Bible Prophecy About The Jews Scattering
"Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast, How shall ye flee away and be at rest! The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave, Mankind their country - Israel but the grave!"
Thus the poet laments the strange suffering of a uniquely persecuted people. We wish to outline these unparalleled experiences of this oppressed nation since they were first uprooted from their ancient homeland.
This takes us back in history over two and a half thousand years when Assyria captured and dispersed the inhabitants of Israel's Northern kingdom. Next Babylon sacked Jerusalem, destroyed its temple, deposed its king and led captive its people who were to sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon: "Yea, they said, we sat down and wept as we remembered Zion".
First throughout the Middle East into Syria and then Eastwards and Northwards though Mesopotamia and Persia and Southwards into Egypt.
From that time on Jewish existence was threatened in every decade, both for those who continued to live in the land of Israel and for those in exile.
A nucleus returned to the land when Babylon was succeeded by the Persian empire and resettled with some success. Eventually they came under the domination of Rome. She ruthlessly suppressed 2 major rebellions. The first was in AD 70 and the second in AD 135, which dispersed the Jews throughout Europe.
In AD 70 the Romans took away their place and nation, destroying the temple. Vespasian and Titus took one stronghold after another, cities and villages were razed and all resistance trampled under foot.
Multitudes perished and many more were carried away to be slain in Roman amphitheatres or to spend their lives in slavery.
However it would appear that even after this many Jews still contrived to remain in the land and it was not until some 60 years later in AD 135 that the destruction of the people was completed.
A false Messiah named Bar-Kokhba inflamed the Jews desire for vengeance and under his leadership the Roman Governor was defeated and Jerusalem regained. The suppression of the rebellion was a work of time and skill and was attended with severe losses. One by one the Jews forts were captured and their villages burnt to the ground. A Roman historian records that during the war 580,000 fell by the sword not including those who perished by famine, disease or fire. The people who remained were gathered together in droves, driven to markets and sold as slaves. the land was wholly depopulated and the people were rooted out. all synagogues and prayer meetings were forbidden,. no Jew was allowed to live in Jerusalem, only being permitted to enter the city once a year to weep over the ruins of the temple.
The Romans even changed the name of Judaea, hoping to eliminate all Jewish memories and links; Henceforth it was to be known as Syria Palestina: Thus Palestine came into being, after Israel's old but long vanquished enemies the Philistines.
In AD 135 the whole of the land was put for sale and purchased by Gentiles. From that time for 1800 years, heathens, Christians and Mohammedans have alternatively possessed Judaea. It has been the prey of the Saracens, the descendants of Ishmael have often overrun it, the children of Israel alone have been denied the possession of it although they fervently wished to return. By AD150 we find therefore that the Jews were living scattered, but with their faith intact, in a vast region stretching from the straits of Gibraltar over to the borders of India, from the Black Sea to the Red Sea, from the Loire to the Indus.
In the early years of the Christian era they were guaranteed freedom of religion, and the dispersion flourished.
However with the fall of the Roman Empire the Jews of Byzantium faced a fanatical Christianity which demanded conversion or expulsion and treated them as aliens. The Emperor Justinian brought all the power of Byzantium against the conduct of Jewish worship.
Other notable events in the Byzantine empire were forcible conversions ordered in 640, baptism ordered for all Jews and Muslims in 721, and the forbidding of the practice of Judaism in 873.
Stoning Jews expressed the zeal of the intolerant. Forced by the Catholic Lateran Council in 1215 to wear a special badge or disfiguring cap which provoked ridicule and insult, the Jew was subjected to reinforced religious persecution.
Massacres of the Jews ended with their expulsion from many countries. In the 14th century they were blamed, totally without cause, for the spread of the black death. Under torture individual Jews were forced to confess to spreading the disease. Between 1347 and 1350 300 Jewish commmunities throughout Europe were attacked.
As an example, in Strasbourg 2,000 Jews were burnt to death on a massive scaffold set up in the Jewish cemetery. Following this a vicious stereotype of the Jew as a spreader of disease and as a sinister force of corruption and destruction gained a wide circulation, flourishing for 6 centuries, making it easy, for those who wished to do so, to rouse simple minded people against the Jew in many lands.
Now look at the wider map of Europe. It was criss-crossed by the expulsion of Jews from country after country, from the Crimea in the 11th century, from Silesia in the 12th century, from England in the 13th, from France and Hungary in the 14th, from Austria, Bavaria, Saxony and Lithuania in the 15th. The map of these expulsions has no pattern; it is a chaos of tragic uprooting, of blood lettings , of torture, of homes abandoned and of hope suppressed. Throughout the Middle Ages, the homeless wandering Jew was a feature of Christian Europe.
For the Jews of Spain and Portugal the milder rule of Islam had been replaced by the harsh rule of Christian kings and another tragedy was impending. In 1355 more than 12,000 Jews were massacred by a mob in Toledo. The flames of anti-Semitism were fanned form the pulpit and violence spread throughout Spain. In 1516 the Jews of Venice were forced to live in a few narrow streets of the town. This area was known as the Ghetto, and so gave birth to a new ominous word in Jewish history.
Jews in Spain and Portugal lived in close knit communities, being subject to legal penalties if they moved outside.
To better understand the meaning of Ghetto life, look at this. "The gates of the ghetto were locked from sundown until morning and latecomers were penalised with lashes and a fine. Laws regulated every movement of the Jews, the trades or crafts they might enter, the type of clothing they might wear, and the compulsory wearing of marks of identification.
(A more complete article is in course of preparation - contact us if you would like a copy in advance)