Not one stone

If the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, then the priest shall go and look. And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house; it is unclean. And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place. (Leviticus 14:43-45)

Mark records in his gospel that Jesus rode into Jerusalem and went to the temple, “And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” He went back the next day and drove out the buyers and sellers and overturned the money-changers’ tables saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

As High Priest, Jesus went into the temple to examine it and found persistent leprous disease in the house. It was unclean. The temple should have been a house of prayer for all nations, a point of light and guidance for all people. But it was not. As Jeremiah had said before:

Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. (7:11-14)

Luke recorded Jesus’ temple examination:

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying,”Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (19:41-44)

Because they refused to repent and recognize the day of their visitation, their house was left to them desolate. Just as Solomon’s temple was torn down by Nebuchadnezzar, so Herod’s temple would be torn down by the Romans. Not one stone was left upon another.


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