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Three Arrows Named Jerusalem and the Blood That Would Not Stop

Nebuchadnezzar's arrows all turned toward Jerusalem. When his army arrived it found blood in the Temple courtyard still boiling after centuries of waiting.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Arrows That Would Not Lie
  2. The Blood That Outlasted the Temple
  3. Whose Blood Would Not Be Covered
  4. The Captain Who Interrogated a Stain

The Arrows That Would Not Lie

Before he marched on Judah, Nebuchadnezzar paused for divination. He was king of an age that consulted weapons before committing armies. He bent his bow and pointed west. The arrow curved in the air and turned toward Jerusalem. He pointed east. The shaft swung and turned toward Jerusalem. He drew a third time and asked the wood and feather which city in the world was the guilty one. The third arrow flew and pointed to Jerusalem.

The empire imagines its violence as strategy. The aggadah makes it testimony. Three arrows turned the Babylonian king's ritual against him: he thought he was practicing belomancy, divination to select a target, but the arrows were not selecting. They were confirming a verdict already given. Nebuchadnezzar did not choose Jerusalem. He received it as an answer from something he did not control. The bow became a courtroom, and every shot returned the same finding.

He took the three-fold sign as license. The prophet Ezekiel would record that he stood at the fork of two roads and cast lots. The lots, the arrows, the entrail-reading, all of them, in the rabbinic understanding, pointed the same direction because the city had already been weighed. The Babylonian army was not the cause of Jerusalem's fall. It was the instrument of a verdict given before the army moved.

The Blood That Outlasted the Temple

When Nebuzaradan, Nebuchadnezzar's captain of the guard, entered the ruins of the Temple, he found something in the courtyard that was not supposed to be there. A pool of blood. Boiling. Churning. Not flowing from a fresh wound but bubbling up from stone as though the rock itself were bleeding.

He asked the priests what it was. They told him it was the blood of sacrificial animals. He killed priests and poured their blood on the spot. The boiling did not stop. He killed more and more. He killed seventy members of the Sanhedrin. Still the blood moved. The numbers grew catastrophic, the Talmudic tradition places 940,000 deaths in Jerusalem alone, the soil of Judah saturated for seven years afterward.

Whose Blood Would Not Be Covered

The old blood was the blood of Zechariah the prophet, son of Jehoiada the priest. King Joash had ordered him stoned to death in the Temple courtyard because Zechariah had rebuked the king for abandoning God. As he died, Zechariah cried out for God to see and avenge. His blood fell on bare rock and was never covered. It had been waiting since the days of the First Temple, through the Babylonian invasion, rising and falling but never still.

The Captain Who Interrogated a Stain

Nebuzaradan interrogated the blood directly. He demanded it stop. The blood would not stop for the blood of the priests he had just poured over it. It would not stop for the Sanhedrin members. It would not stop for anyone.

Finally the captain understood what he was looking at. He spoke to the blood: Zechariah, Zechariah. I have killed the best of them for you. Do you want me to destroy them all?

The blood stilled.

The city that had killed its prophet had been condemned from that moment. The blood carried the record of what the city had done, boiling for centuries, waiting for the destruction that would settle the account. The Babylonian general was not its avenger in any righteous sense. He was the instrument that finally quieted what Jerusalem's own hands had set in motion.

JerusalemTemple DestructionNebuchadnezzarZechariahJudgmentTragedy
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From the tradition

Sources

5 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Vayikra Rabbah 19:6Hebraic Literature (1901)

Before he launched his final assault on Judah, Nebuchadnezzar paused to consult the omens. He was a king of his age, and the practice of his age was belomancy, divination by arrows. He bent his bow and asked the wood and feather to tell him where his armies should strike.

He pointed the first arrow westward and let it fly. The shaft curved in the air and turned toward Jerusalem. He pointed the second arrow eastward. The shaft swung in the air and turned toward Jerusalem. He drew a third time and asked the arrow which city in the world was the guilty one, the one whose fall would satisfy the ledgers of heaven. The third arrow flew, and it, too, pointed to Jerusalem.

The king took the three-fold sign as a license. The prophet Ezekiel would later describe exactly this scene, the king standing at a crossroads, shaking arrows and consulting teraphim: "For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination" (Ezekiel 21:21).

The midrash treats the moment with grief, not triumph. Jerusalem's own sins had turned every arrow toward her. The sages taught that when a nation abandons the covenant, even the wooden shafts of foreign kings begin to point at her gates.

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Gittin 57aHebraic Literature (1901)

For seven years after the destruction of the First Temple, the Sages say, the nations of the world cultivated their vineyards with no other manure than the blood of Israel. The soil itself was saturated with slaughter.

Rabbi Chiya, the son of Abin, transmitted this in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua, the son of Korcha, who had heard it from an old inhabitant of Jerusalem who lived through it. "Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard for Nebuchadnezzar," the old man told him, "killed in this valley two hundred and eleven myriads", roughly 2,110,000 souls, "and in Jerusalem itself he slaughtered upon one stone ninety-four myriads", 940,000 more.

When Blood Touches Blood

The blood, the tradition says, did not pool. It flowed. It ran through the streets of the city until it reached another stain, the blood of the prophet Zechariah, murdered in the Temple courtyard centuries earlier and never covered (2 (Chronicles 24:20)-22). The two bloods met.

The Sages read this as a literal fulfillment of the prophet Hosea's words: "By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood" (Hosea 4:2). The sin of a single murdered prophet, left unatoned for generations, magnetized every drop spilled in the Babylonian sack.

Jerusalem did not fall because its enemies were strong. It fell because its own ground had been waiting to be answered.

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Gittin 57bHebraic Literature (1901)

Rabbi Yehoshua, the son of Korcha, heard the story from an old man of Jerusalem who had lived through the Babylonian destruction. In the valley below the city, Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard for Nebuchadnezzar, slaughtered 2,110,000 souls. Inside the city, upon a single stone, he killed another 940,000. The numbers are midrashic, but the weight is not.

As the blood spread through Jerusalem, it ran until it touched another stain the people had forgotten: the blood of the prophet Zechariah, murdered in the Temple courtyard centuries earlier (2 (Chronicles 24:20)-22). That blood had never been covered. That blood had never stopped waiting.

The Captain Interrogates a Stain

When Nebuzaradan saw the old blood boiling and agitated, he demanded an explanation. "This is the blood of sacrifices," the priests told him. He was not fooled. He ordered sacrificial blood brought for comparison. The two looked nothing alike.

He drew his sword. "Tell me the truth, or I will comb your flesh with iron currycombs."

They broke. "He was a prophet. Because he rebuked us on matters of religion, we rose and killed him. His blood has been restless ever since."

"I Will Pacify Him"

Then Nebuzaradan, pagan general of a pagan king, said something unexpected: "I will pacify him." He brought the members of the greater and lesser Sanhedrin to the spot of the restless blood. And slaughtered them over it, thousands upon thousands, until the boiling at last subsided.

This version, preserved in Gittin 57 and paralleled in Lamentations Rabbah, reads (Hosea 4:2), "blood toucheth blood", as a historical reckoning. A single murdered prophet, unatoned for generations, magnetized an entire city's worth of blood centuries later.

The lesson the Sages drew is unsparing. Every injustice that never gets answered is simply waiting for the moment its answer arrives.

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Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 194Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

When the Babylonians breached the walls of Jerusalem and stormed the Temple, they found something in the courtyard that stopped them cold. A pool of blood. Bubbling. Boiling. Churning as though it were alive. And it had been doing this for centuries.

This was the blood of Zechariah the prophet, son of Jehoiada the priest, who had been murdered in the Temple courtyard by order of King Joash (2 (Chronicles 24:20)-22). Zechariah had rebuked the king for abandoning God, and the king had him stoned to death, in the very courtyard of the Temple itself. As Zechariah lay dying, he cried out: "May the Lord see and avenge!"

God saw. And the blood refused to be silent. According to the Talmud in Gittin (57b) and multiple midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) sources including Pesikta Rabbati (chapter 25) and Lamentations Rabbah, the blood of Zechariah continued to boil on the Temple floor for over two hundred years. No amount of washing could clean it. No amount of time could cool it. It was a wound in the earth itself, a permanent accusation against a nation that had murdered its own prophet in the house of God.

When the Babylonian general Nebuzaradan entered the Temple and saw the boiling blood, he demanded an explanation. The Jews tried to cover it up, it was the blood of sacrificial animals, they said. Nebuzaradan was not convinced. He slaughtered animals and compared the blood. It was different. He pressed harder. Finally, the truth came out.

The general turned to the boiling blood. "I will appease you," he said, and began killing Jews over the blood until it finally grew still. The rabbis preserved this horrifying tale as a lesson: innocent blood cries out from the ground, and its cry does not fade with time.

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Pesikta DeRav Kahana 15:7Pesikta de-Rav Kahana

"How has the faithful city become a harlot" (Isaiah 1:21), a new city, a great city. Rabbi Pinchas in the name of Rabbi Hoshaya said: There were four hundred and eighty synagogues in Jerusalem, and each one had within it a Scripture school and a Mishnah school, a Scripture school for the Written Torah and a Mishnah school for the Mishnah, and Vespasian came up and destroyed them all, as it is written, "And he uncovered the covering of Judah" (Isaiah 22:8).

"She that was full of justice" (Isaiah 1:21), such as the Mishnah of Rabbi Chiyya, the Mishnah of Rabbi Hoshaya, and the Mishnah of Bar Kappara. "Righteousness lodged in her" (ibid.). Rabbi Yudah son of Rabbi Simon said: In his days no one ever lodged overnight in Jerusalem with iniquity in his hand. How so? The morning daily offering would atone for transgressions committed in the night, and the offering of the late afternoon would atone for transgressions committed in the day; so no one lodged in Jerusalem with iniquity in his hand. What is the reason? "Righteousness lodged in her" (ibid.).

"But now murderers" (ibid.) -- they became killers; they killed Uriah the priest, they killed Zechariah. Rabbi Yudan asked Rabbi Acha: Where did they kill Zechariah, in the court of Israel or in the court of the women? He said to him: Neither in the court of Israel nor in the court of the women, but in the court of the priests. And they did not treat his blood as the blood of a deer or the blood of a ram or the blood of a bird. There it is written, "Any man of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, who hunts any beast or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with dust" (Leviticus 17:13). But here, "For her blood is in the midst of her; she set it upon the bare rock" (Ezekiel 24:7). Why so? "That it might cause fury to come up to take vengeance, I have set her blood upon the bare rock" (Ezekiel 24:8).

Seven transgressions Israel committed on that day: they killed a priest, a prophet, and a judge; they shed innocent blood; they profaned the Name; they defiled the courtyard; and it was the Day of Atonement that fell on a Sabbath. And when Nebuzaradan came up, the blood began to seethe. He said to them, "What is the nature of this seething blood?" They said to him, "It is the blood of bulls, lambs, and rams that we used to offer upon the altar." Immediately he sent and brought bulls, rams, and lambs and slaughtered them before it, and still the blood seethed. When they did not confess to him, he took them and hanged them on the gallows. They said, "Since the Holy One, blessed be He, seeks to demand this blood from our hand, it is the blood of a priest, prophet, and judge, who used to prophesy to us all the things you are doing, and we rose against him and killed him." Immediately he took eighty thousand young priests and killed them over it, until the blood reached the grave of Zechariah. What is the reason? "They break out, and blood touches blood" (Hosea 4:2). And still the blood seethed.

At that moment he rebuked it, saying to it, "What do you want? Shall your whole nation be destroyed because of you?" At that moment the Holy One, blessed be He, was filled with mercy and said, "If this one, who is flesh and blood and cruel, here today and gone tomorrow, was filled with mercy upon My children, then I, of whom it is written, 'For the LORD your God is a merciful God; He will not fail you nor destroy you' (Deuteronomy 4:31), how much more so." At that moment the Holy One, blessed be He, gave a sign to that blood, and it was absorbed in its place.

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