therefore out of danger when Emperor Nero appointed General Vespasian to crush the Jewish revolt. Ably assisted by his son Titus, Vespasian proceeded with a force of 60,000.

THE FINAL SIEGE

Internal conflict did not cease even when the Roman armies, now under the command of Titus, were before the very walls of Jerusalem around Passover time of 70 C.E. The city was then crowded with Passover celebrants. On Passover day, Nisan 14, worshipers were admitted into the temple area. But they unexpectedly found themselves surrounded by armed men of one of the city’s rival factions. These men had gotten in undetected, as they entered disguised, with weapons hidden. They were bent on gaining control of the inner temple and its stores. There was violence and bloodshed.

Not long thereafter Roman siege engines were pounding against the outer northern wall of Jerusalem’s triple wall system. On the fifteenth day of the siege this wall fell to the Romans. Four days later the Romans captured the second wall. But Jewish counterattacks retrieved it. At great loss, the Romans, within four days, finally drove the Jews from the second wall and then demolished the northern section from end to end. Now only one wall remained.

Later, Titus held a war council and proposed building a wall around the city. As the Jews would thus be kept from leaving Titus believed that this would bring about their surrender or make it easier to take the city owing to the resultant famine. His plan was adopted. The soldiers were organized to undertake the project. The legions and lesser divisions of the army competed with one another to finish the task. Individually the men were spurred on by desire to please their superiors. The over four-and-a-half-mile-long fortification was finished in just three days. Thus were fulfilled Jesus’ prophetic words addressed to Jerusalem: “The days will come upon you when your enemies will build around you a fortification with pointed stakes and will encircle you and distress you from every side.”​—Luke 19:43.

Famine conditions in Jerusalem now became acute. Josephus writes: “The roofs were covered with women and babes, the streets full of old men already dead. Young men and boys, swollen with hunger, haunted the squares like ghosts and fell wherever faintness overcame them. To bury their kinsfolk was beyond the strength of the sick, and those who were fit shirked the task because of the number of the dead and uncertainty about their own fate; for many while burying others fell dead themselves, and many set out for their graves before their hour struck. In their misery no weeping or lamentation was heard.” Prevented from gathering herbs on account of the wall, “some were in such dire straits that they raked the sewers and old dunghills and swallowed the refuse they found there.” The Romans received reports that during the siege no fewer than 600,000 corpses had been thrown out at the city gates.

As the siege continued, the Romans finally battered their way into the temple area. After the sanctuary was in flames, they decided to set fire to everything else. On the last remaining colonnade of the outer temple some 6,000 had taken refuge, believing a false prophet who had told them to go there to receive signs of their deliverance. However, the soldiers set fire to this colonnade from below. Many Jews then jumped out of the fire to their death while others perished in the flames.

When the siege was over, the toll in lives lost was tremendous. Some 1,100,000 were dead, most of these having perished from pestilence and starvation. Captives taken from the start to the end of the war numbered about 97,000. The tallest and handsomest youths were kept for the triumphal procession. As for the rest, many were sent off to do hard labor in Egypt or Rome; others were presented to the Roman provinces to perish in the arenas. Those under seventeen were sold.

The siege had lasted less than five months. But, in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy, it was indeed the greatest tribulation that had ever come upon Jerusalem. The city and its temple were razed to the ground. Only three towers and a section of the western wall of the city were left standing. Josephus states: “All the rest of the fortifications encircling the City were so completely levelled with the ground that no one visiting the spot would believe it had once been inhabited.”