Masada!

Masada desert view

Slaves sweat under the blazing desert sun, building a massive ramp, feeling like traitors. The people up inside the fortress are, after all, their countrymen. This ramp will provide a path for a battering ram to beat in their walls, and that will be the end of the final Jewish holdout. Day after day for three months they've been working on this ramp. The zealous Sicarii Jews holed up inside have tried everything - flaming arrows, boulders, prayers in the fortress synagogue. Nothing will stop the Romans. It's slaves who die when obstacles are hurled down, so what do their bosses care?

Masada: fortress hill on a flat plain

A slave's opinion is not asked. And it's hot. Who can speak anyway? The nearby huge body of water offers no relief, being nine times as salty as any normal sea. The Dead Sea. Well named. Get a drop of that in your eyes and they sting for hours. Try tasting it and you'll spit it out in disgust. Wash in it, and any wounds from those whips will scream. Better leave it alone. Use the minimal water from the cisterns around the mountain base, when you can.

Dead Sea view from Masada

Roman soldiers, garrisoned in ten enormous camps around the fortress, play dice with clay shards. Some supervise other slaves building an encircling stone wall, seven miles long, surrounding the fortress at ground level. Just in case any Jews inside the fortress tried to escape. Where would they go, anyway? The desert is long and low - this is the lowest point on the earth, for goodness' sake! The Dead Sea is 400 metres below sea level! And the rest of the land, every other city for days of travel, is already under Roman occupation. It's 72 AD. Taking Masada is really just a final sneer. ... But it gives the slaves something to do. When you're near the end of a war you have thousands of prisoners-of-war, now called slaves. You don't want idle slaves. This fortress must be taken.

Herod's patio

Patio party! Imagine the old days!

Once it had been home to the palace of King Herod the Great, famous builder, ruthless destroyer. It was the ultimate fortress, huge and high. It gave him a stronghold overlooking trade routes, and was a fabulous place for summer parties on its "hanging patios". Steam baths, with under-floor heating from fiery furnaces matched by cool cisterns, provided luxury in the dry desert that was unheard of. The water came from beautiful aqueducts: low stone canals channeling streams from the mountains in rainy season. Herod was a master designer.

Storage houses - long rows, walled in

2100 year old walls!

76 years after Herod's death, the empty palace fortress is a refuge for over a thousand fleeing Jews: Essenes, Sicarii, Zealots - all looking for a last stand of safety. But nowhere is safe from the Roman war machine, and here they come with the battering ram. They're crashing against the huge wooden posts that the refugees inside have erected to support their wall. Wait! Maybe the Jews can set the battering ram on fire. Look, it's starting to burn! Hooray, is this salvation?! But then - a gust of wind turns the fire around - "the wind of God" the Romans yell. Fire licks at the stalwart wooden posts, making them crumble even faster under the battering ram. There's no hope. Not a chance. It will be death or slavery. Well, they'll die! Women and children first - like a lifeboat.

A cistern for water storage

And, so the story goes, they slew their women and children. The men lined them up and lay them down and thrust their sicarii knives in, even as the battering ram pushed against the walls, strong, hard, huge and powerful. Their women and children would not be touched by the enemy. They were gone. Then it was the men's turn, and they drew lots to see which ten men would kill the brethren. The deed was done. Finally, those ten, plus their leader, Eleazar ben Ya’ir, had to die. Each man wrote his name on a clay shard and they drew lots to see who would be next. The last person would throw himself on his own sword, so that when the Romans finally bashed in the wall, their victory would be hollow, with no-one captured alive. And so it was done.

1800 years later, eleven clay shards were found on the site, with names inscribed on them. One was the name "ben Ya'ir"; the same name as the valiant Jewish leader. Perhaps these were the very eleven who concluded the tragic, heroic tale of Masada.

Listening to the desert

How do we know the story? Josephus writes that two women and children escaped by hiding inside a cistern; they told him what happened, and he recorded it for all time. I crouched in a corner of the empty walls and imagined being a child listening to my world caving in. Oh, you're exposed in the desert.

Mosaic floor - designed by Herod;

lumpy stones – added later by Sicarii

Masada, fortress of the famous last stand by the Jews against Romans, still towers over the vast deserted terrain surrounding it. The Dead Sea has retreated from it, and a thick haze of evaporation lingers over the water. No-one lives in the diamond-shaped fortress; you can't stay there overnight,

Ornamental stone-laid walls

 but when you visit you can still see what were once lovely mosaic floors, painted and pillared balconies, underfloor heating, walls and ovens, lookout rooms and baths. You can imagine having a party on the patio while the camel caravans on the spice trade pass below.

Terraced balconies below

The strange thing is, no bones were found inside Masada when the excavators unearthed it. The people seeking refuge have vanished as surely as the Romans and the prisoner-of-war slaves outside.  Two skeletons were found, a boy and a very rich woman, possibly from long before, in Herod's time. Her thick hair was still braided and her fancy sandals were by her side, well preserved in this incredibly dry landscape. Where were the refugees? We can only speculate. Perhaps their strong spirits took them to a land beyond, where things like braided hair and fine clothes don't matter. Maybe there's a more practical reason. In any case, those strong-hearted Jews have not been seized, dead or alive, and Masada endures as an everlasting stronghold for their memory.

Choose your ascent ...

I remembered how often the Lord is called our "fortress, refuge, stronghold, place of help in time of trouble" throughout the Bible. Here in the holy land, where at every turn you re-live tales of war and worry, past and present, you can understand why. Refuge is vital. Enemies are real.

A mighty fortress is our God ...

... or Gondola up & down!

I'm sure that even in our western world we need a fortress to shield us from all that's distracting, disturbing and destructive around us. God is our refuge and strength, much greater than Masada, far more refreshing than the Dead Sea. God is a fortress unseen yet invincible. Because He is near, instead of dying in the desert we can live to the full, secure and safe.

The battering ram of life's trials and trouble will continue to do its work. Our story, though, has a different ending.  As they say here in Israel: "Masada will never happen again!"

Everyone in a fortress needs to eat!