The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 32

had been cleared of enemies who might have endeavored to intercept
them. At the time of the siege, the Jews were assembled at Jerusalem
to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and thus the Christians throughout the
land were able to make their escape unmolested. Without delay they
fled to a place of safety—the city of Pella, in the land of Perea, beyond
Jordan.
The Jewish forces, pursuing after Cestius and his army, fell upon
their rear with such fierceness as to threaten them with total destruction.
It was with great difficulty that the Romans succeeded in making their
retreat. The Jews escaped almost without loss, and with their spoils
returned in triumph to Jerusalem. Yet this apparent success brought them
only evil. It inspired them with that spirit of stubborn resistance to the
Romans which speedily brought unutterable woe upon the doomed city.
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 want-stricken 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.

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