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230 discord blazed with terrific fury. The three factions were intoxicated with rage and desperation, and went on slaying and trampling on piles of the dead, with an indescribable, fury. People coming to the temple to worship, were murdered, both natives and foreigners. Their bodies lay in piles, and a collection of blood defiled the sacred courts.

John of Gischala, head of a faction, burned a store of provisions. Simon, at the head of another faction, burned another. Thus the Jews were weakening and destroying themselves, and preparing the way for "wrath to come upon them to the uttermost."

In the midst of these most dismal events, an alarm was made that a Roman army was approaching the city. Vespasian becoming emperor, and learning the factious and horrid state of the Jews, determined to prosecute the war against them, and sent his son Titus to reduce Jerusalem and Judea. The Jews, on hearing of the approach of the Roman army, were petrified with horror. They could have no hope of peace. They had no means of flight. They had no time for counsel. They had no confidence in each other. What could be done? Several things they possessed in abundance. They had a measure of iniquity filled up; a full ripeness for destruction. All seemed wild disorder and despair. Nothing could be imagined but the confused noise of the warrior, and garments rolled in blood. They knew nothing was their due from the Romans but exemplary vengeance. The ceaseless cry of combatants, and the horrors of faction had induced some to desire the intervention of a foreign foe to give them deliverance from their domestic horrors. Such was the state of Jerusalem when Titus appeared before it with a besieging army. But he came not to deliver it from its excruciating tortures; but to execute upon it divine vengeance; to fulfil the fatal predictions of our Lord Jesus Christ, that "when ye see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place—when you see Jerusalem compassed about with armies—then know that the desolation thereof is nigh." "Wheresoever the carcass is, there shall the eagles be gathered together." Jerusalem was now the carcass to be devoured; the Roman eagles had arrived to tear it as their prey.