The Siege of Jerusalem: Prophecy Fulfilled

Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:41-44 (NKJV)

There can be no question that the ultimate fate of Jerusalem and its people was first and foremost on the mind of Jesus as He prepared to enter the city for His last earthly Passover.  This passage was fulfilled – as recorded by Josephus – in stunning detail in his historical work, “Wars of the Jews”, which should be, along with his equally important work “Antiquities of the Jews” required reading for any serious Bible student.

Here is how Titus and the legions of Rome fulfilled this particular prophecy:

But Titus, intending to pitch his camp nearer to the city than Scopus, placed as many of his choice horsemen and footmen as he thought sufficient opposite to the Jews, to prevent their sallying out upon them, while he gave orders for the whole army to level the distance, as far as the wall of the city. So they threw down all the hedges and walls which the inhabitants had made about their gardens and groves of trees, and cut down all the fruit trees that lay between them and the wall of the city, and filled up all the hollow places and the chasms, and demolished the rocky precipices with iron instruments; and thereby made all the place level from Scopus to Herod’s monuments, which adjoined to the pool called the Serpent’s Pool.

Flavius Josephus Wars of the Jews, Book 5, Chapter 3, Section 2.

By first removing all the tactical cover (walls, trees, foliage, as well as depressions and ditches) from the area outside Jerusalem’s walls, Titus was able to prevent those inside the city from moving freely outside of it to attack his camps and forage for food.  But simply removing the foliage and filling the ravines was not enough.  Josephus continues:

That therefore his opinion was, that if they aimed at quickness joined with security, they must build a wall round about the whole city; which was, he thought, the only way to prevent the Jews from coming out any way, and that then they would either entirely despair of saving the city, and so would surrender it up to him, or be still the more easily conquered when the famine had further weakened them;

So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine, and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead, wheresoever their misery seized them.

Flavius Josephus Wars of the Jews, Book 5, Chapter 12, Sections 1-3.

You can find a summary of the events surrounding the siege of Jerusalem here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_%2870%29

And now you know why Jesus wept over the city before entering it for His last, earthly Passover.  He knew of the destruction that would come upon it some 40 years after His death and resurrection.