On the Destruction of Jerusalem 5.16–5.19

“Rash men, do you now at last hope that divine help will be with you, when you have thrown everything into confusion with war, violated the altars, and torn down the defenses of the whole city? Rash men, I say, and forgetful of your own helps, you have prepared shields and swords, and that against the Romans. You were not wont to conquer with such arms. For when was the victory of the Hebrews in spear and sword? Remember where you sprang from and from whom you have come, and how your fathers conquered their enemies. Rash men, what helper have you torn away from yourselves, while you demand the support of others? Not in the multitude of a people but in the fear of God did father Abraham go into Egypt; and when he saw the chastity of his wife, who had been carried off, held captive, he still abstained from war, took up the arms of devout prayer, and enlisted a defender who would conquer while he slept and, having overcome the enemy, would restore his wife to him undefiled. Sarah returned without arms, bringing back to her husband a triumphant victory. Abraham slept, and Pharaoh was tormented. Sarah was afraid, and Pharaoh denied the crime. He sent away another man's wife, and, the crime condemned, honored the chastity he had wished to despoil. Gold and silver were added to Sarah's honor, so that he might condemn a will that had had no share in the deed. He begged father Abraham to pray to the Lord for his household, for his house was barren. Sarah returned richer with her honor safe; Abraham returned holier, having repaid the reward of conjugal chastity with the remedy of barrenness. What shall I say of his son Isaac? He too, relying on his father's protection, did not lead out armed ranks against the insolence of a powerful neighbor; and certainly he had a strong band of three hundred eighteen servants born in the household, which had overcome five kings in war, stripped them of their spoils, and restored the captive Lot to his uncle Abraham. He did not draw his sword from its sheath, but against those who envied him he put on patience alone and brought back simplicity: those came begging who had announced that he must be driven out; they asked for friendship who could not bear him as a neighbor. I tremble to recount such great wonders of the fathers. Holy Jacob, when his brother Esau threatened fratricide, left his homeland and deserted his parents, carrying with him only the provision of prayer; and deservedly, in foreign places, when he feared his brother's plots and lacked the company and help of men, he found the counsel of angels: brought, as it says, to the camp of God, he wrestled with the Lord; and, as Scripture says, “he prevailed with God,” he who thought himself unequal to men. What else did Moses raise against the king of the Egyptians and his army and his serpents but a rod alone? O mighty rod, which covered the sky with darkness, flooded the earth with rains, and dried up the waves of the sea! The Egyptians had surrounded the Hebrews; Moses prayed and did not fight: the sea was divided, and the people went in; Pharaoh followed. Moses, placed amid the waves, prayed: Pharaoh was drowned with his men; Moses sang (Exod 15:4). Who, considering these and similar things, would not wonder and understand that our arms are better in prayer than in strength? For the one brings divine help to itself, the other bodily help. These arms, which are not carnal but mighty through God, were learned by Moses's disciple and also his successor, Joshua son of Nun, who, an imitator nearly equal to his master, turned back the waters of the Jordan; and when he saw the impregnable walls of the city of Jericho, he ordered the priests to sound the trumpet and the people to shout; when this was done, the walls suddenly fell, the city was burned, and all were killed, except those whom the faith of Rahab, the good harlot, defended from the destruction of that city. Gideon too chose three hundred men for war, and ordered them to bear not arms but mysteries: to hold in the left hand jars full of water, in the right torches; struck by this sight the enemy at once fled, and victory came to the Hebrews. The care of sacred religion had been neglected through the negligence of Eli the priest, and the divine commands were deserted; war was brought on by the Philistines, the Hebrews were conquered, even the ark of God was captured, and it was returned to them without arms. By this judgment it became clear that arms do not conquer without religion, and that religion conquers without arms. King Hezekiah, when the Assyrian people had poured into the nation of Judah, and he had fully learned from the voice of the Rabshakeh, by the command of King Sennacherib, what insults were hurled against God, what final destruction was announced to the people, did not, when this was reported to him, think that words should be answered with words or arms with arms; but rising, he put on sackcloth as a shield; instead of a helmet he covered his head with ashes; instead of javelins he hurled prayer. Prayer went up, an angel came down: we counted a hundred eighty-five thousand corpses of Assyrians slain in the night; we did not see the slayer. I had passed over the five kings who, having undertaken war without consulting the Lord, as they travelled through the desert began to be sorely afflicted by lack of water, and thirst tormented them and their horses. Necessity compelled them to repair the neglected duty. For the king of Israel was negligent of the worship of God; yet, advised by others to seek out a prophet of the Lord, he learned that Elisha was not far from the places where they were. They sent to beg the help of his prayer and a remedy for their need. Although he was offended with the king of Israel, because in his faithlessness he did not believe, he nevertheless promised both abundance of water and speed of victory. Water began to flow through the desert, and streams poured themselves over the land of their own accord without any rains. The adversaries, rising up, whom a deeper sleep had held down, secure of victory and with their anxiety relaxed, suddenly saw the waters glowing red as the sun spread over them; some thought that there had been fighting among the peoples of the kings, with whose blood the earth was soaked. So, hurrying to the plunder everywhere, without order, without measure, they ran, one getting ahead of another; thus, advancing headlong into the middle of the enemy, they were surrounded and killed, and gave a huge slaughter of their own. So the prophet, entreated by our fathers, drove away thirst and fear alike, and the same man brought help against famine. For when Samaria was besieged and the king of Israel remained shut up in it, a grave famine pressed them, so that they did not abstain even from abominable food. The prophet, approached about the hideousness of such misery and at the same time by the king's messenger, who thought the famine had grown through the prophet's neglect, answered: “Tomorrow you will see both abundance of grain and cheapness.” To the messenger, who did not believe, he said that he himself, because he did not believe, would see it, yet he promised that the fulfillment would not fail. And suddenly in the night in the camp of Syria the neighing of horses, the crash of chariots, the roar of four-horse teams running, the sound of arms struck fear by their hearing into the victors, as though many strong nations had come to help the Hebrews; and they hastened to rescue themselves by flight from what they thought was impending danger. Night hastened their decision and increased their terror. So, with the Assyrians fleeing, all the supplies they had seized were found in the camp the next day. Abundance created cheapness, cheapness fulfilled the promise; death took the fruit away from the unbeliever himself, but did not hinder the public remedy. It is clear, then, that very many leaders of the fathers gained victory when they did not fight at all; others too were superior in war when, on their consulting, the right of waging war was permitted them by an oracle. Indeed Amalek was conquered, but when Moses raised his hands; Joshua son of Nun conquered, when he made the sun stand still; Gideon conquered, when he had tested those who were to fight at the water; Samson too, while he still kept his hair undefiled; Samuel conquered as well, but when he had resolved to set up the stone of help. David triumphed, when he had joined Bathsheba (that is, the daughter of the sabbath) to himself in marriage by the ministries of the prophets; he conquered also in civil war, which he shrank from when it was brought against him: he did not bring it (for nothing is fouler than civil war), the only one who could have brought it. Asa too conquered in battle, but only after, when his men despaired because they were fewer in number, he said that it made no difference whether they were few or many, since God makes the few who fear him stronger than the many. Good indeed in faith, had he persevered to the end. A woman too conquered by arms, which she kept for God. But Saul was conquered, because he did not keep the command of God. Josiah was wounded, because he went out against the enemy contrary to the command: holy otherwise, and therefore taken away so that he should not see the captivity due to our sins. Necho cried out, “I am not sent against you,” bearing witness to his faith; but there entangled him, as earlier Amaziah, the fellowship of a degenerate alliance. Indeed Amaziah had been warned by a man of God to dismiss those whom he had hired for an alliance in war for a hundred talents of silver, if he wished to conquer. When he hesitated because he would lose so great a price, the prophet answered that the Lord had more, from which he could restore the silver to him too. Relying on this, he renounced the hired auxiliaries and conquered with fewer; yet he did not pay God the wage of so great a victory, but at once offered sacrifices to the very idols that he had captured as victor, as though he had conquered by the favor of the things he had reduced to the plunder of captivity. Zedekiah himself, when the ruins of his homeland were already bearing down and he was pressed by the enemy's siege, was told by Jeremiah the prophet not to fear to go out of the city, that he would be the victor if he obeyed the heavenly commands, or a captive if he thought it should be defended; by his unbelief he deceived himself and his own. The people of the Jews had been carried off by the Assyrians into Babylonia; the rest who had remained were deliberating about moving to the Egyptians. The Lord commanded through Jeremiah the prophet and the others that they be content with the rule of one nation, lest a double captivity increase their misery. But they, setting the oracles of God aside, became captives of two nations, they who had impatiently wished to escape the yoke of one nation. So they remained exiles in Egypt. But those who were led away to the Assyrians, when the time of captivity that the Lord had fixed for the sins of the people was complete, afterward, under the rule of Cyrus, gained the opportunity to go back and returned with favor. The temple of God was renewed by the wealth of the kings Cyrus and Darius and the gifts of the other Persians: so those who had overthrown it gave the cost of repairing it; they also restored the right of the priests and helped the worship of religion. But our own people, while they compete among themselves for the priesthood and canvass among the Parthians to have that honor conferred on them, have made a traffic of religion. Why do we complain of the Babylonians? We have found our own worse. They gave us back every right of religion, they restored the creation of priests, and our own people have poured it back to the Persians. They left the priestly fillets in our power; our people made them tributary to the Babylonians. What shall I add: the sanctuary bloodied with blood, the sacred thresholds dripping, the roofs of the temple still standing half-ruined? God's anger toward us is less than our own strife: the one made us captives, the other sacrilegious; the one scattered the Jews, the other destroyed them. Compare, if you please, what difference there is between our captivity and our sedition. Our captivity spread among the Gentiles a share in our religion; our sedition has taken away even from the Jews the grace of religion. And who brought the Romans into Judea but the quarrel of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus? Who brought Sosius but Herod? Who brought Antony but Sosius? Who begged Caesar for a king for themselves but you? Who but you drove Antipater from the kingdom, and liberty with Antipater? And yet I do not blame or deny that Florus took wicked counsel against you. But a complaint should have been carried to the Romans, not arms brought against them. You scorned Nero, but Vespasian had succeeded, who, kind by nature, could be even kinder by inclination, because he had assumed the empire in Judea; or if kindness did not move you, his valor at least ought to have driven you to take thought for yourselves. But how would he not spare you, who spared Josephus? For to whom ought he to have been more hostile than to me? Who built greater fortifications against the Romans? Who thought it his duty to fight more zealously for the homeland? After the course of war pleased you, I did not approve the beginnings of the wars, but once they were undertaken I did not desert them. The ashes of the city of Jotapata, which sheltered me while I was still fighting, bear witness that I did not stop fighting except after the ruin of that city; that I hid as long as I could in that tomb of the overthrown city; that I endured hunger so as not to hand myself over to the Romans; that I sought ways of escape to come to you; but that, caught, not coming out of my own accord, I would have preferred to perish with my own, but Caesar spared me; that I chose rather to share danger with you, not because I approved the plan, but because I chose a share of danger with you. Yet thanks be to God that I did not fall into the fellowship of so great a crime, so as to be thought an inciter of seditions; or, because I could not mix with these men, to commit the parricide that I could avoid by my hand, or die. Certainly I have been spared seeing my most holy mother torn to pieces for my sake, and the entrails of my family scattered; which things are pitiable indeed, but it is more bearable to suffer them than to have done them. What then are you still waiting for? The signs of our forefathers? We have not those merits, nor those duties toward the worship of God. Nor is the faithlessness of the Romans like that of the Assyrians, who, having received the price of withdrawal, broke faith, and thought they should not withdraw but attack more fiercely. Indeed, so that we may gather from what has happened that the judgment of God has been moved, it is certain that God is opposed to the Jews. For Siloam, which before the war had been dry, and all the veins of the springs outside the city, which had long ceased to flow, so that water was lacking for our use unless bought at a price, now return to their use and pour themselves out for Titus at his coming. The veins gush abundantly, and everything is so filled with overflowing waters that they abound generously not only for the army's drink but also for the horses, the war-horses and pack animals and all the cattle, and there is no lack of abundant water even for watering gardens; so that you would think the channels poured more generously for the Roman victory, as though the elements were striving for it. We recognize the earlier portents, which then too preceded the captivity of our city: the water failed the Jews and poured itself out for the enemy, so that the siege should not be hindered by thirst. Nor is it any wonder if divine grace has departed from the Jews, whom such crimes have surrounded. Does not a good man flee a lodging full of horror? And does he not desert his own house if he learns that some crime has been committed in it? He avoids the fellowship of an unworthy dwelling and curses the iniquities of those who live there; and do we doubt that the most high and spotless God shrinks from the contagion of such great crimes, turns away from the atrocity of deadly wickedness, and does not linger in the gatherings of parricides, he who commanded that Dathan and Abiram, because they had provoked Moses and Aaron by trying to snatch the office of priesthood, be separated from the innocent, lest from their fellowship with the guilty either the stain defile the godly or the punishment involve them? But why do I linger longer on words, when everything around is full of horror and groaning, and the destruction of the temple is being hastened? What eyes can look on this, what senses endure it, what mind tolerate it? O you harder than stones, more rigid than iron, who amid such portents of human affairs still contend among yourselves in crime as if in rivalry of virtue; and, what is graver, you yourselves destroy your homeland and increase its ruin! Turn at last, come to your senses at last, judge, and see the beauty of the homeland you have betrayed: what a city, what a temple, what dwellings of the saints and sanctuaries of holy things, what works of the prophets are being torn apart by your hands? Does anyone lead flames against these, scatter fires and supply burning, and is moved by no feeling? The hardness of rocks, if it could feel, would melt. Certainly even things without feeling often, in the greatest bitterness of affairs, take on the appearance of feeling, so that rocks tremble and drops wet with blood flow; but you remain unmoved, as though something better remained after this, something worthier to keep. Finally, if these things do not move you, because with the godly they are more precious, at least have pity on your kindred: set before your eyes the deaths of your sons, by sword or by famine, and, more bitter than these, the slavery of your wives and daughters, for whom liberty will be safe by a pact of surrender, or captive slavery by the overthrow of the city. Take counsel while you may, lest you leave behind after death worse things than you have done before death. Nor am I free of such danger. I know myself that together with yours my most holy mother is in danger, and my dear wife, a family not undistinguished, and a house once famous. And perhaps you think I am urging this for the sake of my own: kill them, and take my blood besides as wages: I will gladly pay this wage for your salvation, if after me you can come to your senses.”

When Josephus had cried out these things with tears, he swayed many of the people to flee to the Romans after selling what they possessed. Titus sent them wherever each one wished, so that the rest too might be encouraged to hand themselves over to the Romans without fear. So they flocked out once a way of going out was found, secure of their safety if they came over to the Romans, and not anxious about slavery, since liberty was reserved for them. But those who followed John and Simon, the arbiters and instigators of the sedition, feared the punishment of their crimes more than the adversities of war, and therefore thought refuges unsafe for themselves. Not only did they not dare to go out themselves, but they also set ambushes, so that none of the people would be allowed to leave the city. And they took greater care to prevent the departure of their own people than the entry of the Romans. So people were kept in against their will; and if anyone was caught, he paid heavy penalties. A slight suspicion was the cause of a most grievous death. Truth was sought not by evidence but by tortures. If any were wealthy, they were dragged to death on a trumped-up charge of sedition; if any were poor, because they had nothing with which to ransom themselves, they lay open to death.

And now a heavy famine had begun to rage, and the sedition to run riot more widely with fury and madness. Grain could not be found; there was no bread in public use. Wherever it had been discovered to be, the house was at once stormed. The owner of the house was butchered, as the hoarder of grain, for having hidden it. Again, if no grain was found, as though it had been hidden more carefully, tortures were applied. Many longed for the shortcut of death, since either famine wasted them or cruelty tormented them. In fact they disdained to kill those who were older, begrudging them the benefit of death, whom famine, already a fiercer executioner, had left with bare bones covered by thin skin, their insides eaten away by pitiable wasting. Half-dead, they still breathed only by their breath, and dragged sick corpses about. Wherever they saw scraps of vegetables, either dropped by chance or thrown away as dried up, they licked them weakly as they lay on the ground. Or wherever grass was seen growing in walls, they snatched it and comforted their wretched hunger with its miserable juice. The richer bought a measure of wheat with their whole fortune: for why should I keep what will be of no use? The poorer bought a measure of barley, in such a way that no one saw the seller or the buyer. For this was punished more heavily than any crime. Nor did they wait to bake bread, lest death forestall them or the delay summon an informer. Hidden in secret places, those who had any supply of grain, however small, chewed the wheat uncooked. No table, no seat, no light, lest anyone come in and catch them unawares. If there was any sound, the food was hidden. Solitude was suspect, company murderous; among their own a sad contest. For famine shuts out every affection, and above all shame; for to the hungry, shame is a loss of life and a damage to safety. If a man who had a wife or sons or grandsons had any food, he scarcely admitted it; likewise the women. And if someone of gentler spirit had set food before them, it was wrung from his hands. Pitiable was the food, tearful the meal: children snatched it from their parents, parents from their children, and it was pulled out of their very throats. For many the vomit of others was food. Nor was there any horror at eating what was rotten, nor shame at taking from their own the last drops of life. And the form of so unhappy a calamity was this: the fear of being caught. So it was done behind closed doors, lest anyone come upon them who would seek food from another's mouth and, like dogs, lick up others' vomit with his tongue. But not even this went unpunished: for wherever doors were bolted, a hiding of food was suspected. The servants of the seditions leapt out, broke into what was closed, and exacted unbearable punishments of a new cruelty. Not even the private parts of the body were spared; the punishment passed through these too, because in them the sense of pain is sharper. Many, when they saw the slayers breaking in, snatched up the food they had prepared, so that they would not be cheated of their last provision for the journey, or at least so as to avenge the death to come. And what made the cruelty seem graver, those who snatched food from the starving were not themselves hungry. For by plunder they had heaped up others' wealth for themselves and fed on others' stores, while those who had gathered it starved and wasted away with hunger. If any woman, moved by a mother's affection and pitying the cries of her infant, wished to pour the juice of food into it from her own mouth, she paid the penalty for a loving act, and with the child hanging at her neck or clinging to her breasts, they were pierced through together. Many too, thinking it a benefit to die, went out of the city to pluck grasses, or graze on roots, or strip the bark of trees, in case the green in these could supply some comfort of food; the Romans killed them when they found them. And whoever escaped the enemy fell on the very threshold of the gate, wasted by famine and weak in the mouth, whom even the work of chewing had already failed. Those who returned were met by a deadlier band, which with the most bitter wickedness would wrest from the laps of the wretched what had been sought at the greatest danger, and would not leave a share even as the wage of the danger. So they died more by the attack of their own than of the enemy. For what even the enemy had allowed, the citizen snatched away; nor did it profit them to have seized such food, since not long afterward, their bodies green and their middles swelling, they were shaken by pain of the inmost entrails, or, with loosened bowels, they failed as their strength was drained, so that they repented of their wish: what was for a time a comfort was afterward a punishment. Then, cooking green lizards and other kinds of serpents in their skins, they added a plague. For if they happened to find the corpses of horses, dragging them among themselves, they fought it out in fierce battle; nor were they free even from the destructions heaped on them by the enemy. For when very many, going out of the city with their sons and wives, had gone to the part that the depth of sheer precipices had hollowed out, the Romans led them off like captive slaves, striking especially those of younger age as if stronger, lest anyone should dare to creep up on the fighting men. They watched, so that if anyone, in eagerness to seek food, went out to the farther spaces while hunting for roots of wild plants, he would be intercepted. Yet, though the enemy was all around, those to whom hunger gave daring could not restrain themselves, since the affection of parents could not bear to see their little children consumed by wasting and their mouths, opened by hunger, stretched out in vain; they had taken these with them as partners in danger, lest the authors of the sedition kill them in their place, as hostages for their flight. Hunger forced them to go out, for whom it was a benefit to perish by the sword in comparison with fasting. The Romans, on the other hand, because they thought them despisers of death, pressed every kind of punishment, first scourging, then also afflicting with the gibbet of the cross whomever they came upon, so that by the sight of tortures the rashness of the rest might be called back from the insolence of attacking. So the bitterness of such calamities seemed a pitiable suffering to Titus. Innumerable were taken; about five hundred a day were tortured, and they lined the plains before the city in the order of a pitiable procession, so that they could be seen from the walls. The Romans pitied, the Jews were not moved; the enemies felt compassion, the allies were not bent; mercy was found more easily among adversaries than among allies. Yet many were inflamed with indignation, because in such evils they became worse: you would have seen men afflicted in different ways, and various kinds of penalties and forms of punishment for so innumerable a multitude, that there was now no room for the crosses, nor crosses for the bodies. Within, Simon raged, John roared; they laid ambushes for individuals through their servants: if anyone tried to flee, he was dragged along the ground and torn apart. The relatives of those who had gone away were tortured too, or the corpses of many fixed to the cross were shown to their kin who had escaped. On the other side they themselves had lined the wall with a kind of crop of crosses, as if triumphing over adversaries, if they caught any of their own wishing to flee to the Romans, so that fear of going over might come upon the rest. No place was free of bitterness: outside captivity, within famine, dread on both sides; yet arms were less feared than tortures, and it was lighter to be destroyed by the enemy's tumult than by parricide. Yet Caesar did not cease inviting the leaders of the factions to hope of surrender. For with the earthworks built, he announced that the completion of the work was not far off, that destruction hung over the city; they should take thought for themselves, so that they might gain safety and the temple might be snatched from the fire. That they might believe this more easily, many Jews were sent back with their hands cut off, so that they would not be thought to have gone over to the Romans by voluntary desertion and, as deserters, carry nothing back, or be killed by their own. But to his earnest warning they returned grave insults: Caesar's humanity seemed to them more deadly than cruelty, because the one took away liberty, the other life; they would rather die free than live as slaves; they had devoted their lives in the temple. Immortality would follow if they died burned with the temple, among their altars and ancestral hearths. Titus had achieved nothing; he had taken away little and given more: instead of the temple, paradise would come to them, and those who had fought for the temple of God would be transferred there; only let them not see the Roman triumphs with their own eyes and put their captive necks under the yoke. Their little children were being consecrated, not killed, whose parents had been champions of the heavenly mysteries. More moved by this, Titus ordered the engines to be brought up, so that he might at least rescue those who were held against their will.

There was in the army the son of Antiochus of Commagene, who had come to share in the war, an energetic young man indeed and ready of hand, but not very far-sighted in counsel, who, thinking the moderation of the Roman army too slow and not considering the difficulty of the task, hinted to Caesar that he wondered why the Romans delayed to undermine the wall. Titus smiled and said: “The work is common to all.” At that word the young man rushed out with those whom he had, armed in the Macedonian fashion, readier for fighting; for he had come supported by others as well. The cohort called the Macedonians, however, was thought to excel both in bodily strength and in stature itself. As they approached, the battle grew. On the other side, those on the wall fought the more eagerly, since extreme dangers pressed them and the success of the present contest encouraged them; while those below were more often pierced by those above, not all the spears reached those above. Yet the king's son, eager in his youth, better protected with arms, better girt with an escort, dodged some blows and warded off others, and was instructed by his companions, who prompted him to beware of them; and therefore he remained unhurt by wounds. But many of the cohort of the Macedonians, since they thought it shameful to yield even to nature or to fortifications, fought more stubbornly and were wounded. So, their attempt vain, they yielded to those above, having learned that Macedonian men, if they wish to conquer, need both Alexander's eagerness for fighting and the fortune of victory. For he, when besieging a city while the others delayed and the army lingered around the customary engines, set up ladders and nimbly climbed the wall; and having routed those present who were fighting back from the wall, he leapt down alone into the city. Nor was there time for him to open the gates for himself without a companion, since dangers pressed; but his spirit, boundless and greedy for victory, leapt out upon the enemy. The ranks gave way, but how many could he lay low alone? Then the enemy poured round through the various streets of the city; if Alexander bore down on one part, he gave others the chance to surround him from behind. So the victor turned back on his entry, lest he be surrounded by the people. But they, crowded together, began to press him; a very great force of weapons bristled above him; his helmet rang with the clanging, his shield with the crash of stones. And had not the Macedonians, fearing for their leader, burst in, the conqueror of innumerable nations would have been crushed within a small city. It was a mark of eagerness, then, that he leapt onto the wall, threw down the enemy, rushed alone into the city with a triumphant leap, and put peoples to flight by his charge; but it was also fortune, which is most necessary to a leader, that with so many peoples bearing down, so many darts of arrows, so many spears falling, there was no place for a mortal wound. So courage had brought danger, and eagerness would have brought death, had fortune deserted the fighter. The Macedonians entered by a gate they had burst open; so rashness found victory, and fortune turned danger into glory. Our own David too, when he was fighting against the giants, as he charged the enemy had a slayer behind him; but Abishai, the king's companion, forestalled him as he poised his blows. But fortune preserved Alexander; grace preserved the prophet.