THE
GREAT COMMOTION OUT OF THE NORTH

Larry V. Crutchfielda

The sound of a report! Behold, it comes, a great commotion out of the land of the north — to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a haunt of jackals (Jer 10:22 NASB)

The City of David and later the enlarged city of Jerusalem were well protected by deep valleys on the west (City of David by the Tyropean Valley; enlarged Jerusalem by [west?] (Hinnom Valley), east (Kidron Valley), and south (Hinnom Valley). But the exposed northern flank required special fortification. Thus the spot eventually occupied by the Antonia was probably occupied earlier by the Millo. Tower ov Hananel, the birah and the baris.

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[Biblical, historical, geographical and archaeological study of the conquests of Palestine by the great powers of the north, and the consequent efforts of Jerusalem to set up a defensive system to protect the exposed northern flank of the city against those invaders.]

In large measure the history of God’s chosen people in the land of promise is a history of invasion and conquest by foreign powers. The first to come were the Assyrians. Then one after the other, the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Syrians, and finally, the Romans, rose to power over God’s obstinate and rebellious people.

Almost always, the invader came from the north (Egypt was an exception, e.g., 1 Kgs 14:25–27; 2 Chr 12:2–12). Understandably, in Jewish thought the north came to be regarded as the abode of Ill fortune. The perception must have been substantially fostered by the many prophetic pronouncements of God’s impending Judgment upon His wayward people. These prophetic warnings often associated coming judgment with the land of the north.

The Invaders from the North

The first great power to invade Palestine was Assyria. The imminent conquest of the ten northern tribes of Israel — Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom, fell in 722 BC — was prophesied by Isaiah (Is 9:8–10:4). And just a few years later, in 715 BC, an oracle predicting the fall of Philistia warned, “Wail, O gate; cry, O city; melt away, O Philistia, all of you; for smoke comes from the north, and there is no straggler in his ranks” (Is 14:31). The prophecy suggested that like an overpowering cloud of smoke, Assyria was coming against Philistia. The warning was intended for Judah as well.

Just as it was prophesied that Assyria would descend upon Israel from the north, so it was predicted that another conquering force, the Babylonians, would also comedown out of the north to subdue the southern kingdom of Judah.

And the word of the Lord came to me a second time saying, “What do you see?” And I said, “I see a boiling pot facing away from the north.” Then the Lord said to me, “Out of the north the evil w/// break forth on all the inhabitants of the land. For, behold, I am calling all the fancies of the kingdoms of the north,” declares the Lord: “and they will come, and they will set each one his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all its walls round about, and against all the cities of Judah. “(Jer 1:13–15)

Over and over again, Judah was reminded by the prophet Jeremiah that evil and great destruction was lurking in the north (Jer 4:6; 6:1,22; 10:22; 13:20; 15:12; 25:9).1 The end for Judah finally came in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar’s forces took Jerusalem.

It was Jeremiah, too, who prophesied that the Babylonian domination of Judah would be ended by another emerging power in the north. He wrote, “For a nation [Persia] has come up against her [Babylon] out of the north; it will make her land an object of horror, and there will be no inhabitant in it” (Jer 50:3; cf. Is 41:25; Jer 50:9, 41; 51:48).2 In 539 BC the Persians conquered Babylon, and as more benevolent captors, permitted the Jews to return to Palestine (see A&BR article on the Cyrus Cylinder, Winter 1988).

In the prophecy of Daniel3 a specific account is given of the succession of Persian monarchs and of the kingdoms that would eventually hold the reins of power (Dan 11). Four more rulers were prophesied for the Persian monarchy (Dan 11:2). These

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began with Cambyses in 529 BC and ended with the reign of Xerxes (known in the book of Esther as Ahasuerus) in 465 BC.

Persian rule would terminate with the conquests of Alexander the Great (Dan 11:3–4). But Alexander’s empire was broken up shortly after his death to give rise to, among others, the kings of the south (the Ptolemies of Egypt) and the kings of the north (the Seleucids of Syria).

At first Palestine fell under Syrian rule. Butfrom301 to 198 BC, Egypt controlled the region. That control ended in 198 when a “king of the north,” Antiochus III (the Great), defeated the Ptolemaic forces at the Battle of Panias (Caesarea Philippi of the NT). Palestine was once again in Syrian hands (Jos, Ant. 12.3.3; Dan 11:13–16).

But one other great military power was already standing in the wings, preparing to take center stage in the drama of Palestinian history. When Antiochus III attempted to expand his power in Asia Minor and Greece, he was defeated by Rome at Magnesia (in Asia Minor) in 190 BC. Then in 168, Antiochus’ son, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, would also be halted by the Romans in his expansionist designs on Egypt (Dan 11:29–30, Jos, Ant. 12.5.2–3).

A humiliated Antiochus retreated to Palestine where his cultic Hellenization policies and eventual dese-

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cration of the temple resulted in the Maccabean revolt (Jos. Ant. 12.6. lff.), a revolt that lasted 40 years. With the death of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus VII in 128 BC, and a prior conditional recognition of the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus (son of the Maccabean leader Simon) by Syria, Palestine enjoyed a period of relative independence. But that independence came to a decisive end when Palestine passed from Seleucid to Roman control in 63 BC. In that year the Roman general Pompey made the region a province of Rome.4

The Highway from the North

The invasions of Palestine by the great powers of the north may be explained to a great extent by the geography of that region (see map on page 83).

Israel is located on a land corridor through the fertile crescent. It is bounded on the west by the “Great Sea” (the Mediterranean Sea) and on the east by the vast Arabian Desert. These geographical realities dictated that Palestine would be situated on the major international highway connecting the kingdoms of the north with Egypt in the south.

This most important highway in the Fertile Crescent, identified by some as the Great Trunk Road,5 by others as the Via Maris (the “way of the sea,” Is 9:1),6 originated in the north at the head of the Persian Gulf. From there it ran in a northwesterly direction through Ur, Babylon and Accad.

From Accad, the highway followed the Euphrates River past Marl, and on up to Tiphsah and Aleppo. At Aleppo, the great international artery turned sharply southward where, in due course, it reached Hamath. From that city it followed the course of the Orontes River for a short distance before departing to make contact with Qatna.

[Just south of Marl, the highway branched off to provide a shortcut between the Euphrates River and Palestine. On this trek, the highway took the traveler past the Oasis at Tadmar and on to Damascus. It was this branch of the highway that was used by the exiles who retumed to Palestine with Ezra (Ezr 8:3) and Nehemiah (Neh 1–3).]

At Qatna, the major course of the highway continued its southern descent to Damascus, and from there, to the heavily fortified city of Hazor. This stronghold stood guard over Palestine’s northernmost frontier.

After Hazor, the great highway descended in the direction of Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee before it passed through the Jezreel Valley and Megiddo. The militarily strategic city of Megiddo controlled the principal pass through the Carmel Range.

From Megiddo, the highway continued in a southern and increasingly western direction along the Great Sea toward Gaza, and the Egyptian cities of Sile and Zoan. At Zoan, the great road tumed sharply southward toward the city of On, or Memphis, where it terminated.

While this great international highway served as the principal commercial route between the kingdoms of the north and those of the south, it naturally functioned also as the major thoroughfare for the movement of military men and machines – usually men and machines from the north in search of new riches in the south. It was primarily to guard against this northern menace that the inhabitants of Palestine constructed strong fortifications and defensive systems.

The Defense of the North

With a touch of irony, the specific topographical realities of the city of Jerusalem itself reflected Palestine’s general need for defense against the peril abiding in the north.

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The City of David was built on the Ophel, the southern slope of Mount Moriah. This mount, approximately 2,440 feet above sea level, was well protected on three sides by deep valleys— the Tyropoean on the west, Kidron on the east, and the Hinnom to the south. Only the exposed northern approach left the city vulnerable. Consequently, from the time of the earliest rudimentary fortifications of the city of Jerusalem until Herod the Great’s construction of the magnificent Fortress Antonia, precautions were taken to fortify the city against attack from the north.

With his great skill as a military leader, David must have immediately recognized the need to fortify the high rocky elevation that was the northwestern spur of Mount Moriah. Not only was it an ideal defensive platform for the northern sector of the fledgling capital of David’s kingdom, but it also overlooked the place where he would eventually “erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah [or Oman] the Jebusite” (2 Sm 24:18; cf. 2 Chr 3:1). This platform might be identified with the Millo (“filling, mound, or terrace”) mentioned as part of David’s building program (2 Sam 5:9).

After Solomon succeeded David as king of Israel, he too seems to have recognized the strategic importance of this one spot which rose well above the future temple precinct. Using forced labor he built, among other things, “the house of the Lord” and “the Millo” (1 Kgs 9:15, 24). In building the latter structure, Solomon is said to have “closed up the breach of the city of his father David” (1 Kgs 11:27). Whether the Millo served as the royal residence for David and/or Solomon is a matter of conjecture.

More than two centuries after Solomon, Hezekiah strengthened the Millo against the Assyrians. With the Assyrian king Sennacherib poised to attack Jerusalem, Hezekiah directed his forces to cut off the supply of water to the springs outside the city. He then “rebuilt all the wall that had been broken down, and erected towers on it, and built another outside wall, and strengthened the Millo in the city of David” (2 Chr 32:2–5).

Less than a century later, Jeremiah was the first to mention a tower in Jerusalem’s northern line of de-fence that may have replaced the Millo on the northwestern spur of Mount Moriah. Jeremiah prophesied, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the lord, “when the city shall be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Comer Gate” (Jer 31:38). And in his eschatological reference to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, Zechariah wrote that the newly built city would extend from the “Tower of Hananel [in the city’s northern extremity] to the king’s wine press [in the southern end of the city]” (Zech 14:10).

Almost fifty years after Zechariah’s prophecy and in his rebuilding program following the exile (ca 445–425 BC), Nehemiah had the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt, consecrated and rededicated, including the Tower of Hananel (Neh 2:8). What is not clear is the relationship that existed between this tower and what Nehemiah calls the birah, a “fortress” or “castle” which was “by the temple” (Neh 3:1; 12:39). But both seem to have stood in roughly the same area, and could very well have been one and the same structure.

Toward the end of the second century BC, Nehemiah’s birah was rebuilt by the Hasmonean, John Hyrcanus, and called in Greek, the barfs (Jos., Ant. 18.4.3). The baris was occupied by the Hasmonean rulers until 63 BC when it was apparently breached by Pompey in his siege of Jerusalem (Ant. 14.4.4). But after Herod the Great rose to power in Judea in 37 BC, he rebuilt the fortress and called it Antonia after

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A. General location of the Millo, Tower of hananel, the birah, the baris, and Antonia.

B. ‘The Valley,” later known as the Tyropoeon Valley.

C. Kidron Valley, also known as the “Valley of Jehoshaphat,” and perhaps the “King’s Valley” (Gen 14:17; 2 Sam 18:18).

D. Hinnom (Jer 7:31) or Gehenna Valley.

E. On Mt. Moriah, site of the threshing floor of Oman the Jebusite and later the Temple complex (2 Chr 3:1–5:1).

F. The Ophel (2 Chr 27:3, Neh 3:26)

G. Palace of Herod the Great

H. “First Wall,” built by the Maccabees, 164-141 BC (Wars 5.4.1)

I. “Second Wall” (Wars 5.4.2), built second or first century BC?

J. “Third Wall” (Wars 5.4.2), begun by Agrippa I in AD 41–44, completed just before outbreak of Jewish War in AD 66.

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The Fortification Of Jerusalem From David To Herod

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his old friend and patron, Mark Antony (Ant. 15.11.4, cf. Wars 1.3.3).7

Excavations under the Notre Dame de Sion, believed by many to be the site of the Antonia, have revealed a pavement (possibly the central courtyard of the fortress) consisting of large flagstones measuring three feet square by one foot thick. The modem visitor can still see channels for carrying rain water to cisterns, scoring in places to enable horses to keep their footing, and the crude outline of games scratched into the floor, presumably by soldiers who were billited nearby. If it is assumed that Pilate resided in the Antonia at the time of Christ’s trial, then the fortress would be the Praetorium into which Christ was taken (Jn 18:28, 33; 19:9; cf. Acts 23:35), and the flagstone pavement would be the Gabbatha referred to in John 19:13.

If this is indeed the central courtyard of the Antonia, then it is all that remains of the great fortress or any of its predecessors. When the Roman general Titus razed Jerusalem to the ground in AD 70, he was very thorough. This time there would be no resurrection, no rebuilding program for the great citadel on the northwestern spur of Mount Moriah. As archaeologists sift through debris under modem buildings where the northern stronghold of Jerusalem once stood, its appearance is left only to the imaginations of scholars and artists.

The Deliverance from the North

While in the Jewish mind the north was a continual source of dread and danger, it is also presented in Scripture as the direction from which Israel’s deliverance would come. It was in the north that God was believed to have His throne and seat of power.

In Isaiah’s account of Satan’s prideful rebellion, “the star of the morning” is recorded as having said, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the North. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High” (Is 14:13–14). And Psalm 48:2 declares, “Beautiful in elevation. the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion in the far north, the city of the great King.”

Furthermore, there are several passages of Scripture that specifi-

While virtually nothing remains of the Antonia, in Josephus’ account of it, the fortress resembles a tower with four other towers at its comers (Wars 5.5.8.) and had walls that were “square and strong, and of extraordinary firmness” (Ant. 15.11.4)

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cally associate the restoration of Israel with the north. Following the conquest of the ten northern tribes, for example, there was a promise of restoration for Israel proclaimed “toward the north,” a reference to the Assyrian captors (Jer 3:12–23). In his prophecy, Zephaniah said that God “will stretch out His hand against the north and destroy Assyria, and He will make Nineveh a desolation, parched like the wilderness” (Zeph 2:13). The Assyrian capital of Nineveh fell in 612 BC at the hands of another of Israel’s northern neighbors, Babylon.

Then came the promise that the Babylonian captivity would be ended by the Persians who would come down out of the north to deliver Judah (Is 41:25; Jer 50:3, 9, 41; 51:48; cf. Zech 2:1–13; 6:1–8). Jeremiah wrote of this event:

There fore behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, when it will no longer be said, “As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but, “As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where He had banished them.” For I will restore them to their own land which I gave to their fathers. (Jer 16:14–15; cf 23:8; 31:8).

Ezekiel painted a vivid picture of the Jews back in their land. It will be a time, according to the prophet, when God’s people will be delivered from the beasts of the land (Ezek 34:22, 25, 27–28) and led to rest (34:15). They will “live securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods… and no one will make them afraid” (34:25, 28). During the promised period of future restoration, the children of Israel will no longer live in fear and dread of the “great commotion out of the land of the north.”