Jeremiah 26:4-6 “And you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord: "If you will not listen to Me, to walk in My law which I have set before you, (5) to heed the words of My servants the prophets whom I sent to you, both rising up early and sending them (but you have not heeded), (6) then I will make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth."
The next key event that we will discuss is the destruction of the First Temple. Leading up to this particular event, many of the Lord's prophets had prophesied to the Jews over a long period that if they did not repent of their lawless deeds, He would destroy both the temple and the city of Jerusalem. One example of the numerous prophecies about this event is recorded in the above-quoted passage of scripture. The context of this passage is that in approximately the year 627 BC the prophet Jeremiah was prophesying in the temple and warning the Jews of its impending destruction[1]. The Jews to whom Jeremiah was prophesying at the time, knew exactly what the Lord was implying when He said that He would make their temple like Shiloh; Joshua had set up the Lord’s tabernacle in Shiloh in approximately the year 1399 BC when, under his leadership, the Israelites first took possession of their inheritance, and the Lord’s tabernacle had remained there ever since[2]. As we have already mentioned, many years later, Israel split into two separate nations; a northern kingdom (Israel), and a southern kingdom (Judah). When the split took place, Shiloh had been included within Israel’s geographical boundaries, and the temple in Jerusalem had been included within Judah’s geographical boundaries. And so when the Lord finally judged Israel by sending the Assyrians to conquer them in the year 722 BC, in the process the Tabernacle in Shiloh had been destroyed[3]. And so when the Lord told the Jews in Jerusalem that He would do the same thing to them, they knew that He was talking about the destruction of both Jerusalem and the First Temple.
2 Kings 25:1-10 “Now it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came against Jerusalem and encamped against it; and they built a siege wall against it all around. (2) So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. (3) By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine had become so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. (4) Then the city wall was broken through, and all the men of war fled at night by way of the gate between two walls, which was by the king's garden, even though the Chaldeans were still encamped all around against the city. And the king went by way of the plain. (5) But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and they overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his army was scattered from him. (6) So they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they pronounced judgment on him. (7) Then they killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, put out the eyes of Zedekiah, bound him with bronze fetters, and took him to Babylon. (8) And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month (which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. (9) He burned the house of the Lord and the king's house; all the houses of Jerusalem, that is, all the houses of the great, he burned with fire. (10) And all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down the walls of Jerusalem all around.”
The final stage of Judah’s judgement was the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple, which included the final exiling of the Jewish elites to Babylon. In the above-quoted passage of scripture, we have the account of that event taking place, which historical records reveal as having occurred in the year 587 BC[4]. As we have already mentioned in the previous section, the context of this passage is that King Zedekiah of Judah rebelled against Babylonian rule in the year 589 BC. And so in response to the Jewish rebellion, King Nebuchadnezzar sent his army to crush the rebellion. The Babylonian army laid siege to the city of Jerusalem for two-and-a-half years, and it finally fell in the year 587 BC, resulting in King Zedekiah being taken into captivity and the city and temple finally being destroyed. And so we see that the First Temple stood for approximately 372 years between the years 959 BC and 587 BC.
Ezekiel 8:4-18 “And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the plain. (5) Then He said to me, "Son of man, lift your eyes now toward the north." So I lifted my eyes toward the north, and there, north of the altar gate, was this image of jealousy in the entrance. (6) Furthermore He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations." (7) So He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, there was a hole in the wall. (8) Then He said to me, "Son of man, dig into the wall"; and when I dug into the wall, there was a door. (9) And He said to me, "Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are doing there." (10) So I went in and saw, and there--every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls. (11) And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up. (12) Then He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, 'The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land.' “(13) And He said to me, "Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing." (14) So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the Lord's house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz. (15) Then He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn again; you will see greater abominations than these." (16) So He brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house; and there, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east. (17) And He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger. Indeed they put the branch to their nose. (18) Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them."
We need to discuss the reason for the destruction of the First Temple. In the above-quoted passage of scripture, we have an account of a vision that the Lord gave to the prophet Ezekiel in approximately the year 592 BC[5]. In the vision, the Lord showed Ezekiel how extensive Judah’s worship of foreign gods had become. Scripture teaches us that towards the end of his reign, King Solomon (influenced by his many foreign wives) introduced Israel to the practice of worshipping foreign gods (1 Kings 11:1-8). Over the following centuries leading up to the destruction of both the tabernacle at Shiloh and the First Temple, pagan worship became more and more prevalent in both Israel and Judah. It eventually became common practice for Judah to use the Lord's Sanctuary for their abominable practices (2 Chronicles 33:4-5). And so we see that one of the main reasons why the Lord eventually destroyed both the Tabernacle at Shiloh and the First Temple was because of the Jew’s worship of foreign gods. The irony is that King Solomon, who built the First Temple, was the one who introduced Israel to the practices that ultimately led to its destruction. So why is this point so important? It is important because as we will see in a later section, the Lord would not allow the Jews to build the Second Temple until they had repented from their practices of worshiping foreign gods.
Michael E.B. Maher
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