HISTORY OF JUDAH and THE DIASPORA
Masada, Ancient Drama
Janene W. Baadsgaard, “Masada, Ancient Drama,” New Era, July 1977, 32
Early morning freshness lingered in the air as I rounded yet another corner on the long
road from Arad to Masada, a city of mystery. The hours before dawn are so peaceful
in the desert. Israel seems to reach eternally outward, a scorched vastness of brooding
rocks and crawling sands. Thousands of years of war have left areas of desolation and
buried cities of grandeur.
Each new turn in the road, until now, had brought little more than another view of dry
stillness and more dust-filled road ahead, but this corner was different. In contrast to
the miles of desert behind me, an immense blueness of sun-reflecting water now lay
open to my eyes. Stretching into the horizon, the water met the sun that was gently
rising to bring the dawn. The sun’s dripping yellow fingers splashed light against the sky
and into my eyes. It was sunrise on the Dead Sea!
We continued down the road until we reached the base of a huge diamond-shaped
rock sticking out from the Judean plateau. With massive sheer drops on all sides,
Masada stands like a great ship overlooking the Dead Sea. This is the place where one
of the most moving stories of Jewish history took place over 1,900 years ago.
As I stood at the base looking up at this immense piece of stone, my mind wandered
back in time to the first century A.D. when this land of the Jews was known as Judea
and was one of the provinces of Rome. It was at this time, around A.D. 66, that the
Jews started a revolt that was to become known as the Great Jewish War against
Rome. After bloodshed and fighting that continued for five years, the Romans believed
the end had finally come when they took over Jerusalem and destroyed the Jewish
temple, the people’s holiest shrine. Thousands of Jews were either slaughtered or
taken captive; but a few managed to escape. Eleazar Ben-Ya’ir was the leader of these
few, and they were known as Zealots. They had escaped to this remote spot in the
desert called Masada. It was the story of these men, women, and children that filled my
mind as I looked up at their rock fortress, Masada.
The climb to the top of Masada is not an easy one, but once on top I could see clearly
for miles around. In the vastness of this huge desert panorama, I felt very small yet
uniquely alive. Huge barren mountains curled and rolled in all directions beneath me,
thousands of feet below. I felt a strange feeling of strength inside of me, as if I were an
eagle perched high in the sky, my nest dangling from the side of a cliff as I surveyed the
world beneath me before leaping into the air and gracefully winging into the horizon.
As I began to wander through the remains of the fortress, I could feel the quiet dignity
that seems to accompany it. I was surprised to find palaces and elaborate baths but
learned that before this Jewish war, Masada was a Roman garrison where Herod the
Great had built a fortress in fear that the Jewish people would dispose of him and also
in fear of Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. Herod strengthened and fortified Masada into
a mighty stronghold able to withstand a long siege. Ironically Herod never occupied the
fortress, and it came to serve the very people he had built it to protect himself from.
The story of Masada gradually seemed to come alive as I walked through the
magnificent palaces, Roman baths, storerooms, and water cisterns. The Jews had
taken over Masada early in the revolt and were holding it. Not long after the
destruction of Jerusalem, the Romans turned their thoughts to the rebels who were still
holding out in Masada. They were an embarrassment to the great Roman empire and
had to be taken care of. Rome sent out possibly as many as 20,000 soldiers and
prisoners of war to lay siege on them, a small group of 967.
Looking down from on top of the cliff, I could still see the clearly visible remains of the
Roman camps circling around me and could imagine the feeling of the Zealots after
months of being surrounded. The Romans built a siege wall and camps all about, but
with the help of their supplies and water cisterns, the Zealots withstood the siege for
two years. Then came the tragic fall of Masada.
I walked slowly beside the outer wall of the fortress as what I knew of the fateful day
came to my memory. The lonely wailing of the wind around me seemed to cry from the
dust. I looked over the edge of the cliff to where the Romans had built a ramp and had
finally broken through the outer wall surrounding the fortress. The defenders had
quickly improvised an inner wall that could withstand the battering ram, but the Romans
soon flung fiery arrows onto the wall, and the wooden staves began to burn. A gust of
wind came up behind me as I was remembering that moment. The Jewish rebels too
had been surprised by this strange, lonely wind. Just at the moment their wall was about
to be burned, the wind suddenly changed direction and blew the flames into the faces
of the Romans. The defenders of Masada thought they had been delivered, but just as
suddenly as before, the wind changed back and the fire continued its destruction of
their wall. The Romans descended from the ramp and returned to camp to prepare for
the dawn when they would finally conquer Masada. The power of their numbers
assured them of victory over their enemies, the rebel Jews.
Eleazar, the rebel leader who had lived so long on top of the mountain in spite of the
thousands of soldiers Rome sent against him, faced the defeat that would come with the
rising sun. He called together all of his followers and in a powerful, moving speech cried
to them to choose death rather than surrender to the slavery that would follow defeat.
These are the words he spoke that night on the top of Masada, with the blaze of the
burning wall behind him and his enemies waiting below for the dawn to come:
“My loyal followers, long ago we resolved to serve neither Romans nor anyone else but
only God, who alone is the true and righteous Lord of men: now the time has come that
bids us prove our determination by our deeds. At such a time we must not disgrace
ourselves: hitherto we have never submitted to slavery, even when it brought no danger
with it: we must not choose slavery now, and with it penalties that will mean the end of
everything if we fall alive into the hands of the Romans. For we were the first of all to
revolt, and shall be the last to break off the struggle. And I think it is God who has
given us this privilege, that we can die nobly and as free men, unlike others who were
unexpectedly defeated. In our case it is evident the day-break will end our resistance,
but we are free to choose an honourable death with our loved ones. This our enemies
cannot prevent, however earnestly they pray to take us alive; nor can we defeat them in
battle.
“Let our wives die unabused, our children without knowledge of slavery: after that, let
us do each other an ungrudging kindness, preserving our freedom as a glorious
winding-sheet. But first let our possessions and the whole fortress go up in flames: it will
be a bitter blow to the Romans, that I know, to find our persons beyond their reach
and nothing left for them to loot. One thing only let us spare—our store of food: it will
bear witness when we are dead to the fact that we perished, not through want but
because, as we resolved, we chose death rather than slavery.
“If only we had all died before seeing the Sacred City utterly destroyed by enemy
hands, the Holy Sanctuary so impiously uprooted! But since an honourable ambition
deluded us into thinking that perhaps we should succeed in avenging her of her
enemies, and now all hope has fled, abandoning us to our fate, let us at once choose
death with honour and do the kindest thing we can for ourselves, our wives and
children, while it is still possible to show ourselves any kindness. After all we were born
to die, we and those we brought into the world: this even the luckiest must face. But
outrage, slavery, and the sight of our wives led away to shame with our children—these
are not evils to which man is subject by the laws of nature: men undergo them through
their own cowardice if they have a chance to forestall them by death and will not take
it. We are very proud of our courage, so we revolted from Rome: now in the final
stages they have offered to spare our lives and we have turned the offer down. Is
anyone too blind to see how furious they will be if they take us alive? Pity the young
whose bodies are strong enough to survive prolonged torture; pity the not-so-young
whose old frames would break under such ill-usage. A man will see his wife violently
carried off; he will hear the voice of his child crying ‘Daddy!’ when his own hands are
fettered. Come! While our hands are free and can hold a sword, let them do a noble
service! Let us die unenslaved by our enemies, and leave this world as free men in
company with our wives and children.” (Flavius Josephus, “Wars of the Jews,” The
Works of Flavius Josephus, book VII.)
The defenders first slew their own wives and their children, then drew lots, leaving ten
to execute the rest of the men. Each man went near the place where his family lay and
willingly waited for the ten to carry out their job. Finally lots were cast for one of the
ten to execute the other nine, leaving only one man to examine the masses of bodies to
see if any needed his hand, then set fire to the royal palace. Then this one man, very
much alone, with all the strength he had left, drove his own sword into his body and fell
dead beside his friends.
On the dawn of the next morning, the Romans reached the top as the sun was rising
over the quiet waters of the Dead Sea. They found the fortress destroyed, with only the
faint crackling of fire, the smell of ashes in the air, and the bodies of nearly a thousand
men, women, and children. Surely they must have asked themselves, “Who are the
victors here?” It was an empty victory.
Although the defenders all died believing that none remained, two women and five
children were found hiding in a water cistern. They lived to tell the story to the Romans.
Masada is a universal symbol of dedication to a cause. It symbolizes men, women, and
children who chose death rather than slavery. It is a heritage that its defenders have
handed down from generation to generation. It would be unwise to suppose that all the
qualities of the defenders of Masada were to be admired or that what they chose to do
was the only solution, but they were surely a people of great strength and courage, and
that is important for us to know.
As I left the cliff, I thought of the words of Y. Lamdon: “Masada shall not fall again!”
That expresses the heritage that the defenders of Masada have given to today’s
generation. Yet as I looked at Masada for the last time, she seemed to say, “I will
stand as I have always stood. It is only men that fall!”
Masada whispers to me today. What she has to say is sometimes clouded with the
winds of the past, yet unmistakably she speaks, sometimes so softly that you cannot
hear unless you stop to rest and listen for her. She speaks of courage and an unyielding
desire to be free, free of the hatred of men and wars that brought a creation and
destruction at her heights, free of long-ago treasures of wealth, buried and rusted with
age, free of men’s power and might that are now swept to and fro by the mocking
winds. She is free at last to listen to the peaceful sounds of the land and behold the
unmarred beauty of yet another sunrise over the Dead Sea.
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