Christ’s Prophecy Fulfilled

It is fitting to set beside these accounts our Savior’s unerring prediction, in which he made these very things known. He prophesies them in this way: “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those nursing in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great affliction, such as has not happened from the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.” [a]

The historian, adding up the whole number of the slain, says that 1,100,000 perished by famine and sword, and that the rest, the rebels and robbers, were informed on by one another after the capture and put to death. The tallest of the young men, and those outstanding for beauty of body, were kept for the triumph. Of the rest of the multitude, those over seventeen were sent in chains to the works in Egypt, while still more were distributed among the provinces to be destroyed in the theaters by the sword and by wild beasts. Those under seventeen were carried off as captives and sold, and of these alone the number came to ninety thousand. [b]

These things happened in this way in the second year of Vespasian’s reign, in keeping with the predictions of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who by divine power had foreseen them as though they were already present, and wept and mourned over them, as the holy evangelists write. They set down his very words, when at one time he said, as if to Jerusalem herself: [c] “If you had known on this day, even you, the things that make for your peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a siege wall around you, and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children.” [d] And at another time, as if of the people: “For there will be great distress on the land, and wrath against this people; and they will fall by the mouth of the sword and be taken captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled by nations, until the times of the nations are fulfilled.” And again: “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that her desolation has come near.” [e]

If anyone compares our Savior’s words with the rest of the historian’s account of the whole war, how could he fail to marvel, and to confess that our Savior’s foreknowledge and prediction were truly divine and wonderful beyond nature? As for what befell the whole nation after the Savior’s passion, and after those cries in which the crowd of the Jews begged off the robber and murderer from death and pleaded that the Author of life be taken away from among them, there is no need to add anything to the histories. [f] But it would be right to add what may show the kindness of the all-good Providence, which put off their destruction for a full forty years after their crime against Christ. During all that time most of the apostles and disciples, and James himself, the first bishop there, who was called the Lord’s brother, were still alive and living in the city of Jerusalem itself, and they remained there like a strong wall around the place. For God’s oversight was still patient with them then, to see whether they might at last repent of what they had done and obtain pardon and salvation; and besides such great patience, it also provided wonderful signs from God of what would happen to them if they did not repent. [g] Since these too have been thought worthy of record by the historian already named, there is nothing better than to set them before those who come to this work.