Terrible were the calamities that fell upon Jerusalem when the siege was resumed by Titus . The city was invested at the time of the Passover , when millions of Jews were assembled within its walls . Their stores of provision , which if carefully preserved would have supplied the inhabitants for years , had previously been destroyed through the jealousy and revenge of the contending factions , and now all the horrors of starvation were experienced . A measure of wheat was sold for a talent . So fierce were the pangs of hunger that men would gnaw the leather of their belts and sandals and the covering of their shields . Great numbers of the people would steal out at night to gather wild plants growing outside the city walls , though many were seized and put to death with cruel torture , and often those who returned in safety were robbed of what they had gleaned at so great peril . The most inhuman tortures were inflicted by those in power , to force from the wantstricken people the last scanty supplies which they might have concealed . And these cruelties were not infrequently practiced by men who were themselves well fed , and who were merely desirous of laying up a store of provision for the future .
Thousands perished from famine and pestilence . Natural affection seemed to have been destroyed . Husbands robbed their wives , and wives their husbands . Children would be seen snatching the food from the mouths of their aged parents . The question of the prophet , " Can a woman forget her sucking child ?" received the answer within the walls of that doomed city : " The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children : they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people ." Isaiah 49:15 ; Lamentations 4:10 . Again was fulfilled the warning prophecy given fourteen centuries before : " The tender and delicate woman among you , which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness , her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom , and toward her son , and toward her daughter , . . . and toward her children which she shall bear : for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness , wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates ." Deuteronomy 28:56 , 57 .
The Roman leaders endeavoured to strike terror to the Jews and thus cause them to surrender . Those prisoners who resisted when taken , were scourged , tortured , and crucified before the wall of the city . Hundreds were daily put to death in this manner , and the dreadful work continued until , along the Valley of Jehoshaphat and at Calvary , crosses were erected in so great numbers that there was scarcely room to move among them . So terribly was visited that awful imprecation uttered before the judgment seat of Pilate : " His blood be on us , and on our children ." Matthew 27:25 . Titus would willingly have put an end to the fearful scene , and thus have spared Jerusalem the full measure of her doom . He was filled with horror as he saw the bodies of the dead lying in heaps in the valleys . Like one entranced , he looked from the crest of Olivet upon the magnificent temple and gave command that not one stone of it be touched . Before attempting to gain possession of this stronghold , he made an earnest appeal to the Jewish leaders not to force him to defile the sacred
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