At last, after many years of wandering the Tables of the Law seemed to have reached a place of enduring rest. Solomon, the Wise, decided to provide them with a magnificent home. Far and wide his messengers travelled to ransack the world for rare woods and precious metals. The entire nation was asked to offer its wealth to make the House of God worthy of its holy name. Higher and higher the walls of the temple arose guarding the sacred Laws of Jehovah for all the ages. Alas, the expected eternity proved to be of short duration. Themselves intruders among hostile neighbors, surrounded by enemies on all sides, harassed by the Philistines, the Jews did not maintain their independence for very long. They fought well and bravely. But their little state, weakened by petty jealousies, was easily overpowered by the Assyrians and the Egyptians and the Chaldeans and when Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, took Jerusalem in the year 586 before the birth of Christ, he destroyed the city and the temple, and the Tablets of Stone went up in the general conflagration. At once the Jews set to work to rebuild their holy shrine. But the days of Solomon's glory were gone. The Jews were the subjects of a foreign race and money was scarce. It took seventy years to reconstruct the old edifice. It stood securely for three hundred years but then a second invasion took place and once more the red flames of the burning temple brightened the skies of Palestine. When it was rebuilt for the third time, it was surrounded by two high walls with narrow gates and several inner courts were added to make sudden invasion in the future an impossibility. But ill-luck pursued the city of Jerusalem. In the sixty-fifth year before the birth of Christ, the Romans under their general Pompey took possession of the Jewish capital. Their practical sense did not take kindly to an old city with crooked and dark streets and many unhealthy alley-ways. They cleaned up this old rubbish (as they considered it) and built new barracks and large public buildings and swimming-pools and athletic parks and they forced their modern improvements upon an unwilling populace. The temple which served no practical purposes (as far as they could see) was neglected until the days of Herod, who was King of the Jews by the Grace of the Roman sword and whose vanity wished to renew the ancient splendor of the bygone ages. In a half-hearted manner the oppressed people set to work to obey the orders of a master who was not of their own choosing. When the last stone had been placed in its proper position another revolution broke out against the merciless Roman tax gatherers. The temple was the first victim of this rioting. The soldiers of the Emperor Titus promptly set fire to this center of the old Jewish faith. But the city of Jerusalem was spared. Palestine however continued to be the scene of unrest.