Jerusalem was under siege. Day after day, the defenders inside the city lowered a basket of silver over the walls, and the besiegers below filled the basket with a lamb, a kid, or another animal fit for the Temple sacrifice. This exchange had kept the daily offerings going, and as long as the offerings continued, the besiegers could not take the city. Some source inside the camp of the enemy, speaking in Greek, had whispered the secret. The siege would not succeed while the korbanot rose from the altar.
The next day the defenders lowered the basket of silver as usual. This time, when they hoisted it back, no lamb sat inside. A pig was tied in its place. The defenders understood the joke immediately. A pig cannot be offered on the altar. The daily sacrifice was going to be broken.
Halfway up the wall, the pig began to struggle. It braced its feet against the stones and pushed. The moment its hooves struck the wall of the Temple Mount, an earthquake rolled outward through the land of Israel. The tremor was felt for four hundred miles. The Talmud records this scene in tractate Sotah (49b), and it was on that day, the rabbis say, that a saying was fixed in Jewish memory. "Cursed is the man who raises swine, and cursed is the one who teaches his son Greek wisdom."
The pig and the Greek language became linked as twin betrayals of the city. Both had come in through a gap the defenders had failed to guard. An earthquake is what the land does when sacred ground is used to shame what it was built to exalt.