The Temple in the Bible

The Destruction and the Second Temple: Loss and Return

Solomon's temple stood for nearly four centuries until the Babylonians burned it to the ground in 587 before Christ, and Israel went into exile. Seventy years later a remnant returned under the decree of Cyrus and, through hardship and delay, rebuilt the house under Zerubbabel, Ezra, and the preaching of Haggai and Zechariah. The second temple was humbler than the first, and the old men who remembered wept. Yet God promised through Haggai that the glory of this latter house would be greater than the former, a promise the New Testament reads as pointing to the coming of Christ.

To a discouraged remnant rebuilding a lesser house, God gave an astonishing word:

The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.Haggai 2:9 (KJV)

The warnings and the fall

The temple did not fall suddenly or without warning. For generations the prophets pleaded with Judah to turn from idolatry and injustice, warning that the presence of the temple was no charm against judgment if the people forsook the God who dwelt there. Jeremiah stood in its gates and told the crowds not to trust in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, as if the building could save a faithless nation.

The warnings went unheeded. In 587 before Christ the army of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took Jerusalem after a long siege. Second Kings records it plainly: he burnt the house of the LORD, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem. The bronze pillars were broken up and carried off, the vessels were taken, and the people were led away into exile in Babylon. The house of glory was a ruin, and it seemed that God had abandoned His people.

By the rivers of Babylon

The exile was the great grief of the Old Testament. By the rivers of Babylon the people sat down and wept when they remembered Zion. They asked how they could sing the LORD's song in a strange land. Ezekiel, a priest among the exiles, even saw in a vision the glory of the LORD departing from the temple before its fall, a picture of the presence withdrawing. Yet the prophets also spoke of return, of a set number of years, of a God who had not finished with His people.

The honest telling of this story matters. Israel's God allowed His own house to be destroyed rather than let it become a hollow idol. The loss was real, the judgment was just, and the hope was not in the stones but in the promise of the God who had spoken.

The return and the rebuilding

When Babylon fell to Persia, Cyrus the king issued a decree that the exiles might return and rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem. A remnant went back under Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest. They laid the foundation, and the book of Ezra records a scene of mingled joy and grief: the younger people shouted for joy, but many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid. They wept because this house would be so much smaller than the glory they remembered.

The work stalled for years under opposition and discouragement. Then God raised up the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to stir the people to finish it. Haggai rebuked them for building their own panelled houses while God's house lay waste, and promised His presence and blessing if they would build. The people obeyed, and the book of Ezra records that the house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king, about 516 before Christ. The second temple stood.

The greater glory promised

To the discouraged builders of a lesser house, God gave a promise that reached far beyond their own day: The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace. On the face of it this seemed impossible, for the second temple lacked the ark, the visible glory cloud, and much of Solomon's splendour. In what sense could its glory be greater?

The answer the New Testament gives is that the greater glory was a person. This is the temple, later enlarged and beautified by Herod, into which the Lord Himself would come. Malachi promised that the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple. The glory of the second temple was not gold but the presence of the Messiah, who walked and taught within its courts. Its lesser stones would hold a greater treasure than Solomon's ever did.

The long years between

The second temple stood for far longer than Solomon's, through nearly five centuries of turbulent history. After the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, Judea passed under Persian, then Greek rule. In the second century before Christ the temple was desecrated by the Greek king Antiochus, who set up a pagan altar in it, provoking the revolt of the Maccabees. When the temple was cleansed and rededicated, that deliverance was remembered ever after at the Feast of Dedication, which the Gospel of John shows Jesus attending. Through all these upheavals the daily sacrifices continued, the priesthood served, and the hope of the promised Messiah did not die.

It is worth telling this honestly, without gilding it. The second temple era was not a golden age; it was a time of foreign domination, compromise, and longing. The visible glory cloud of Solomon's day did not return, and faithful Jews knew that something was still missing, still awaited. That very sense of incompleteness was itself a kind of preparation. The people were kept waiting, and looking, and hoping, until the day the true glory would walk in through the temple gates. When at last Herod covered the second temple in white stone and gold, he made it magnificent to the eye, but its real greatness was still to come, in a carpenter from Nazareth who would be presented in it as a baby and would call it His Father's house.

How it points to Christ

The destruction and rebuilding of the temple teach a truth the whole Bible confirms: God's dwelling with His people cannot finally be destroyed, though the buildings that picture it may fall. The first temple was burned; the second was raised; and into the second came the true and living temple, Jesus Christ. When His enemies threatened Him in its courts, He said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, speaking of the temple of his body.

So even the ruin and the rebuilding point to Christ. As the second temple rose from the ashes of the first, so the true temple, His body, would be raised on the third day, never to be destroyed again. Haggai's promise of a greater glory and a lasting peace is fulfilled not in cedar or marble but in the risen Lord, and through Him in His people, and at last in the city that no army can ever burn.

There is comfort in this for everyone who has watched something precious fall. Israel saw the house of its glory reduced to ashes, and wept by the rivers of Babylon; the old men who remembered the first temple wept even at the laying of the second, so small did it seem. Yet God was not finished, and the story did not end in the ruins. He brought His people back, He raised the house again, and He filled it at last with a glory no fire could touch. The God who let the temple fall and raised it again is the God who was crucified and rose, and who promises that nothing given into His hands is ever finally lost.

A note for all traditions: the history above (the temples, their building, their destruction, and the rebuilding) is told as Scripture and the record present it. Where the New Testament states plainly that the temple is fulfilled in Christ, that is named as fulfilment; where a connection is a reflection rather than a direct statement, it is offered as such. The one Lord of the whole story, from Solomon to the new Jerusalem, is Jesus Christ, and every believer is called to draw near to God through him.

Read on: Solomon's temple · Herod's temple in Jesus' time · Jesus and the temple · The Temple in the Bible