The harmony, chronicle and order of the New Testament the text of the four evangelists methodized, story of the acts of the apostles analyzed, order of the epistles manifested, times of the revelation observed : all illustrated, with variety of observations upon the chiefest difficulties textuall & talmudicall, for clearing of their sense and language : with an additional discourse concerning the fall of Jerusalem and the condition of the Jews in that land afterward / John Lightfoot ...

§. II. The face and state of the Country after the Cities ruine.

WE will first begin at Ierusalem it self. It was laid so desolate, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, That travellers by could see no sign that it had been ever inhabited: they are the words of Iosephus De Bell. lib. 7. cap. 1. The Friars there, and the Maps here with us, that point out places so punctually, as to tell you Here was Pilates Palace, here the Highpriests, here the dolorous way, &c. must receive more curtesie from your belief, then they can give proof to their assertion.

It appears by the constant and copious testimony of the Jews, that the City and Temple were not only laid flat by fire, ruine, and demolishment, but that Turnus

Rufus brought a plow over them to make good that Prophesie, Zion shall be plowed as a field: The plowman would finde but rugged work: They allot it, as observed before, to have been on the same day of the year, and so a twelvemoneth at the least must intercede.

What the beauty of the place had been, needs no Rhetorick to set it forth, nor what the populousnesse; the Temple, if there had been no other goodly stru∣ctures, was enough to speak the one, and the multitude of their Synagogues the other: their own records summe them up to four hundred and threescore. R. Phi∣nehas in the name of R. Hoshaiah saith there were 460 Synagogues in Ierusalem, and every one had a house for the Book of the Law for the publick reading of that, and a house for the publick teaching and explaining the traditions. Jerus. Chetub. fol. 35. col. 3. which in Megillah fol. 73. col. 4. and in R. Solomon upon the first of Isaiah are reckoned up to four hundred and fourscore. But now not one relick left, of Temple, Synagogue, Midrash, House, or any thing else but rubbish and desola∣tion. Her people used this custom while she stood, that on all other daies of the year the unclean walked in the middle of the street, and the clean by the houses sides, and the unclean said unto them, Keep off: But on the daies of the festivals, the clean walked in the middle of the street, and the unclean by the house sides, and then the clean bid Keep off. Jerus. Shekalin fol. 51. col. 1. But now where is that company, that nicenesse, nay where are the streets? Titus himself some time after the deso∣lation, coming that way, could not but bemoan the fall of so brave a City, and cursed the Rebels that had occasioned so fatall a destruction: Ioseph. De Bell. lib. 7. cap. 15.

How the Country neer about was wasted with so long and terrible a siege, and indeed the whole Country with so dreadfull a Warre, it is easier conceived then ex∣pressed. Iosephus tels particularly much of it, and this thing for one, That all the timber twelve miles about the City was cut down, and brought in to make forts and engines for the siege, lib. 6. cap. 40.

We may take a view of the whole Country as to the surface and situation of it in this prospective of their own: The Land [say they] that Israel possessed that came out of Babylon, was these three Countries, Iudaea, Galilee and Beyond Iordan, and these were severally tripartite again. There was Galilee the upper, and Galilee the neather, and the Vale. From Caphar Hananiah upward, all that bears not Syca∣mores, is Galilee the upper, and from Caphar Hananiah downward all that doth bear Sycamores is Galilee the lower, and the border of Tiberias is the Vale. And in Iudaea, there is the Mountanous, and the Plain, and the Vale. And the plain of Lydda is as the plain of the South, and the mountanous thereof as the mountain royall: From Bethoron to the sea is one Region: Sheviith per. 9. halac. 2. The Ierusalem Gomarists do adde thus, What is the vale in Galilee? The vale of Genezareth and the adjoyn∣ing. What is the mountanous in Iudaea? This is the mountain royall; and the plain thereof is the plain of the South, and the vale is from Engedi to Iericho. And what is the mountanous beyond Iordan? R. Simeon ben Eleazar saith, The hills of Macvar, and Gedor: And the plain thereof Heshbon and all her Cities, Dibon, Bamoth Baal, and Beth Baal Meon. And the vale is Beth Haran, and Beth Nimrah. Sheviith fol. 38. col. 4.

It were endlesse to trace the footsteps of the Warre particularly in all these places, let Iosephus be consu••ted for that: we may say in short, that hardly any considerable plac•• escaped, but such as were peaceable, or such as were unaccessi∣ble. Of the later sort the mountanous of Iudah was the chiefest place, Iosh. 21.1. Luke 1.39. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 The mountain royall, as the Hebrew Writers do common∣ly call it [a place incredibly populous as they testifie, Ierus. Taanith fol. 69. col. 1.] Hither Christ gives his Disciples warning before hand to flee, when these evils should come, Matth. 24.16. Which warning we cannot judge but they took, and so planted here as in a place of safety by his warrant.

Though therefore the Country were extreamly wasted, with so long and so fu∣rious a Warre, yet was it not utterly waste, nor the Nation destroyed from being a people, though it were destroyed from being what it had been. Those places and persons that had quietly submitted to the Roman power, if they had escaped

the fury of their own seditions ones, were permitted to live in quiet, yea to injoy their own Religion and Laws, they in the mean while demeaning themselves as peaceable subjects, to that power that had brought them under. And for one ac∣knowledgement of that subjection, they were injoyned to pay that Didrachma or half shekel that they usually paid to the Temple for their lives, to Iupiter Capitolinus, Xiphil. apud Dionem. pag. 748.

Their Sanhedrin continued in the same lustre and state, as it had done for many years before the City fell: and their Synagogues in the same posture, and their Religion in the same condition, save only those parts of it, which were confined to Ierusalem, which was now in the dust. And generally the places and people that had escaped the Warre, if they would live quiet, did injoy their quietnesse, as well as men could do in a Land in such a condition as into which it was now brought.