32 
ISRAEL. 
From the epoch of the Captivity, the fulfilment of this prediction had become con¬ 
stantly more hopeless. Judah, successively a Persian viceroyalty, a slave of the ferocious 
monarchies of Egypt and Syria, and a Roman conquest, had lost sight of the diadem for 
nearly five hundred years; finally Rome, on declaring her tributary, had totally forbidden 
its assumption. 1 2 
Yet, on the eve of the coming of our Lord, Judah saw a king, established by Rome 
herself; the first Herod, a man singularly formed for his troubled time; insatiable in the 
pursuit of power, but splendid in its possession, steering with unexampled dexterity through 
the conflicting factions of his country, conciliating all the successive masters of Rome, and, 
at length, after undergoing the most eminent personal hazards, calmly seated on a throne, 
sanctioned alike by Antony and Augustus, the rivals for the empire of the world. 
Herod was the first monarch of all Palestine since the Captivity, as his grandson 
Agrippa (a.d. 41) was the last.- The prophecy was now to be fulfilled. 
In the twentieth year of his reign, Herod commenced the rebuilding of the Temple. 3 
And in the beginning of the last year of the sole monarch of Judah, the mightiest event of 
human history was accomplished; the Shiloh came; the Loed Jesus Christ was born . 4 
The purpose for which Israel had been formed, protected, sustained, and disciplined, 
was now done; and the catastrophe earned by long disobedience was to come. 
It had been predicted by Moses, eight hundred years before ; that Judah should perish 
by war, and that war made not by an Asiatic nation, but by one from a remote quarter of 
the globe, of a language unknown to the Oriental ear, and of unrivalled military power, 
and merciless execution. 5 The sword was now put into the irresistible and unsparing hand 
of Rome. 
The well-known havoc of the siege fearfully fulfilled the prophecy. The factions of 
Eleazar, Simon, and John, enfeebled the strength of the defenders, until the city fell. In 
the year 71 of our era, Jerusalem was stormed by the legions under Titus, and the Temple 
was burned; one million one hundred thousand Jews perished by famine and the sword 
within the walls, and ninety-seven thousand were sold into captivity. This was the mortal 
1 Aristobulus, about one hundred and seventy years before the national fall, had assumed the crown, 
but it was an unauthorised act, protested against by the people, and finally producing only a more 
formal and declared prohibition by the Roman government, at the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey, b.c. 
63.—Antiq. xiv. 43. 
2 At his death his kingdom was divided among his family, and Archelaus, whom he had appointed 
his heir, was named ethnarch, and prohibited to bear the title of king.—Joseph. Antiq. xvii. 11. The 
first Agrippa was king but for three years ; the second had a mutilated kingdom. 
3 With the object of defeating the prophecy of JMalachi, it has been said, that the temple built by 
Herod was the third. But it was always regarded by the nation as the second , because it was built by 
portions only, as the former was removed, and also because the daily sacrifices had never been inter¬ 
mitted. (Hales, Chron. vol. ii. p. 650.) Josephus, in stating the duration of the second temple, reckons 
from the “ second year of King Cyrus to the destruction under Vespasian." The interval was 605 years. 
' 4 It is not necessary to more than advert here to the differences of chronologers on the actual epoch 
of our Lord. The common calculation, introduced into the Western Church by Dionysius, a.d. 526, 
makes it some years later than the truth. But this does not interfere with the fact, of its being a short 
period before the death of Herod, as is evident from his decree for the massacre of the infants at Beth¬ 
lehem.—Jahn, Heb. Commonwealth. 
5 Deuteronomy, xxviii. 
