It is the middle of the first century b.c. Workers hammer thick wooden pegs into the baked Judean clay to pitch a heavy goat-hair tent. The midday sun beats down on the laborers. Sweat stings their eyes as they pull the rough canvas taut against the wind. Foreign armies march through the surrounding valleys. The threat of violence hangs heavy in the dry air. The locals seek shelter under this makeshift roof for simple survival and desperate comfort.
Judean citizens plead with the Judge of Nations not to abandon them to the advancing Roman legions. Pompey marches on Jerusalem in sixty-three b.c. The locals prefer the sharp sting of a wooden shepherd's rod wielded by a familiar hand over the iron broadswords of a Gentile army. A Roman infantryman earns the equivalent of roughly ten months of a common laborer's wages each year to conquer and occupy foreign territories. The people ask him to strike them directly instead. A father disciplines a son with a heavy stick to correct his behavior. They beg the Almighty to correct them himself. Being handed over to foreign generals means certain death or slavery.
A heavy goat-hair tent requires constant tension to remain upright. If the ropes slacken or the wooden pegs pull free from the dirt, the entire structure collapses under its own weight. The local population views divine presence exactly like this crude shelter. It offers physical protection from the elements, but it demands continuous maintenance and harsh discipline to stand firm in a hostile landscape.
Better to take a beating from a father in the yard than to be sold to strangers at the market.
The Roman siege engines eventually battered down the temple walls. The foreign conquerors claimed the land and forced the inhabitants to find shelter beneath an entirely different kind of authority.