Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
12| [….] And since the Word of God also gave an oracle about the place, come, let us look at what he said about it. The rulers of the Jews, unable to bear his solemn teaching, or his boldness of speech and his reproofs, were bringing it about that he left the city. And as he withdrew from Jerusalem he uttered words like these against the city: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a bird gathers her nestlings under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me from now on until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." For since an accursed defilement was to be committed by them in the time that followed (this was the abomination they dared against the Savior), it was surely necessary that not only the inhabitants of the city but the very ground on which they prided themselves should suffer the wages of what the inhabitants had done. And this they did suffer before long, when the Romans came against the city: of the inhabitants they slaughtered some by the law of war, led others away as captives, destroyed others by famine, and scattered the captives too into every place, while their house and the temple they burned and brought to the uttermost desolation. These things, however, happened in later times; but the Savior, forestalling the future through his foreknowledge, as God the Word, foretells in the words before us what was going to happen. By the children of the city he means the whole nation of the Jews, and by their house he means the temple. Then he testifies that the gloomy things will come upon them through their own fault, since he himself had often wished to gather their children together under the yoke of true religion, as one who exists before all things and has had providential care of them from eternity, turning them back and calling them again through each prophet and in each generation; but they would not obey the call. On account of this the sentence against them [….]; and he says precisely that not the city but the house in it will be desolate, plainly the temple, which he will no longer have called his own, nor even God's house, but says is theirs. And he declares that it will be desolate in no other way than by being forsaken by the providence that formerly watched over it; therefore he said: "Behold, your house is left to you desolate." And truly one may marvel at the outcome of the word: never at any other time did the place endure such desolation, not even when, for their surpassing impieties and idolatries and their bloodshed against the prophets, it was taken by the Babylonians; [….] seventy [….] it became [….]. So the words "Behold, your house is left to you desolate" could not properly have been said to them then. For it was not forsaken; it received a visitation after no long time, at which it was counted worthy of a greater restoration than the earlier one, so that one of the prophets foretold that "the last glory of this house will be greater than the former." But after our Savior's word, how they were forsaken and how their house, by God's sentence, was driven to the uttermost desolation, the very sight shows those who come to the places, and shows still more clearly the outcome of the word. And the time, too, which has run to many long years, so that it is not only double the seventy-year desolation that took place under Babylon but even exceeds it fourfold, confirms our Savior's sentence. Again, at another time, when the Savior was walking around the temple we have spoken of, and his disciples, marveling greatly at the buildings of its enclosure and at the size and beauty of the temple, were pointing them out to him, "he answered and said, [….] stone that will not be thrown down." That everything in the building and in the rest of the construction of the temple there was indeed worth seeing, the histories make clear. And as a sample some remains are preserved even to this day, through which the traces of the ancient constructions can be made out. But more wonderful than all is the divine voice of our Savior's foreknowledge, which, in reply to those struck with amazement at the buildings, [….] stone [….] not to be demolished. For on account of what its inhabitants were going to dare, the place had to undergo complete ruin and desolation, as having become the dwelling of impious men. How the prediction has passed into fact, how the whole temple and its enclosure, and the solemn and beautiful structures in it, which surpassed all description, have endured desolation from that time until now, and how the power of the word grows with time and spreads, so that in some places not even a trace of the foundations can be seen, anyone who wishes can take in with his own eyes. But if someone should speak of the disappearance, as the desolation grows day by day, and of the said predi[….] of those who have interpreted the words before us differently: for, as they hold, it was not said about all the buildings but about some part of them, which his disciples were pointing out to him in wonder, since it was against that part that he uttered the prediction. But again the writing of the disciples about him teaches these things about the [….] of the place [….] some things were prophesied about the temple, but those before us about the city itself, which the Jews named "God's city" on account of the temple of God established within it. The Lover of mankind weeps over the whole city, pitying not so much the buildings or the ground itself as the souls of the former inhabitants and their destruction, and he also sets out the causes of their desolation, saying: "If you, even you, had recognized on this day the things that make for peace." He means that his coming had taken place to bring peace to the whole world. For he was the one about whom it was said: "Righteousness will dawn in his days, and fullness of peace." And he had come for this very purpose, to proclaim "peace to those near and those far"; and to those who received him he says: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you," which peace the nations over the whole inhabited world who believed in him received. But the people of the circumcision, not believing in him, did not know the things that make for their peace. Therefore he adds: "But now it is hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you, and your enemies will surround you." The things, then, that would overtake them a little later in the siege against them, because they did not accept the peace announced to them beforehand, were hidden from their eyes. They did not foresee what would befall them after this; but he foretells it by prediction, indicating most plainly the siege by the Romans that would overtake them: "For days will come upon you," because you did not know the things that make for your peace. For on this account "days will come upon you, and your enemies will surround you and encircle you and hem you in on every side, and will raze you to the ground, and your children within you," and he has sketched by these words the manner of the war that would come against them. How these things were brought to completion, one can gather from the writing of Josephus, who, being a Jew and of the Jewish tribe among them, and one of the distinguished and notable men in the nation, in the times of the siege recorded each of the things done, showing the outcomes to be in agreement with the predictions set before us. [….] by the words set before us, signs of the time of the complete desolation of the place, which he sets forth, saying: "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has drawn near." For let no one, he says, expect, after the coming siege and the desolation of the place that will follow it, that there will be another renewal of it, as happened in the days of Cyrus, the Persian king, and afterward under Antiochus Epiphanes, and again under Pompey. For though the place had often endured a siege, afterward it was judged worthy of greater honor. But now know that the final desolation of the city and its complete disappearance will come upon it, when "you see it besieged by armies." By the desolation of Jerusalem he means the obliteration of the temple and the abolition of what was formerly performed in it according to the law of Moses. For do not suppose that these words point to a desolation of the city itself, as though no one would live in it any more. He adds next, at any rate, that the city will be inhabited, not indeed by Jews but by gentiles, saying something like this: "And Jerusalem will be trampled by the gentiles." So he knows that it will be inhabited by gentiles. What he calls its desolation is that it will no longer be maintained by its own people or according to the worship of the law. How this too was fulfilled needs no long account. For one may see with one's own eyes the Jews scattered among all the nations, and men of other tribes and other races living in what was once Jerusalem, now renamed Aelia after its besieger, Aelius Hadrian. The paradox of the oracle, then, would be this: about the Jews he says, "And Jerusalem will be trampled by the gentiles," and about the gentiles, "And Jerusalem will be trampled by the gentiles." The outcome is astonishing: for if the Jews, who fill the whole inhabited world of men, so that they have spread even as far as the Ethiopians and the Scythians and the very ends of the earth, had found only their own city and the place they once held sacred [….] the city also uninhabited, one might well have supposed this to be the cause. But as it is, while the place is inhabited by nations of other races and other tribes, it is closed to them alone, so that they cannot even look on their ancestral soil from a distance. All this has been brought to pass in this way, in keeping with the oracle which said, "They will be taken captive among all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the gentiles." He also points to the war that came before the captivity when he says, "For there will be distress upon the land and great wrath on this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword." How these things were done in detail, and how what our Savior foretold came to its fulfillment in fact, one may learn from the history of Flavius Josephus. He too plainly sets out the outcome of our Savior's prediction which said, "But woe to those who are with child and to those who are nursing in those days," when he records how women roasted their own babies over the fire and ate them, because of the extremity of the famine that had gripped the city. For the Savior, foreseeing this very famine that would come upon the city, advised his disciples that, in the siege which was to come upon the Jews, they should not seek shelter in the city as in a safe place guarded by God, which is what most people suffered, but should withdraw from there and flee to the mountains; that those in the middle of Judea should go out among the nations; and that those in the countryside should not flee into it for shelter as into a stronghold. That is why he says: "And let those in the countryside not enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written" [….]
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