A silver tetradrachm of the Second Jewish Revolt, struck in Judea during the years AD 132 to 135 under the leadership of Simon bar Kosiba — known to history as Bar Kokhba, son of the star. The obverse depicts the façade of the Jerusalem Temple: four columns supporting an architrave, with the Ark of the Covenant visible between the central pair, and a star — sometimes a rosette — above the pediment. The legend reads shimon on the earliest issues, then yerushalayim on the later. The reverse shows a lulav — the bound palm, myrtle, and willow of the Sukkot festival — together with an etrog (citron), and the Hebrew legend le-cherut yerushalayim — "for the freedom of Jerusalem." Almost every surviving specimen was overstruck on a Roman silver tetradrachm or denarius. The host coin's portrait of Trajan or Hadrian was hammered down, and the new revolutionary types impressed over the surface — but the undertypes ghost through. On many examples the Latin legends of the original Roman coin remain visible at the rim, the imperial profile dimly readable beneath the Temple façade. The political symbolism is exact: the empire's silver, restruck as the coinage of revolt. The star above the Temple alludes to Numbers 24:17 — a star shall come out of Jacob — the Balaam oracle that Rabbi Akiva, according to the Jerusalem Talmud (Ta'anit 4:5), applied to Bar Kokhba as messianic claimant. The application proved disastrous; the revolt was crushed by Hadrian's general Julius Severus, Akiva himself was tortured to death, and Jerusalem was rebuilt as the pagan Aelia Capitolina with Jews barred from entry. But the coinage survives. It is the only ancient numismatic depiction of the Jerusalem Temple façade — struck three generations after the Temple itself had burned. Specimens are dispersed across the Israel Museum, the British Museum, and the American Numismatic Society. Leo Mildenberg's Coinage of the Bar Kokhba War remains the standard catalogue. Sources: Leo Mildenberg, The Coinage of the Bar Kokhba War (Verlag Sauerländer, 1984); Yaakov Meshorer, A Treasury of Jewish Coins from the Persian Period to Bar Kokhba (Yad Ben-Zvi / Amphora, 2001); David Hendin, Guide to Biblical Coins (5th ed., Amphora, 2010); Jerusalem Talmud, Ta'anit 4:5; Numbers 24:17.
These tetradrachms constitute the only ancient numismatic representation of the Jerusalem Temple façade, struck under Bar Kokhba during AD 132–135 — decades after the Temple's destruction. Overstruck on imperial Roman silver, they materially embody the revolt's messianic program and illuminate the Numbers 24:17 oracle's application in second-century Jewish expectation.