commiserated
their case; while the seditious, who saw it also, did not repent,
but suffered the same distress to come upon themselves; for they were
blinded by that fate which was already coming upon the city, and upon
themselves also.

WAR BOOK 5 FOOTNOTES

[1] This appears to be the first time that the zealots ventured to
pollute this most sacred court of the temple, which was the court of
the priests, wherein the temple itself and the altar stood. So that the
conjecture of those that would interpret that Zacharias, who was slain
"between the temple and the altar" several months before, B. IV. ch. 5.
sect. 4, as if he were slain there by these zealots, is groundless, as I
have noted on that place already.

[2] The Levites.

[3] This is an excellent reflection of Josephus, including his hopes of
the restoration of the Jews upon their repentance, See Antiq. B. IV.
ch. 8. sect. 46, which is the grand "Hope of Israel," as
Manasseh-ben-Israel, the famous Jewish Rabbi, styles it, in his small
but remarkable treatise on that subject, of which the Jewish prophets
are every where full. See the principal of those prophecies collected
together at the end of the Essay on the Revelation, p. 822, etc.

[4] This destruction of such a vast quantity of corn and other
provisions, as was sufficient for many years was the direct occasion
of that terrible famine, which consumed incredible numbers of Jews in
Jerusalem during its siege. Nor probably could the Romans have taken
this city, after all, had not these seditious Jews been so infatuated as
thus madly to destroy, what Josephus here justly styles, "The nerves of
their power."

[5] This timber, we see, was designed for the rebuilding those twenty
additional cubits of the holy house above the hundred, which had fallen
down some years before. See the note on Antiq. B. XV. ch. 11. sect. 3.

[6] There being no gate on the west, and only on the west, side of the
court of the priests, and so no steps there, this was the only side that
the seditious, under this John of Gischala, could bring their engines
close to the cloisters of that court end-ways, though upon the floor of
the court of Israel. See the scheme of that temple, in the description
of the temples hereto belonging.

[7] We may here note, that Titus is here called "a king," and "Caesar,"
by Josephus, even while he was no more than the emperor's son, and
general of the Roman army, and his father Vespasian was still alive