Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.—Micah iii. 12.

"Walk about Zion, and go round about her, tell the towers thereof, mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces," are they still "beautiful for situation?" Is Jerusalem yet the "joy of the whole earth?" Within "her walls peace once reigned, and prosperity within her palaces." But how changed the spot! desolation and dismay reign in undisturbed possession, where elegance and art displayed their richest and most curious productions. Jerusalem is fallen—war destroyed her palaces, and levelled her temple—the fire which consumed that magnificent city was kindled by the hand of civil discord—the desolating element that blazed with awful glare, amidst the splendid sanctuary, was first lit by Jewish hands—and the enfuriated Roman soldiers applied the torch, which ultimately destroyed the temple of Jehovah. The Jews having burnt the greater part of the galleries around the temple, and the Roman soldiers set fire to the remainder, Titus commanded his troops to extinguish the flames; but no sooner were his orders executed than a Roman soldier threw a fire-brand into the temple, and the interior was instantly in a blaze; the flames spread with rapidity, and not all the commands, threatenings, or entreaties, of the Roman general, and his officers, were effectual to preserve the building. Whilst some were endeavouring to check the furious element, others set fire to several of the door-posts; the scene was dreadful; the Jews were filled with astonishment and horror, and their conquerors with fury. Amidst the crackling of the fire were heard the shouts of the victors, and the cries of the vanquished; the shrieks of the wounded, and the groans of the dying. The ground on every side was strewed with dead; while the courts flowed with Jewish blood, the fire raged above; the conflagration was awful, and the massacre dreadful.[140] Jerusalem and its walls were destroyed, the temple levelled, and the Jews conquered, in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, on the same month and day as Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the former city and temple. The last temple, once celebrated for its magnificence, is now no more. That building which, by the solidity of its construction, seemed to defy the mouldering hand of time, soon became a heap of ruins, and "the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest."[141] Titus, before he withdrew his troops, commanded them to reduce the city and temple to a level with the ground, and they left not "one stone upon another," to mark the spot where the temple stood. So strictly was this order executed, that the demolished city scarcely appeared to have been the residence of human creatures. Only three strong towers remained of the once magnificent Jerusalem, and they were left to exhibit to future times the skill and power of the Roman troops, in becoming possessed of a place so strongly fortified by nature and art. Josephus and other Jews attribute the unparalleled calamities of their country-men, and the destruction of the temple, to the signal vengeance of heaven, inflicted to punish that deluded people for their cruelty and injustice to James the just, the brother of Jesus, who is called Christ: but a believer of the New Testament must consider that they were punished for their rejection and crucifixion of Jesus Christ himself, the Messiah of Israel, and Son of God; it was for that cause "Zion was plowed as a field; Jerusalem became a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest."