noon
There is loud chaffering , for the Arabs are leading horses and trying to sell them ; and , in their eagerness , they speak in high , shrill voices . The courtly person leaves the talking mostly to his servants ; occasionally he answers with much dignity ; directly , seeing the Cypriote , he stops and buys some figs . And when the whole party has passed the portal , close after the Pharisee , if we betake ourselves to the dealer in fruits , he will tell , with a wonderful salaam , that the stranger is a Jew , one of the princes of the city , who has travelled , and learned the difference between the common grapes of Syria and those of Cyprus , so surpassingly rich with the dews of the sea . And so , till towards noon , sometimes later , the steady currents of business habitually flow in and out of the Joppa Gate , carrying with them every variety of character ; including representatives of all the tribes of Israel , all the sects among whom the ancient faith has been parcelled and refined away , all the religious and social divisions , all the adventurous rabble who , as children of art and ministers of pleasure , riot in the prodigalities of Herod , and all the peoples of note at any time compassed by the Caesars and their predecessors , especially those dwelling within the circuit of the Mediterranean . In other words , Jerusalem , rich in sacred history , richer in connection with sacred prophecies -- the Jerusalem of Solomon , in which silver was as stones , and cedars as the sycamores of the vale -- had come to be but a copy of Rome , a center of unholy practises , a seat of pagan power . A Jewish king one day put on priestly garments , and went into the Holy of Holies of the first temple to offer incense , and he came out a leper ; but in the time of which we are reading , Pompey entered Herod 's temple and the same Holy of Holies , and came out without harm , finding but an empty chamber , and of God not a sign . The reader is now besought to return to the court described as part of the market at the Joppa Gate .