THE ZEALOTS' LAST STAND
 

The Roman Army Camp

According to Josephus, a band of Sicarii (Jewish resistance fighters) and their families committed mass suicide the night before the Roman army burst through a breach in the wall at Masada.

Josephus tells the dramatic story of those defenders who occupied the fortress in the Jewish Revolt. They survived by using  the vast stores of wheat, water, wine, and weapons in the storerooms.

Perhaps they could have held out indefinitely, but the Roman army dug in for the long haul. They set up a Roman army camp at the foot of the mountain on which Masada sat.

Then, bit by bit, they built a massive siege ramp leading up to the top of the plateau, and prepared to storm the walls.

The Sicarii/Zealots knew they had no chance, so they decided in the end to take their own lives instead of dying at the hands of the Romans, or becoming slaves.

The truth is that they would almost certainly have been killed anyway. The soldiers preferred to make a profit from their captives, but the Masada rebels would not have fetched a good price, since by now Jewish captives were a drug on a shrinking market... 

Weapons at Masada

There was no shortage of weapons at Masada. Each man put his wife and children to the sword, and then ten chosen men killed the others.

This probably happened in the converted storehouses at Masada. 

Of the surviving ten, one was chosen by lot to kill the rest, burn the buildings and valuables, and then turn his sword on himself. 

This way, in words Josephus attributes to their leader Eleazar ben Yair, they "chose death rather than slavery" and carried out their resolve "neither to serve the Romans nor anyone else except God." 

When the Roman soldiers completed the siege ramp and entered the fortress, they were met with complete silence. The Jewish defenders were all dead.

Thus the rebellion ended where it began seven years before, at Masada.

THE SYNAGOGUE AT MASADA

The Synagogue at Masada

Herod built a synagogue at Masada, measuring 12.5x10.5meters, with tiers of plastered benches around the walls on which people sat as they listened to prayers, readings and discussions.

But visitors to Masada today will see ruins from a later synagogue, one used by the Jewish rebels.

It was built into a previously existing room whose interior dividing walls were knocked out and its pillars rearranged. It has a set of tiered seating benches around the wall - see below for a
floor plan of the synagogue. 

There was an internal storage area built into the northwestern corner, perhaps used to store scrolls too old to use but too sacred to discard. 

Fragments of two scriptural scrolls had been placed in two pits dug under the floor of the synagogue - presumably by the Jewish rebels just before the Roman soldiers broke through. These were preserved by the dry climate until they were discovered two thousand years later. 

Floor plan of the Synagogue

It is interesting that these two scrolls were from Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. Both these books have material that could have inspired the rebels.

• Deuteronomy gave concrete directions to the Jewish people about how Israel was to live. It includes a system of checks and balances to ensure fair distribution of land and its produce. It also points out that the land belongs to God, so that the people who lived there were in fact only tenant farmers.
• The Book of Ezekiel stipulates that kings and monarchs should play only minor roles - the Temple priests should hold the real power.

But the Herodian dynasty had put itself ahead of the Jerusalem priests, in power and in wealth. They followed the Roman model of kingship, rather than the one proposed in Ezekiel. The defenders of Masada, faithful to their Scriptures, would never accept this.

Go to 'BIBLE STUDY GUIDE'  for passages from these books.

The Defenders of Masada