Lecture 4—The Destruction of SoIomon’s Temple
In this lecture, we follow the history of the kingdom of Judah until its conquest by the Babylonians and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. The foretelling of the destruction of the First Temple by earlier prophets foreshadowed Jesus’s prediction that the Second Temple would be destroyed. The Gospel accounts that describe conversations between Jesus and his disciples about the end of days and place Jesus on the Mount of Olives draw on significant biblical traditions connected with the earlier lsraelite prophets.
Reforms of King Josiah
1. One of the most celebrated kings of Judah was King Josiah, who ruled from approximately 640 to 609 B.C. Josiah was loved by the biblical writers because of his religious reforms, which reasserted the centrality of the Temple of Jerusalem and its priesthood and eliminated local sanctuaries. In other words, because Josiah’s reforms were perfectly in keeping with the preferences and views of the biblical writers, they described him in glowing terms.
2. According to one biblical passage: “Then the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for the Baal, and the Asherah, and for all the host of the heavens. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the lime kilns by the Kidron and carried away their ashes to Bethel.”
3. Notice that Josiah is clearing out objects of worship to gods other than the God of Israel in the Jerusalem Temple. This act demonstrates the continuing tension between inclusive and exclusive Yahwism among the Israelites, even in the 8"‘ and 7" centuries B.C.
4. The passage continues: “Moreover he brought the Asherah from the house of the Lord outside Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley and burned it at the Kidron Valley and ground to powder and cast the powder of it upon the graves of the common people. Furthermore, he tore down the houses of the devotees of the fertility cult, which were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove tunics for the Asherah
5. Asherah is an enigmatic term debated by scholars. Some think that the Asherah refers to a female consort of the God of Israel. lt was, of course, typical in antiquity for male deities to have female companions.
6. The centerpiece of Josiah’s reform was the discovery, or reputed discovery, of a book of law, which came to be called the Book of Deuteronomy, during work on the temple building in Jerusalem. This law is called a “Second Law” because it basically reformulates and restates many of the laws that are in the first four books of Moses. Therefore, Josiah’s reform is called the Deuteronomistic reform.
Armageddon
1. Josiah’s assertion of the centrality of Jerusalem served to unify the country and strengthened the central government. Unfortunately, however, Josiah died an untimely death, at the hands of the Egyptians.
2. In the ancient Near East, Babylonia was an emerging power; and, at the time of Josiah, Assyria, Egypt, and Babylonia were jockeying for position. The Egyptians were trying to bolster the weaker power, Assyria, against the stronger, emerging power, Babylonia; thus, the Egyptians sent an army out to support the Assyrians. To travel to Assyria, the Egyptians had to pass through the area where Josiah’s kingdom was located.
3. According to the biblical account, “ln the year 609 B.C., the Egyptian pharaoh Necho ll set out with a large army and marched northwards.” As the Egyptian army was crossing the mountain pass at the foot of Megiddo (a large biblical tell), Josiah confronted them, and Necho captured and killed him.
4. Because of Josiah’s reforms, the biblical writers viewed him as a second David: “Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. He reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in all the way of his father David. He did not turn aside to the right or to the left.” Because the biblical writers directly compared Josiah to King David, Josiah’s death was a disaster that also put an end to the hopes of a revived kingdom of Judah.
5. Interestingly, Josiah’s death occurred at the site of Megiddo. Megiddo guards the outlet of a crucial mountain pass in the center of Israel. In antiquity, many significant battles were fought there. Eventually, Josiah’s death at Megiddo became identified as the site of the ultimate battle at the end of days, as expressed in the Revelation of John 16:14-16: “They are demon spirits that perform wonders, and they go out to the kings all over the world to muster them for battle on the great day of God Almighty. So they mustered the kings at the place called, in Hebrew, Armageddon.”
6. The Greek word Armageddon actually comes from the Hebrew words Har Megiddo, meaning “Mount Megiddo.” ln Greek, Har Megiddo became Har-Magedon. ln English, it became Armageddon.
The Babylonian Exile
1. After Josiah’s death, the Babylonians began to conduct a series of military campaigns against the kingdom of Judah, exiling the inhabitants of Judah to Babylonia. All of this culminated in the year 586 B.C., when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem for 18 months. That siege ended with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple.
2. The king of Judah at that time was Zedekiah. He was captured by the Babylonians while trying to escape the city under the cover of night. His sons were put to death in front of his eyes, and he was then blinded so that the last sight he ever saw was the death of his sons.
3. The destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C. mark the end of the First Temple period and the beginning of the Babylonian Exile. The Babylonian Exile lasted from 586 to 539 B.C. It is commemorated in a number of memorable passages in the Bible, including Psalm 37: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. How could we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand fail me. May my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I set not Jerusalem above my highest joy.”
Foreshadowing the Destruction of the Second Temple
1. The destruction of the First Temple, Solomon’s Temple, was a deeply traumatic event for the Judeans. What’s more, this event was drawn upon by later authors referring to the destruction of the Second Temple. The destruction of the First Temple became a foreshadowing of the destruction of the Second Temple.
2. This foreshadowing figures prominently when we talk about Jesus and the Gospel accounts because, according to Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus foretold the destruction of the Second Temple. For example, a critical passage in the Gospel accounts tells us: “As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another. All will be thrown down.”’
3. Of course, a key theme throughout the Gospel accounts is Jesus being cast in the light of a biblical prophet. It is not coincidental, therefore, that earlier lsraelite prophets had reportedly foretold the destruction of the First Temple. Thus, when we see Jesus reportedly foretelling the destruction of the Second Temple, he is doing much the same thing that earlier lsraelite prophets had reportedly done with regard to the First Temple, following in a biblical tradition.
4. For example, consider this passage from Jeremiah: “Therefore, I will do to the house that is called by My name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to ShiIoh.” Similarly, in Micah, we find: “Therefore, because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field. Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins and the mountain of the house, a wooded height.”
5. In addition, there were other works later on, aside from those of the Gospel authors, that used this sort of evocative language of the destruction of the First Temple to refer to the destruction of the Second Temple. One of these works was the Fourth Book of Ezra or the Second Book of Esdras-an apocalyptic work written in the 90s A.D. The writer evokes the destruction of the First Temple, but what he’s really talking about is the destruction of the Second Temple.
Significance of the Mount of Olives
1. One of the Gospel accounts, Mark 24:3, describes Jesus sitting on the Mount of Olives: “When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, ‘Tell us when will this be and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?”’
2. Jesus’s place on the Mount of Olives is crucial to understanding the significance of this passage. The Mount of Olives is located to the east of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount. Jesus is sitting on top of this mountain overlooking the city. According to Ezekiel 11:23, the Mount of Olives was the place where the glory of God went after departing the Temple.
3. The Mount of Olives has further significance because, according to biblical tradition, it is also the place where the Messiah was expected to appear. In Zachariah 14:4-5, the author says, “On that day, His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split into from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall withdraw northward and the other half southward. Then the Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with him.”
Suggested Reading
Goldenberg, The Origins of Judaism, chapter 3, “The Book and the People.”
Questions to Consider
1. Why did the biblical writers like Josiah?
2. What is the significance of the Mount of Olives in Jewish tradition?
