Av 8 – Baseless Hatred – Today in the Bible

Av 8 – Baseless Hatred

August 12, 2024

Av 8, 5784; from sunset August 11, 2024, to sunset August 12, 2024

(Eighth day of the fifth month)

Josephus (37- c. 100 CE) was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing The Jewish War, he was born in Jerusalem to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry. (Wikipedia)

Today in the Bible, we’re remembering a time that is not recorded in the Bible. Rather, Josephus made a record of these events in his Wars of the Jews. We feel that they are important to remember and something we can learn from today. Before the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, they laid siege upon Jerusalem. During the siege, fighting broke out between different factions of the Jews inside the city. One group set fire to the city’s food stores. This led to mass starvation. This baseless hatred is considered one of the main reasons leading to the Temple’s ruin just three years later.

And now there were three treacherous factions in the city, each separate from the other. Eleazar (the leader of the Zealots) and his party, that kept the sacred firstfruits, directed their drunken fury against. Those who were with John (of Gischala, who held a monopoly on kosher oil and netted huge profits but wanted political power as well) plundered the populace, and went out with zeal against Simon (Bar-Giora, a rebel leader). This Simon had his supply of provisions from the city, in opposition to the seditious.

When, therefore, John was assaulted on both sides, he made his men turn around, throwing his missiles upon those citizens that came up against him, from the cloisters he had in his possession, while he opposed those who attacked him from the temple by his engines of war; and if at any time he was freed from those who were above him, which happened frequently, from their being drunk and tired, he sallied out with a great number upon Simon and his party; and this he did always in such parts of the city as he could come at, till he set on fire those houses that were full of grain, and of all other provisions. The same thing was done by Simon, when, upon the other’s retreat, he attacked the city also; as if they had, on purpose, done it to serve the Romans, by destroying what the city had laid up for the siege, and by thus cutting off the sinews of their own power.

Accordingly, it so came to pass, that all the places that were around the temple were burnt down, and were become an intermediate desert space, ready for fighting on both sides of it; and that almost all that grain was burnt, which would have been sufficient for a siege of many years. So they were taken by the means of the famine, which it was impossible they should have been, unless they had thus prepared the way for it by this procedure.

And now, as the city was engaged in a war on all sides, from these treacherous crowds of wicked men, the people of the city, between them, were like a great body torn in pieces.

The aged men and the women were in such distress by their internal calamities, that they wished for the Romans, and earnestly hoped for an external war, in order to deliver them from their domestic miseries. – Josephus, Wars of the Jews 5:21-28

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