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.