4

Sorrow and Woe

THREE DAYS AFTER JERUSALEM FELL, the Romans were flushing out pockets of resistance and consolidating their gains. But they also had another task. In the mid-August heat the stench of battle wreckage was already rising from the city, with corpses piled on top of one another. The Roman soldiers knew they would have to bear the brunt of the cleanup. This was not a case of pillage and march back to Roma. Titus and his elite force could do that, but not the legions stationed in the province of Judea.

In the streets soldiers searched door-to-door for entrenched enemy combatants. Others dug trenches for bodies, dumped them in, sprinkled them with lime, and buried them. Lingering fires were extinguished. Jewish informants were questioned and tortured to disclose the whereabouts of John, Simon, and other Zealot leaders. Suspicious areas were cordoned off and searched.

A beggar name Josiah was accustomed to sit at the Damascus Gate, shaking his bowl with a few lepta in it. Few noticed the toothless old man or his cries for money. Josiah was neither blind nor crippled, but his wrinkled, emaciated form and earnest pleading did manage to stir a few hearts to compassion.

Josiah hoped he might be able to salvage something of value now that the fighting had ceased. As he slowly made his way down to the western retaining wall of the temple, the smoke from the fires still burning on the temple mount hung acrid in the morning air. He had heard rumors that some of Titus’s soldiers had pried up some of the massive stones to get at the molten gold flowing from the temple treasury—for even the temple treasury, with all its wealth and sacred vessels, had been engulfed in flames.

The Lepta and Ancient
Economic Realities

The least valuable of all coins used in Judea was the lepta. It was a small copper coin with images on both sides. In the Gospels this is the coin the widow dropped into the Jerusalem temple treasury, providing Jesus with an example of sacrificial giving.

Figure 4.1. Bronze widow’s mite or lepta

The image on one side is of a lamp, and on the other side the sun or perhaps a star. Jews in general did not approve of coins with human or “graven” images on them; hence observant Jews objected to using Caesar’s coins, which bore his image.

Money in the Jewish world of Jesus’ day had inherent negative associations, since it usually served as propaganda for a living pagan ruler. These coins were generally used to pay taxes, tolls, tributes, and tithes, and this contributed to their negative evaluation. Ancient economies were not predominantly money driven but oriented toward barter and a culture of patronage and reciprocity.

Rats scampered through the rubble, and vultures picked and fought over human flesh. Josiah, yielding to the tug of curiosity, climbed to a point where he could survey the damage at the top of the temple mount. The spectacle made even an old man like himself stand in awe. Later he would tell his friends:

“With the temple already burned, I guess the Romans decided to torch everything else that would burn . . . the porticoes, the gates—except on the east and south. Everything that would burn was smoldering, and everything else scorched. And the temple treasury too! Do you have any idea how much gold and silver and fine clothes and other valuables were laid in there? Oh, I watched long ago when wealthy citizens hauled their treasure to the safety of the temple. It’s all gone now!” 1

Josiah recalled hearing the peasant prophet, Jesus son of Ananias. He had prophesied for over seven years in Jerusalem before this great calamity. He would stand in the temple precincts and cry out, “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds: a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against the bridegroom and the bride, a voice against all the people.”2 Despite the protests of the residents of Jerusalem, and despite a flogging from the governor Albinus, Jesus son of Ananias kept declaiming, “Woe to Jerusalem!” His cries were heard most loudly at the festivals. Finally, when the siege of the city had begun, he added, “Woe to me as well!” Josiah had heard that a huge stone from a Roman catapult struck and killed Jesus son of Ananias on the spot.

As Josiah was turning to climb down from his perch, he noticed that some Roman soldiers had set up their legionary standards in the temple court opposite the eastern gate. From a safe distance he continued to watch as they offered sacrifices to their gods. Then came shouts of acclamation to Titus, their imperator and conquering hero. A group of temple priests, who had evidently surrendered or been routed out of hiding, were marched before someone sitting in a chair. Could this be Titus? Josiah watched with rapt attention . . . then gasped, feeling his stomach lurch, as the priests were executed on the spot! But one of them was spared. What could be the meaning of this?3

“So it has come to this,” Josiah said quietly. As Jesus of Ananias said, God had abandoned his temple, his city, his people, and let them face the fury of Roma. The wizened old man fell to his knees and wept. His whole life he had lived in this city, and now, in the span of just a few days, it was gone. It began to dawn on Josiah that his begging days in Jerusalem were over. How would his people ever recover from this blow? On this day, with the stench of rotting flesh in his nostrils, and his eyes watering from the smoke of fires still smoldering on the temple mount, he could see no future for Zion. None at all. He pulled out a couple of the most recent coins he had collected in his beggar’s bowl. One had been minted by the rebels during the revolt. The Hebrew inscription on it read “For the Freedom of Zion.” Josiah tossed it away and sobbed.