A Mighty Fortress

Saul, the first king of Israel is dead. The giant Goliath and his brothers are dead.  David is King of the United Kingdom of Israel. He finally has a chance to reflect upon all that God has done for him over the years.  As he opens his mouth to speak of the many adventures, with the trials and dangers, he can do nothing but give praise and honor and glory to Jehovah. All along the pathway from the shepherd fields to the royal palace, God has blessed David.  

The song of deliverance that David composed at this time is recorded in 2 Samuel 22, and again almost exactly the same in Psalm 18. Both chapters declare Jehovah to be David's Rock and Fortress. The Hebrew word translated "Fortress" in most English Bibles is MASADA (#4686 in Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary) Jehovah was the Lofty Cliff, the High Place of safety, the Mighty Fortress for David.  When Martin Luther wrote in his famous song, "A Mighty Fortress is our God, A Bulwark never failing our Refuge He amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing" he no doubt had 2 Samuel 22:2 and Psalm 18:2 in mind. 

"Upon this top of the hill, Jonathan the high priest first of all built a fortress, and called it Masada: after which the rebuilding of this place employed the care of king Herod to a great degree."

  War of the Jews by Josephus: Book 7 

The significance of Masada did not end with David, nor did the word have the same meaning and victorious outcome to all who used it in years to come. When Jonathan the high priest built a fortress around 150 years before Christ, he named it Masada. When we look at the place he picked and the physical layout of the site, we begin to understand why he named it so. This Jonathan was high priest during the MACCABEAN period, and was himself a member of the HASMONEAN family. This was the name of the dynasty that ruled ancient Judea for almost a century, from the Maccabean wars that ended in approximately 145 B.C. until the Roman occupation of ancient Palestine in 63 B.C. (See a good Bible Dictionary for Intertestamental History details.)

Masada is located near the Southwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the Judean Wilderness. It was at that time a one thousand foot high plateau, accessible only by way of a narrow winding dangerous, serpentine road. The elevated area was large enough to accommodate large and numerous buildings in addition to supporting a decent amount of agriculture.  A series of  deep cisterns were cut in the rock and reservoirs were prepared above the site to gather water. Aqueducts were used to bring water from the two fresh water rivers nearby, and storehouses were able to hold enough grain to outlast any siege. This could be called the TITANIC of all mighty fortresses, and was for all intents and purposes "impregnable".

MASADA was so secure in fact that over a century later Herod the Great rebuilt the site, vastly improving it with further fortifications, towers, and walls, so impressive that once again. Herod also added a Palace and Temple area, and stocked the granaries with supplies. But this was still not the end of our mighty fortress.

Sometime just prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Masada became a secure place for a band of Zealots, a group dedicated to the proposition that the Romans along with their sympathizers should be "eliminated". This band was the only resistance left in Israel after Jerusalem fell, and they probably would not have been assaulted were they not "SICARII".  Sicarii is the Latin form of the Greek SIKARIOS (sikarioj) a word meaning “dagger-man” or “assassin” they were Jewish fanatics outlawed by the Romans.  This is the word translated “murderers” in Acts 21:38  in our King James Version of the Bible. At any rate they inhabited this " mighty fortress " during the extended siege by the Romans. The siege by General Silva which ended in 73 A.D. is given in vivid detail in Josephus'  "Wars of the Jews", Book 7, Chapters 8 and 9 and describes how the Romans, using Jewish captives, built a wall of earth some distance from the cliff face and then carried dirt and stone to fill the gap. This process was repeated day after day, week after week, and month after month until finally the engines of war could be brought up to make the assault.

Then, on the last day before certain defeat, the 960 souls defending the fortress committed mass suicide, considering death to be better than servitude under Rome.  The fathers first killed all of the wives and children, then the men remaining chose 10 men by lot to kill the fathers.  The 10 then selected one man by lot to kill the nine, and finally to take his own life. Only two women and five children reportedly survived by hiding from the carnage. Today this incident is considered a symbol of freedom and independence. Recruits to the Israeli Defense Force Armored unit swear the oath of allegiance in an annual ceremony. With their defiant cry “SHNEE MATZADA LO TEFULE!” "Masada will never fall again!” they mean to warn their adversaries that they will not commit suicide any more, but will defend their land to the last man.

How far removed from the Shepherd King David were these Sicarii! He was not nearly so pius as they thought themselves to be, yet he was trusting in the God who is there, unseen, faithful. They placed their confidence in that Titanic of fortresses. They were bound to a place whilst David was bound to a Divine Person. They looked to the Masada of rock, David to the Rock of Masada. Another Day is coming, and Israel the Nation once again is seeking various ways to secure the land against those who would take that promised place from them. Their Masada today is their weapons of war and the idea of land for peace. We recognized that there is also the modern 7000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal (Rom. 11:4,5) who are presently trusting in Jehovah, in Jesus the Messiah, and looking for that final deliverance when the earthly fortress fails to hold, when Israel once again is as they were on the banks of the Red Sea as Pharaoh with his armies press them on one side while the sea has them trapped on the other, and then, with no place to turn, they cast their eyes upon Him, they look up!  So shall the remnant do once again.

                                                            HOSANNA!

Where is your Masada? Is Christ your Rock, your Fortress, your Deliverer? Once again listen to Luther’s hymn; "Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing; Were not the right Man on our side, The Man of God's own choosing.Dost ask Who that may be? Christ Jesus it is He; Lord Sabaoth his His name, From age to age the same, And He must win the battle!"  Far from saying "Never again Masada", let us say "Masada Forever",  Jehovah, our Masada.

Historical Notes:

Masada is the most visited of all archeaological sites in Israel and one of the most popular climbs. It can be reached from two directions today, either from the Dead Sea in the east, via the original and steep "snake path" or from the west on a path built from the old Roman ramp, offering an easier climb or one may take a cable car to ease the ascent. Facing east towards the Dead Sea and
separated from the mountain range by two deep wadis  (gorges) Masada was a natural fortress. In the years 37-4 B.C, King Herod further fortified Masada and turned it into a luxurious mountain resort with steam baths, water cisterns, guard towers, weapons and food warehouses for possible refuge, were he to be overthrown, so that he could live his life of exile in luxury.

In 66 A.D. during the Jewish Revolt against the Romans, Massada was captured by a small group of Jews. They and other refugee families remained there even after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. In 72 A.D. however, the Roman General Silva, decided to put an end to even the tiniest pockets of resistance against Rome and with a ten to fifteen thousand strong army, he began the siege of Massada. He built a wall around the base of the mountain and eight seige camps to prevent escape by the besieged.

When it eventually became clear to the Romans that the water and food supplies on Masada could sustain the Zealots for a long time, they erected a ramp on the western side. When the Zealot leader, Elazar ben Yair saw the end nearing, he gathered his people and together they chose death with honor by their own hands rather than being captured alive and becoming slaves to the Romans.

Today it is a symbol of freedom and independence. Recruits to the I.D.F. Armored unit swear the oath of allegiance in an annual ceremony Their defiant cry: "Masada will never fall again

Masada  fell in 72-73 A.D. after a three year siege by the powerful Roman Tenth Legion.

Next to Jerusalem, it is the most popular destination of Jewish tourists visiting Israel. It is strange that a place known only because 960 Jews committed suicide there in the first century  should become a modern symbol of Jewish survival. What is even stranger is that the Masada episode is not mentioned in the TALMUD. Why did the rabbis choose to ignore the courageous stance and tragic fate of the last fighters in the Jewish rebellion against Rome?

Anyone who has climbed the famous "snake path" to Masada can understand why the surrounding Roman troops had to content themselves with a siege instead of a direct assault. Masada is situated on top of an enormous isolated rock. Anyone climbing it to attack the fortress would be an easy target. Yet the Jews, encamped in the fortress, could never feel secure; every morning, they awoke to see the Roman Tenth Legion hard at work, constructing battering rams and other weapons. If the 960 defenders of Masada hoped that the Romans eventually would consider this last Jewish beachhead too insignificant to bother conquering, they were to be disappointed. The Romans were well aware that the Zealots at Masada were the group that had started the Great Revolt; in fact, the Zealots had been in revolt against the Romans since the year 6. More than anything else, the length and bitterness of their uprising probably account for Rome's unwillingness to let Masada and its small group of defiant Jews alone.

Once it became apparent that the Tenth Legion's battering rams and catapults would soon succeed in breaching Masada's walls, Elazar ben Yair, the Zealots’ leader, decided that all the Jewish defenders should commit suicide. Because Jewish law strictly forbids suicide, this decision sounds more shocking today than it probably did to his compatriots. There was nothing of Jonestown in the suicide pact carried out at Masada. The alternative facing the fortress’s defenders were hardly more attractive than death. Once the Romans defeated them, the men could expect to be sold off as slaves, the women as slaves and prostitutes.

Ironically, the little information we have about the final hours of Masada comes from a man whom the Jews there considered a traitor and happily would have killed: Flavius Josephus. When he wrote the history of the Jewish revolt against Rome, he included an extensive section on Masada’s fall which was largely sympathetic to the Romans. He also tells us of  two women and five children that managed to hide themselves during the mass suicide, and it was from one of these women that he heard an account of Elazar ben Yair's final speech. In essence it said: "Since we long ago resolved never to be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God Himself, Who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice.... We were the very first that revolted [against Rome], and we are the last that fight against them; and I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God has granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom." Even at this late juncture, Elazar could not accept that the main reason the revolt had failed was because Rome's army was vastly superior. Instead, he dwelt on his belief that the Lord had turned against the Jewish people. Finally, he came to an inescapable conclusion: "Let our wives die before they are abused, and our children before they have tasted of slavery, and after we have slain them, let us bestow that glorious benefit upon one another mutually." Elazar ordered that all the Jews' possessions except food be destroyed, for "the food will be a testimonial when we are dead that we were not subdued for want of necessities; but that, according to our original resolution, we have preferred death before slavery." After this oration, the men killed their wives and children, and then each other.

In recent years, Masada became widely known through the excavations of Israeli archaeologists. In addition to finding two MIKVAOT (ritual baths) and a synagogue used by Masada's defenders, he uncovered twenty-five skeletons of men, women, and children. In 1969, they were buried at Masada with full military honors.