THE TALE OF TWO CITIES

See also Matthew 24

ICHABOD

THE FALL OF SHILOH:

The title of this story is “Ichabod.” The setting for the story is a quiet, sleepy hillside village just 20 miles North of Jerusalem. The town’s name is Shiloh. Shiloh means peace and security. The Tabernacle was set up at this location. What an honor! This was the place where God’s presence was always to remain. This was the place where the Jews traveled three times a year to worship God.

In 1 Samuel 1:9-28 the story of Hannah’s prayer for a child is recorded. In keeping with her promise made in that prayer, she gave that child back to God. The boy, Samuel, was actually given to Eli, the priest, to serve and to learn at his feet. One night, while Samuel was laying on his bed, God told him that he was going to destroy Eli’s family because his son’s were evil and Eli had failed to correct them. A short time later, the Israelites went to war against the Philistines.

In 1 Samuel chapter four, we learn that Eli’s sons took the Ark of the Covenant into battle with them. The story continues with these words: “The slaughter was very great; Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers.  The ark of God was captured, and Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died. That same day a Benjamite ran from the battle line and went to Shiloh, his clothes torn and dust on his head. When he arrived, there was Eli sitting on his chair by the side of the road, watching, because his heart feared for the ark of God. When the man entered the town and told what had happened, the whole town sent up a cry.

“Eli heard the outcry and asked, ‘What is the meaning of this uproar?’ “The man who brought the news replied, ‘Israel fled before the Philistines, and the army has suffered heavy losses. Also your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured.’

“When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man and heavy. He had led Israel forty years. His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and near the time of delivery. When she heard the news that the ark of God had been captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she went into labor and gave birth, but was overcome by her labor pains. As she was dying, the women attending her said, ‘Don't despair; you have given birth to a son.’ But she did not respond or pay any attention.

 “She named the boy Ichabod, saying, ‘The glory has departed from Israel’-because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband” (1 Samuel 4:11-21).

We do not have the actual account of Shiloh’s destruction, but it is conjectured that after 30,000 Israelites were killed the town of Shiloh was left in smoking ruins. (Ichabod!-The glory of the sleepy village was gone!)

FALL OF JERUSALEM:

Four hundred years passed. In Jeremiah’s day, Shiloh was still a pile of ruins. Jeremiah saw the wickedness of his people growing worse and that they were heading to the point of a crisis. In a desperate attempt to bring His people to repentance, God told them through Jeremiah, “’Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.  While you were doing all these things, declares the LORD, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer. Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your fathers. I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your brothers, the people of Ephraim.’

“’So do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you. Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. But am I the one they are provoking? declares the LORD. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?’

“`Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched’” (Jeremiah 7:12-20).

Jeremiah was encouraging Israel to go up and view the ruins of Shiloh in order to avoid the same fate, but the people would not listen and therefore were conquered by another nation. The book of Lamentations is Jeremiah’s story of his crying over the ruins of Jerusalem after the Babylonians captured the city and carried off most of the people to be slaves in Babylon.

FALL OF JERUSALEM IN NEW TESTAMENT DAYS:

In the days of Jesus, Jerusalem was a much greater city than Shiloh or even the city of Jerusalem of Jeremiah’s day. It had become the religious capital for over half of the world. People from all over the world came to worship at Jerusalem. At one time, Jerusalem housed the most beautiful building in the entire world, the temple. The city of Jerusalem was crowned with the glory of God - God’s only Son came to teach there and God’s greatest gift to man was presented to us at Jerusalem.

To the east of Jerusalem is a row of three mountains. The most southern is called the Mount of Offense. Here, across the valley from God’s Temple, Solomon offended God by building temples to idols. The most northern of the three mountains is called Mount Scopus. It was here that, in 70 A.D., Titus “scoped” the city of Jerusalem and made his plans to destroy it. The center mountain is the Mount of Olives. It was from this mountain that Jesus wept over Jerusalem’s coming destruction, sweat blood and assented to heaven.

Luke records our story in chapter nineteen. “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace-but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you,’” (Luke 19:41-44). The horrible destruction which Jesus predicted came to Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

Josephus, who was a firsthand witness of the events, told of the great suffering. He told that, early in A.D. 70, nearly two million Jews fled ahead of the Roman army and had secured themselves behind the walls in the tiny city of Jerusalem. (The city was 5,400’ X 3,000’; just over 1 mile long and just over 1/2 mile wide.) At the beginning of the siege, each person in town had only eight square feet of space for his own. Hog farmers today try to give each hog an average of eight square feet of space.

The mighty Roman army completely surrounded the city and blocked off all avenues of escape. Rome held this position for nearly 3-1/2 years!

Street gangs inside the city constantly fought for control. These Jewish thieves fought, raped, killed and plundered their Jewish neighbors.

Since there was an abundance of gold inside Jerusalem, many people swallowed as much gold as they could and then jumped over the wall to escape. Once they felt they were safe, they relieved themselves and retrieved the gold. Roman soldiers soon witnessed this strange spectacle. As a result, when anyone escaped and was captured, the soldier sliced open his stomach and searched for the gold.

Soon starvation began to spread through the city. The streets were filled with dead, stinking bodies. The most anyone could do was to throw the bodies over the wall. Soon there was a solid row of putrefied bodies all around the city. Josephus tells us that the starvation was so bad that mothers were killing and eating their own children.

One million, one hundred thousand (1,100,000) people died and 97,000 were taken captive.

About 35 miles southeast of Jerusalem is a plateau called Masada. The hillsides are nearly perpendicular which makes it a natural fortified stronghold. When Jerusalem fell to the Roman army, many Jewish men, women and children took refuge on this plateau. The Roman General Silva conquered this stronghold by forcing the newly enslaved Jews from Jerusalem to carry dirt in baskets on their shoulders to build a ramp up this mountain. The Jews were forced to work so hard in the heat of that desert that they died at the rate of three per day for approximately six months. When the ramp was finally completed, huge battering rams were pulled to the top. However, before they knocked down the wall, the Jews on top of Masada set fire to all the store of supplies and executed each other. When the Romans broke through the wall, they found only two women and a child still alive out of the 967 people who had taken refuge at Masada.

The Romans were so angry with the Jews who survived the war at Jerusalem that they sent them all out of the country and made it a capital offense to return to their home land. Some years later, the Jews were permitted to return only one day a year and that was the day the Romans celebrated as the day they had defeated Israel. When the Jews finally returned to their country, they had no temple to go to, since it had been totally demolished. The Jews gathered at the retaining wall that was near the temple and there they have prayed and wept for nearly 2,000 years. The wall is called the “Wailing Wall.”

It would be good if Americans could visit the ruins of Shiloh and see first hand the suffering the Jews have experienced due to their rejection of God and His Son. If we don’t learn from history we are destined to relive it.

What will be the future story of America? Happy ever after or will it be Ichabod?

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