JERUSALEM FROM THE SOUTH. 
Jerusalem: was founded by Melchizedec, 1 in the forty-sixth year of Abraham, 2107 years 
before the nativity of our Lord, and 2177 before its siege by Titus. It was even then 
named Salem (peace), doubtless with prophetic reference to its future purposes, as the 
centre of pure religion in the world. 
Yet, in an historical point of view, no name could seem more unsuited to its fortunes, 
for no other city of the earth has ever undergone so constant and so terrible a succession of 
sufferings. 
After the general conquest of Canaan under Joshua, it fell into the hands of the 
Jebusites, by whom it was fortified, and from the strength of its position, it was probably 
impregnable to the rude science of those early times; but David 2 had the daring to attack, 
and the skill to master it, by entering through an aqueduct, from which he ascended into 
the city. On its capture he made it the capital of the kingdom, and on the Hill of Zion 
erected a palace for himself with other buildings. Solomon next levelled the summit of 
Mount Moriah, and on it built the Temple. Our space prohibits the detail of the 
calamities which so soon overshadowed its splendours. Josephus sums them up in 
one expressive record : “ Jerusalem was taken six times, but desolated only twice. The 
several captures were by Sesac, the Babylonians, Antiochus, Pompey, Herod, and Titus; 
its desolations were by the Babylonians and by the Romans under Titus.” 3 
The horrors of the Roman siege, as narrated by Josephus, proverbially form 
the most overwhelming collection of the images of suffering by famine, popular fury, and 
national despair, that were ever combined to make the fall of a people fearful to its own age 
and memorable to every age to come. 
The siege, in all its parts, distinctly exhibits a supernatural influence, controlling 
human circumstances into the means of more consummate destruction. It was pressed at 
the Passover, the last period at which military prudence would have attempted the attack. 
But as almost the whole male population of middle age were assembled in the city, the 
havoc must have been thus only the more sweeping. 
The singular tardiness, and even incertitude of design, exhibited by the Roman 
army in its first attempts, so inconsistent with the habitual daring and decision of the 
Roman system of war, unquestionably had the effect of deluding the city into a more 
continued resistance, and thus inflicting a more irrecoverable ruin. 
The destruction of the Temple was wholly opposed to the policy of Rome, which 
prided itself on its indifference to the worship of its conquests; and it was even directly 
opposed to the commands of Titus, who naturally wished to preserve its plunder for his 
triumph, and who must have looked on the Temple as the noblest trophy ever won by a 
conqueror. But a mightier power was there, and all perished. 
Joseph. B. Jud. vi. 10. 
s 2 Sam. v. 6. 
3 Bell. Jud. vi. 10. 
