February 14, Site #2

MASADA
This is the fortress built by Herod the Great a short distance from the Dead Sea on the rock of Masada. In 40 BC Herod left his family there with 800 soldiers ordered to protect them while he fled from the Parthian Army. However, the cisterns dried up and his family was about to die. He turned around and rescued them. Later Herod enlarged the complex into a palace-fortress. It contained twelve cisterns which could contain 1,412,588 cubic feet of water. When Jerusalem fell in 70, Jewish zealots captured the fortress and held it for 3 years. In 73 Roman General Flavius Silva and the Tenth Legion built a huge ramp to capture the stronghold. Rather than surrender, 960 men, women and children committed mass suicide.

Psalm 137 (remembering Jerusalem)
By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its
foundations!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!