The tallest and most beautiful of the young men were saved for the triumphal procession; everyone else over the age of seventeen was sent in bonds to work the Egyptian mines. A great number were also sent into the provinces to provide amusement in the theaters. (Josephus 37:B.C A.D. 70 p. 230)
Scripture fulfillment of prophecy. (Deuteronomy 28:68 concerning Jerusalem) "And the LORD will take (you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you), 'You shall never see it again.' And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves), but no one will buy you." (emphasis added)
“The cities could be seen full of unburied corpses, the dead bodies of the aged flung down alongside those of infants, women without (a rag to conceal their nakedness) and the whole province full of indescribable horrors. (Eusebius, The History of the Church, 9 105)
Scripture fulfillment of prophecy. (Jeremiah 7:33 concerning Jerusalem) The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. And no one will frighten them away. Then I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land shall be desolate.
Josephus reckon the number of captive taken during the war at 97,000 and the number of those who perished during the siege at 1,100.000. The number who perished in the whole war are reckoned at the total of 1,337,490 and the number of prisoners at 101,700; but even these estimates do not include all the items of many skirmishes and battles, nor do they take into account the multitudes who, throughout the whole country, perished of misery, famine and disease. In may well be said that the nation seemed to have given itself ‘a rendezvous of exterminations.’ Two thousand putrefying bodies were found even in the subterranean vaults of the city, (F.W. Farrar. pp 487-489).
Titus ordered Jerusalem to be completely leveled and work began. However, he allowed part of the walls to remain in their place. All the stones were thrown down at that time. Eleazar, commander of the Temple along with many Jewish men, women, and children escaped from Jerusalem fled to Massada, a fortress in the wilderness built by Herod. Fighting dragged on for three more years after Jerusalem fell and ended when Massada was captured in 73AD.
The Temple along with the system of the laws of Moses came immediately under attack and fell on August 10, 70AD. The upper city fell on September 7, 70AD and the capture of Jerusalem was over. That millstone was threw it into the sea, and shall not be found anymore. (Revelation 18:21)
Despite the alliance between Jerusalem and Rome and the vigorous and universal persecution of the Church, Nero and the Jews failed to purge the world of Christian power and influence. The faith and sacrifice of the saints proved to be stronger than the fiery trials and persecutions. Their earthly forces were no match for the spiritual power of Christ’s gospel. Thus, Nero failed to serve Israel’s purpose.
God was not simply doing away with a national system and people; he was also receiving and bringing to perfection a spiritual nation. Unlike national Judaism, spiritual Israel cannot be entered, possessed, or ruled by earthy kinds. The spiritual rule and dominion of Christ is not vulnerable to the military might and ingenuity of civil governments. Nations shall rise and fall, but God’s spiritual nation of Israel shall abide forever. Daniel 7:14 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed.
Titus states "We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war.”
1. Now when Titus was come into this [upper] city, he admired not only some other places of strength in it, but particularly those strong towers which the tyrants in their mad conduct had relinquished; for when he saw their solid altitude,... and the largeness of their several stones, and the exactness of their joints, as also how great was their breadth, and how extensive their length, he expressed himself after the manner following: "We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications; for what could the hands of men or any machines do towards overthrowing these towers?" At which time he had many such discourses to his friends; he also let such go free as had been bound by the tyrants, and were left in the prisons. To conclude, when he entirely demolished the rest of the city, and overthrew its walls, he left these towers as a monument of his good fortune, which had proved his auxiliaries, and enabled him to take what could not otherwise have been taken by him. The Works of Flavius Josephus War of the Jews Book 6 Chapter 9
The Number Of Captives, And Of Those That Perished In The Siege.
Book VI, Chapter IX, Section 3 (Entire)
3. Now the number of those that were carried captive during the whole war was collected to be ninety-seven thousand ; as was the number of those that perished during the whole siege, eleven hundred thousand * , the greater part of whom were indeed of the same nation, [with the citizens of Jerusalem,] but not belonging to the city itself; for they were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread, and were on a sudden shut up by an army , which, at the very first, occasioned so great a straitness among them, that there came a pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine as destroyed them more suddenly. And that this city could contain so many people in it is manifest by that number of them which was taken under Cestius, who being desirous of informing Nero of the power of the city, who otherwise was disposed to contemn that nation, entreated the high priests, if the thing were possible, to take the number of their whole multitude.
So these high priests, upon the coming of their feast which is called the Passover, when they slay their sacrifices, from the ninth hour to the eleventh, but so that a company not less than belong to every sacrifice, (for it is not lawful for them to feast singly by themselves,) and many of us are twenty in a company, found the number of sacrifices was two hundred and fifty-six thousand five hundred; which, upon the allowance of no more than ten that feast together, amounts to two millions seven hundred thousand and two hundred persons that were pure and holy; for as to those that have the leprosy, or the gonorrhea, or women that have their monthly courses, or such as are otherwise polluted, it is not lawful for them to be partakers of this sacrifice; nor indeed for any foreigners neither, who come hither to worship.
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