Subscribers can listen to the audio version of today’s post here.
The streets of Jerusalem have been bathed in blood for millennia. It’s like one of those small towns in Maine that Stephen King writes about where bad shit just constantly happens. Except there’s no supernatural murder clown spider thing doing the killing. It’s just humans being dicks.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 13, 587 BCE--
Nebuchadnezzar II ruled the Second Babylonian Empire for over four decades, living to be 80 when the majority of people really fucking didn’t. God. Could you imagine being 80 in a time without ibuprofen? Or decent dentistry? Fuck. Anyway, Neb2 put a guy in charge of Jerusalem named Zedekiah and said you’re king. But only a vassal king. So don’t get any ideas. And yet, Zedekiah did get ideas, and got chummy with Egypt to form an alliance to rebel against Neb2 and Neb2 said you disloyal cockblanket and laid some siege.
The siege of Jerusalem, of which there have been many, began in January of 589 BCE and lasted over two years. The inhabitants starved and resorted to eating each other, shown in that totally fucked up image I chose. Nebuchadnezzar II’s forces finally took the city on July 13, 587 BCE—maybe, because it was a long fucking time ago and record keeping wasn’t the best—and decided to wreck some shit. Generally, they wrecked the whole city. Specifically, they burned Solomon’s Temple.
Solomon was king of Israel 900 years before brown-skinned socialist Jew Jesus showed up. Being king he said hey we need a temple and threw a bunch of money at it and dedicated it to Yahweh, the god of Ancient Israel. Four hundred years later the Babylonians wrecked it, razed Jerusalem to the ground, and took a bunch of people as slaves.
Seventy years after that a second temple was built, this one by King Herod and also dedicated to Yahweh, and it lasted almost 600 years before Roman Emperor Titus decided to send in his legions to destroy it. He also looted the shit out of the place and built a big arch back in Rome as a monument to show off how great he was for having fucked up Jerusalem’s shit because that was such a rare thing. Sarcasm.
And then another 65 years later Roman Emperor Hadrian said you know I really don’t want there being Jews in Jerusalem anymore so y’all get the fuck out, and he kicked them out. He kicked the Jews out who were still alive after he massacred a shit-ton of them, I mean.
Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:
Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.