The Destruction of the Temple

Earlier, we read about Jesus, the founder of Christianity. The Romans put Jesus to death, because they were afraid that the Jewish people would follow Jesus and obey him, instead of obeying the rulers of Rome.

The Jews had been ruled by other countries for many years. Do you remember who was the father of the Jewish people? Abraham left Haran and went to Canaan. There, he had a son named Isaac and Isaac had a son named Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons. And each one of Jacob’s sons had a family of their own. Now Abraham’s family was as big as a whole nation! And they were called “Israelites” or “Jews.”

Jacob loved his son Joseph more than his other sons. The other eleven brothers were jealous, and they sold Joseph as a slave. Joseph was taken to Egypt, and soon the rest of the Israelites came down to join him, because a famine had wiped out all their crops—and there was only grain in Egypt.

The Israelites lived in Egypt for a long time. But the pharaoh made them into slaves, until Moses came along and led them out of Egypt, back up to Canaan. The Israelites lived in Canaan until the Assyrians came along, captured them, and took them away, back to Assyria. The Assyrians were then conquered by the Babylonians—who took the Israelites from Assyria and moved them to Babylon. Then the good king of Persia and Babylon, Cyrus the Great, gave the Jews permission to move back to their own land—back to Canaan.

The Jews had been moved around the ancient world for hundreds of years. After Cyrus allowed them to go home, they hoped that they would finally get to stay in their own country and live in peace.

But now they were being ruled by Rome.

Finally, the Jews refused to obey any longer. They set fire to the house of the Roman ruler of Judea. Armed groups of Jewish men attacked Roman soldiers. Fighting between the Jews and the Romans in Jerusalem grew worse and worse.

When the emperor in Rome heard what was happening, he sent more Roman soldiers with orders to destroy Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jews.

Jerusalem was an important city to the Jews. Inside the city was the Temple, the place where they worshipped God. But when the Roman soldiers attacked, they burned down the Temple. Inside the temple were many beautiful decorations made of gold and silver. One ancient historian writes that, when the Temple burned down, the gold and silver melted and ran into the cracks between the huge stones of the Temple’s foundation. The Roman soldiers, anxious to get at this wealth, pried the stones apart with crowbars. This completely destroyed the Temple, all the way down to its foundation. And then the Romans drove the Jewish people away from Jerusalem.

Now the Jews had no Temple to worship God in, no capital city, and no country of their own. They were scattered throughout all the countries of the ancient world. The Jews didn’t return to the land of Canaan until just a few years ago.

Note to Parent: The Temple was destroyed in AD/CE 70.