torch between the hinges of the door : the whole building was in flames in an instant . The blinding smoke and fire forced the officers to retreat , and the noble edifice was left to its fate .
" It was an appalling spectacle to the Roman--what was it to the Jew ? The whole summit of the hill which commanded the city , blazed like a volcano . One after another the buildings fell in , with a tremendous crash , and were swallowed up in the fiery abyss . The roofs of cedar were like sheets of flame ; the gilded pinnacles shone like spikes of red light ; the gate towers sent up tall columns of flame and smoke . The neighboring hills were lighted up ; and dark groups of people were seen watching in horrible anxiety the progress of the destruction : the walls and heights of the upper city were crowded with faces , some pale with the agony of despair , others scowling unavailing vengeance . The shouts of the Roman soldiery as they ran to and fro , and the howlings of the insurgents who were perishing in the flames , mingled with the roaring of the conflagration and the thundering sound of falling timbers . The echoes of the mountains replied or brought back the shrieks of the people on the heights ; all along the walls resounded screams and wailings ; men who were expiring with famine rallied their remaining strength to utter a cry of anguish and desolation .
" The slaughter within was even more dreadful than the spectacle from without . Men and women , old and young , insurgents and priests , those who fought and those who entreated mercy , were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage . The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers . The legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead to carry on the work of extermination ." --Milman, The History of the Jews , book 16 . After the destruction of the temple , the whole city soon fell into the hands of the Romans . The leaders of the Jews forsook their impregnable towers , and Titus found them solitary . He gazed upon them with amazement , and declared that God had given them into his hands ; for no engines , however powerful , could have prevailed against those stupendous battlements . Both the city and the temple were razed to their foundations , and the ground upon which the holy house had stood was " plowed like a field ." Jeremiah 26:18 . In the siege and the slaughter that followed , more than a million of the people perished ; the survivors were carried away as captives , sold as slaves , dragged to Rome to grace the conqueror ' s triumph , thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheaters , or scattered as homeless wanderers throughout the earth .
The Jews had forged their own fetters ; they had filled for themselves the cup of vengeance . In the utter destruction that befell them as a nation , and in all the woes that followed them in their dispersion , they were but reaping the harvest which their own hands had sown . Says the prophet : " O Israel , thou hast destroyed thyself ;" " for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity ." Hosea 13:9 ; 14:1 . Their sufferings are often represented as a punishment
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