How does James A. Michener use imagery in The Source; a Novel?

Imagery:

"In the year that General Petronius bore down with his legions upon Judea, Yigal was only twenty-six years old, and he was one of the least important men in Makor, but by some intuitive sense it was he who foresaw with shimmering clarity what would happen to the Jews if the Romans succeeded in erecting their statues to Caligula in local synagogues and in desecrating the great temple in Jerusalem.

"But in those dark days, when the Jews of Europe sighed at the stake and smothered in their districts without any moral protest from the Christian world, one gleam of hope began to shine from a most unlikely quarter: the inconspicuous hillside town of Safed in Galilee."