"The city of Herod the Great and Herod Agrippa was brutally destroyed and devastated after the capture of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70, and its ruins still further overturned by the Hadrianic building operations of the second century A.D. Our excavations have shown that with the exception of a few of the public buildings, quite literally scarcely one stone stands on another."

Kathleen Kenyon, "Digging Up Jerusalem" (London: Ernest Benn, 1974) pp. 236-37.

Jerusalem as Prophetic Focal Point

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Jerusalem as Historical City- Temple | Jerusalem as Prophetic Focal Point | Jerusalem as Babylon | Jerusalem as Heavenly City

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"'...when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies...'

"In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints," and of all to doubt that this blood of prophets and saints was shed by the covenant people?  Didn't Jesus Himself point out that no prophet dies outside Jerusalem?" (C. Vanderwaal)

Alexander Campbell (1841)
"Their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which is [mystically] spiritually called Sodom and Egypt; also, the city where our Lord was crucified, [Jerusalem]." ("The Coming of the Lord - No. VII," Millennial Harbinger 5, July 1841; p. 322) 

Dr. Lange
"Jeremiah predicts (Jer. 31:36-40) that the city should in future times extend beyond the north wall (the second wall) and inclose Gibeat Gareb, or the Leper's Hill, and Gibeat Goath, or the Hill of Death (of roaring, groaning). The position of Gareb can correspond only with Under Bezetha, and the position of Goath only with Upper Bezetha where Golgotha rose. Both of these elevations were inclosed by Agrippa, as parts of the new city, and lay inside the third wall. From the context we learn that Gareb and Goath were unclean places, but, being measured in with the holy city, became sanctified. That the Goath hill of Jeremiah is identical with the Golgotha of the Evangelists, is more than probable. The wall of Agrippa was built around Bezetha by Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great" (Lange on Matt. 27:33).

Johann Philip Schabalie (1635)
"And because this city was the cause of the shedding of the innocent blood, she was suddenly visited with judgments -- as sudden as the coming of lightning. (The destruction of Jerusalem was sudden.  In a very short time, not less than eleven hundred thousand perished.  See Josephus, de Bell, Ind. lib. 6, c. 9, § 3. - trans." (The Wandering Soul, p. 401)

"In order that God might show that he was determined utterly to destroy Jerusalem; and to that end, he gave them several signs, to warn each one in the city of the coming destruction." (p. 411)

Adam Clarke (1837)
(On Revelation 1:7) "By this the Jewish People are most evidently intended, and therefore the whole verse may be understood as predicting the destruction of the Jews; and is a presumptive proof that the Apocalypse was written before the final overthrow of the Jewish state." (6:971.)

Milton Terry (1898)
"There is only one city that comes to mind at this specific statement, and that answers perfectly to the description of this verse.  Jesus himself said to his disciples "that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed (Matt. xvi, 21; xx, 18; Mark x, 33; Luke xviii, 31)." (Biblical Apocalyptics, p. 371)

C. Vanderwaal (1978)
"The more we study these connections and interpretations, the more things come together.  Revelation 17 and 18 are not talking about a heathen city or empire; they are talking about Israel, the covenant people who killed the prophets (I Kings 19:10; Lam. 4:13).

Jesus Christ spoke the same language to the rabbis in Matthew 23:29ff, calling them "sons of those who murdered the prophets" (v. 31).  "Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.. that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth (vs. 32,35).  The "earth" referred to can better read as a reference to the land of the covenant people.

"Judah deserves to be called the "faithless one."  When we consider the fact that the prophets repeatedly speak of forsaking the covenant as harlotry and adultery (Is. 1:21; Ezek. 16:22; Hos. 1-3), the pattern in Revelation falls into place.  Revelation 17 carries on the line of Jeremiah 4:30 by speaking within the framework of the covenant.  Thus the subject is not "Rome" but "Judah." (Ibid., p. 134)

Foy Wallace (1966)
"(the prophecies of Revelation 18) do not fit Rome, nor any other city than Jerusalem;  where the prophets, apostles and saints were slain.  The usual interpretation to bring the apocalypse down through the ages to stage again the historical pageantry of the Roman empire, in the effort to find a future fulfillment, takes all the force out of the words of Christ in Matthew 23 and 24, and robs the apocalypse of its immediate message.  The apostate Jerusalem was the object of the visions of Revelation." (ibid., p. 383)

"There was no basis for a symbol or an analogy in which Rome could have been depicted as having become a harlot, for Rome never stood in the spiritual relation to God as a faithful city, turned to harlotry.  The harlot was a city once faithful to God, and only Jerusalem can fulfill the symbolic descriptions." (ibid., p. 364)

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