r the Jewish tabernacle or temple were built.
Nor is the famous command given by God to Abraham, to go two or three
days' journey, on purpose to offer up his son Isaac there, unfavorable
to such a notion.

[17] Note here, that Josephus, in this his same admirable speech, calls
the Syrians, nay, even the Philistines, on the most south part of Syria,
Assyrians; which Reland observes as what was common among the ancient
writers. Note also, that Josephus might well put the Jews in mind, as
he does here more than once, of their wonderful and truly miraculous
deliverance from Sennacherib, king of Assyria, while the Roman army, and
himself with them, were now encamped upon and beyond that very spot
of ground where the Assyrian army lay seven hundred and eighty years
before, and which retained the very name of the Camp of the Assyrians to
that very day. See chap. 7. sect. 3, and chap. 12. sect. 2.

[18] This drying up of the Jerusalem fountain of Siloam when the Jews
wanted it, and its flowing abundantly when the enemies of the Jews
wanted it, and these both in the days of Zedekiah and of Titus, [and
this last as a certain event well known by the Jews at that time, as
Josephus here tells them openly to their faces,] are very remarkable
instances of a Divine Providence for the punishment of the Jewish
nation, when they were grown very wicked, at both those times of the
destruction of Jerusalem.

[19] Reland very properly takes notice here, how justly this judgment
came upon the Jews, when they were crucified in such multitudes
together, that the Romans wanted room for the crosses, and crosses
for the bodies of these Jews, since they had brought this judgment on
themselves by the crucifixion of their Messiah.

[20] Josephus, both here and before, B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 4, esteems the
land of Sodom, not as part of the lake Asphaltiris, or under its waters,
but near it only, as Tacitus also took the same notion from him, Hist.
V. ch. 6. 7, which the great Reland takes to be the very truth, both in
his note on this place, and in his Palestina, tom. I. p. 254-258; though
I rather suppose part of that region of Pentapolis to be now under the
waters of the south part of that sea, but perhaps not the whole country.

BOOK VI.

Containing The Interval Of About One Month.

From The Great Extremity To Which The Jews Were Reduced To
The Taking Of Jerusalem By Titus.

CHAPTER 1.

That The Miseries Still G