The destruction of the Temple happened on the eve of the ninth of Av, on the outgoing of the Sabbath, in a Sabbatical year. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, the Levites were standing on their platform with harps in hand, singing the psalm that begins, "He has brought upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own evil." They never finished the verse. The enemy burst in before the last words left their mouths.
The same horrifying symmetry occurred with Nebuchadnezzar's earlier destruction. Again it was the ninth of Av, again the outgoing of the Sabbath, again the Levites were mid-song. Sixty myriads of Levites, all descendants of Moses, stood with harps. The verse was the same. The interruption was the same. The exile to Babylon followed.
When they arrived in Babylon, their captors demanded entertainment. "Sing us a song of Zion," they said. The Levites answered: "How can we sing a song of Zion on foreign soil?" The captors threatened to force them. So the Levites bit off their own fingers with their teeth and threw the severed digits before their tormentors. "How can fingers that struck the strings of God's harps in the Holy Temple now play for idols?"
That night a cloud descended and covered the Levites and their families, and a pillar of fire led them through the darkness. By morning they had reached the shore, where God extended the river Sabbatyon around them as a barrier. This miraculous river rolls stones and sand with the noise of an earthquake six days a week, making it impossible to cross. On the Sabbath it rests, but then a wall of fire erupts on the western side, burning everything within thirty-four miles. Behind that river, the sons of Moses live in purity to this day, with no thieves, no unclean animals, and no one dying before the age of 120.