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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 21, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 32, No. 5.

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Historical Department.

Prophecy is History in Advance.

HISTORY OF JERUSALEM.

The earliest mention of this place in Scripture is in connection with the pursuit by Abraham of the kings who had made a prisoner of his nephew, Lot. Having effected the rescue of that person, Abraham, on his return to Hebron where he lived, (20 miles south of Jerusalem,) was met by Melchizedek, the King of Salem, who came out with bread and wine to the valley of Shaveh—probably the point just below the City—and blessed him in the name of the most high God. Five hundred years after this we find the place named Jebus, afterward Jerusalem. The Turks at the present day call it El Khuds, signifying Holy City; also Beit el Mackhudis, the House of the Sanctuary.
As early as the conquest of Canaan, 1,451 B. C., Jerusalem was a considerable place. The league of five kings against Joshua, which was broken up at the great battle of Gibeon, was formed at the suggestion of the King of Jerusalem. . . . In the division of Canaan among the Twelve Tribes, Jerusalem fell to Benjamin, and how it came to be transferred to Judah is difficult to explain. Perhaps it was by the right of conquest, for the tribe of Judah was the first to capture it from the Jebusites. Other cases similar to this are to be found where important places were transferred from one tribe to another, and no reasons given for it.
The first settlement of Jerusalem, under the Jewish nation, was by King David, 1015 B. C. He captured it from the Jebusites, fortified a portion of it, and built the palace there. During the reign of Solomon, other portions were enclosed within its walls, and the temple built. Since that period it has been seventeen times destroyed and rebuilt.
1. Four years after King Solomon’s death it was taken and plundered by Shishak, king of Egypt.
2. One hundred and forty-five years afterward it was taken by Jehoash, king of Israel, plundered, and a large portion of the walls demolished.
3. Two hundred and thirty-eight years afterward it was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and almost totally destroyed. The temple of Solomon was buried, together with the king’s palace. The larger part of the people were carried into captivity. The city lay desolate for half a century. Then Zerubbabel led back 52,000 of the captives and rebuilt the temple, with a portion of the dwellings. Seventy-nine years after, Ezra conducted a second colony, and thirteen years later Nehemiah guided the third and rebuilt the walls.
4. Two hundred and seventy-five years afterward, Antiochus, Epiphanes stormed the city, and slew 80,000 of the inhabitants. Two years after this he returned and totally destroyed the city. This was the most terrible calamity the Jews had ever experienced.
5. One hundred and six years afterward it was taken by Pompey, the Roman general, who then attached Judea as a province of the Roman Empire. . . . Shortly afterward, Herod the Great commenced to rebuild the city. In this he labored with great assiduity for forty years, restoring the fortifications, the temple, and the walls, to more than their former magnificence. It was in this condition when our Saviour made it the scene of his ministrations.
6. One hundred and thirteen years after its capture by Pompey, it was stormed by Titus, the Roman general, and totally destroyed. Of all its grandeur and beauty, he left nothing but two or three towers in the western wall as mementos that a great city had stood there. More than a million of people perished during the siege.
7. Sixty-two years afterward, it was rebuilt in part, by the Emperor Adrian, who gave it the name of Aelia.
8. One hundred and seventy-four years afterward, it was further rebuilt, and many splendid Christian churches erected by Helena, mother of Constantine, the Roman Emperor.
9. Two hundred and thirty-one years afterward, the city was still more strongly built and beautified by the Roman Emperor, Justinian.
10. Seventy-seven years afterward, it was taken by the Persians, and nearly demolished.
11. A year afterward, the Romans took it, and rebuilt the portion that had been destroyed by the Persians.
12. Twenty-three years afterward, it was taken by the Arabians, who held it for 437 years.
13. Next came the Turks, who took it from the Arabians.
14. Twenty-five years afterward, and on the 15th of July, 1099, the Crusaders, under Baldwin, took it by assault, after a siege of forty days, and restored the Christian emblems which were cast down nearly 500 years before.
15. Eighty-eight years afterward, it was taken by the Turks under Saladin, who had first gained a great and decisive victory over the Christian army, at Hallin, near the Sea of Galilee.
16. During the next fifty-seven years, Jerusalem changed masters several times, but in the year of our Lord, 1244, the Turks finally established themselves in possession, and have held it to the present day, a period of 622 years.
What a history is this! For 3,500 years these hills have been the scene of mortal strife. The echoes of these surrounding mountains have resounded to the warriors of a hundred nations—seventeen times destroyed, and as often rebuilt—now a place of grandeur and luxury—now a place of desolation! With these facts before us we shall understand the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and can more perfectly enter into the spirit of those words uttered by our Saviour as he stood upon the Mount of Olives, east of the city, and looked down upon it, doomed within less than forty years to become a place of desolation, and said: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee. . . . Your house is left unto you desolate!”

CONNECTED EVENTS.

Having thus sketched the history of this far-famed city, I proceed to mention a few of those events with which it is associated in sacred history:
1. In the year 1872, B. C., Abraham came here, a three day’s journey from Beersheba, to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, as God had appointed. It has been made a question among Bible Commentators, whether it was Mount Moriah—adjoining Jerusalem—upon which this sublime act of faith occurred, or Moreh, near Shechem, forty miles further north. Without attempting to decide a question upon which the wisest have differed, it appears to me that the burden of evidence rests in favor of Jerusalem.
2. When King David came here from Hebron, twenty miles south, to capture this place from the Jebusites, Jerusalem only covered a small portion of its present site, that of Zion in the southwest. The place was protected by walls that rendered it almost impregnable, and the enemy felt so secure that they ventured to insult King David with the challenge, that even their blind, and lame men could keep him out. Upon this, King David made proclamation that whoever should first enter into the city, should be made the general of his army. The valiant Joab gained the prize, and Zion was taken. As the strongest parts of a fort are those that are least looked after by the defenders, it is likely that this daring man climbed up by night at the northeast corner of the city, where the crags are more than 100 feet high and exceedingly steep, and there made his entrance.
3. When Rabshakeh, the captain of the king of Babylon approached Jerusalem, he took his station at the Upper Pool of Gibeon, opposite the northwest corner, and it was at this point that the Crusaders made their attack in 1099. When Pompey besieged Jerusalem, he made his headquarters, it is said, on the hill south of the city, now called the Hill of Evil Counsel. But when Titus, 133 years afterward, began his siege, he established himself on the hill Scopus, north of the city. It was on the eminence called Neby Samuel, or Mizpeh, five miles north of Jerusalem, that King Richard the lion-hearted, stood in the last Crusade, when he buried his face in his hands, and prayed, “Ah, Lord God, suffer me not to look upon Jerusalem, if so be that I may not rescue it from the hands of thine enemies.”
4. It was at Jerusalem that the people of Israel were expected to assemble themselves together, at least once a year, to worship in God’s holy temple. To this point they came up by hundreds of thousands, and by millions! By the southern road, by way of Hebron and Bethlehem; by the eastern road, by way of Bethabara and Jericho and Bethany; by the north-eastern road, by way of Golan and Succoth; by the northern road, by way of Shiloh and Bethel; by the north-western road, by the Pass of Beth-horon, and by Gibeon; these people sought their God in his covenanted place, and made their offerings and their sacrifices, according to the Law of Moses. Not only the city within the walls, which were more than three miles in circumference, must have been crowded to overflowing upon these occasions, but the adjacent hillsides, and the neighboring villages, and wherever a spot could be found for a camping place.
Different, indeed, is the present appearance of Jerusalem. A town with scarcely 12,000 inhabitants, with streets narrow, crooked, and offensive to eye and nostrils, a city of strangers—how forcible the contrast to that Golden City, that unequalled metropolis which afforded St. John a model for the “Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”—The Mystic Temple.