Children of the Stones protection. The villagers then turned to stone when they looked at the beam of light from Hendrick's house. Professor Brake and Matthew attempted to save with them their close village friends Margaret and her daughter Sandra, but despite warnings to them not to look back as they were running away, in a scene with eerie similarities to Lot's wife in the Bible they both did look back at the light and met the same fate as the other villagers. The professor and his son then escaped to the Sanctuary, just as the ancient travellers had done in the original circle.
Operation Pillar of Defense had ended. According to Human Rights Watch, both sides violated the laws of war during the fighting. Although the official English name of the operation is "Pillar of Defense", the Hebrew name translates as "Pillar of Cloud". Eytan Buchman, head of the IDF's North American media desk, explained that this usage refers to the Pillar of Cloud in the Bible that protected the Israelites during the Exodus and guided them to the Promised Land (). The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament elaborate on the story, specifying that the Pillar of Cloud shielded the Israelites from the Egyptians' arrows and