Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
Just in the height of his glory, after he had conquered almost every nation in the east, and overcome the whole of Judaea, except that one small city of Jerusalem, Sennacherib's great army was swept away, he neither knew how nor why, in a single night, and utterly disheartened and abashed, he returned to his own land; and even there he found that the God of Israel had followed him that the idols whom he worshipped could not save him from the wrath of that God to whom Assyria, just as much as Jerusalem, belonged.
Then he had got his freedom, and next, the governorship of Judaea, probably by his brother Pallas's interest, who had been a slave like him, and had made an enormous fortune by the most detestable wickedness. When in his governorship, Felix began to show himself as wicked as his brother. The violence, misrule, extortion, and cruelty which went on in Judaea was notorious.
The successes of Judas and the restoration of the Temple worship inflamed with renewed anger the heathen population of the countries in the near vicinity of Judaea; and there seems to have been a general confederacy of Idumaeans, descendants of Esau, with sundry of the Bedouin tribes, and of the heathen settled east of the Jordan in the land of Gilead, and of Phoenicians and heathen strangers in Galilee, to recover what the Syrians had lost, and to restore idol worship.
Zacharias was a priest, "of the course of Abijah," and twice a year he journeyed to Jerusalem to fulfil his office, for a week of six days and two Sabbaths. There were, Josephus tells us, somewhat more than 20,000 priests settled in Judaea at this time; and very many of them were like those whom Malachi denounced as degrading and depreciating the Temple services.
He was only at the beginning of the second year of His ministry, and had just healed the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, and we find the Jews consulting how they might kill Him, and He was compelled again to retire from Judaea. Ch. vii. 19.
I was walking along that deserted shore which contains the ruins of Ptolemais, one of the most ancient ports of Judaea. It was evening; the sun was sinking in the sea; I seated myself on a rock, lost in melancholy contemplations on the destinies of a spot once so famous in the history of man. The calm Mediterranean, bright in the glowing light of the west, was the only object before me.
And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ: But they had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. And they glorified God in me. In Syria and Cilicia Paul won the indorsement of all the churches of Judea, by his preaching.
On the fall of Pompey, Crassus the triumvir plundered the Temple of ten thousand talents, as was estimated, and the fate of Judaea, during the memorable civil war of which Caesar was the hero and victor, hung in trembling suspense.
And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him; In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem! in the land of Juda, are not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of the shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.
The case of Judaea is obscure; but it would seem that something analogous must have happened there, when the continuity of national life had been snapped by the exile. A revolutionised and most unhappy present involved a changed attitude towards the past. Oral tradition and the scraps of written records that had survived the shipwreck of the kingdom fell, as it were, naturally into another order.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking