In time, the ruins which had been inhabited by beasts and overrun with wild vegetation were replaced by new buildings, including a small and unimpressive temple. Elders who recalled the elegance and glory of Solomon’s structure wept in shame when their new house of warship was completed. Under the reign of Nehemiah the city’s walls were rebuilt, and gradually the spirit of the people was rekindled, along with their faith that the heavenly abode of God still existed directly above their humble earthly place.

Jerusalem, according to history, was next brutalized by the tireless armies of Alexander the Great, which surged through the defenseless land after defeating Persia and Syria on their march to Egypt. Later, Alexander’s former general, Ptolemy I, who had been selected by his commander to be caretaker king of Egypt, returned to Jerusalem following Alexander’s death to seize the hapless city once more, this time for his own budding empire.

Syria’s Antiochus III, the Great, was the next to subject the land to foreign oppression, and a reign of terror was instituted by his successor, Antiochus Epiphanes, whose goal was the complete obliteration of every vestige of Jewish religion. He almost succeeded, forcing temple priests to burn diseased and untouchable swine on their holy altar, ordering all copies of the Jewish Law destroyed, and making both circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath a crime punishable by death.

Still the Jews endured, suffering all manner of degradation from this Syrian despot, until he went too far and destroyed their altar of sacrifice. In the revolt that followed, a suicidal band of brave and outnumbered volunteers, under Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers, who assumed leadership when he fell, achieved a blood-drenched independence for their people, a freedom that lasted only until the heel of a new power pressed down upon them—Rome.

When Caesar Augustus selected Herod, the despised Idumaean from the south, as his deputy king of all Judaea, the people of Jerusalem rebelled once more, refusing to recognize or pay homage to this non-Jew who professed to be one of them. Again the city came under siege, and Herod’s armies slaughtered thousands of all ages, including the revered high priest and leader, Antigonus. After three months, the starving survivors capitulated.

Herod the Great had ruled with wile and terror for thirty-three years, taxing his subjects almost beyond their endurance in order to please his friends in Rome by building, throughout the land, great theaters and hippodromes and viaducts and palaces of marble and gold as material evidence of his supreme leadership. He also took unto himself ten wives and murdered seven members of his family, including three sons. Since Herod, in keeping with Hebrew Law, at least publicly abstained from eating forbidden meats such as swine, the common joke among the people was that it was much better to be a pig in Herod’s court than his son.