 |
Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms |
|
|
|
Haggai 2:9, "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..."
This is interpreted by many Christians as referring to Jesus' glory.
Answer for yourself: What is the truth of the matter?
There was no glory in the Second Temple, because it lacked the fullness of the First Temple, materially without the holy Ark of the Covenant, etc., and spiritually without the special holy presence of G-d, the Sechinah. This glory had long departed before the birth of Jesus.
Ezekiel 43:7, " . . the place of my throne, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever. . .
Unmistakably, this verse is not about the Second Temple, because, in addition to lacking fullness it lacked peace. While at Mount Sinai Moses was given instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, and as you know, resided in the Holy of Holies within the Temple at Jerusalem. The top of the ark was the mercy seat before which the high priest sprinkled blood on the day of Atonement. Two cherubim adorned the top of the ark. It was housed in the inner sanctuary of the tabernacle. The Ark was first destined to contain the testimony, that is to say the tables of the Law (Ex., xl, 18; Deut., x, 5). Later, Moses was commanded to put into the tabernacle, near the Ark, a golden vessel holding a gomor of manna (Ex., xvi, 34), and the rod of Aaron which had blossomed (Num., xvii, 10). According to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix, 4), and the Jewish traditions, they had been put into the Ark itself. Some commentators, with Calmet, hold that the book of the Law written by Moses had likewise been enclosed in the Ark; but the text says only that the book in question was placed "in the side of the Ark" (Deut., xxxi, 26); moreover, what should be understood by this book, whether it was the whole Pentateuch, or Deuteronomy, or part of it, is not clear, though the context seems to favour the latter interpretations. However this may be, we learn from III Kings, viii, 9, that when the Ark was placed in Solomon's temple, it contained only the tables of the Law.
The people carried the ark with them during the wilderness wanderings. Eventually it was brought into the land of Canaan where it rested at Shiloh for a time. The ark was carried into battle by the Israelites. The Philistines captured it, but when a plague broke out in their camp, they sent it back by ox cart to the Israelites. David brought the ark to Jerusalem and Solomon eventually placed it in the Temple he built. The ark was apparently destroyed when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 587 BC.
As to what became of the Ark at the fall of Jerusalem, in 587 B.C., there exist several traditions, one of which has found admittance in the sacred books.
In a letter of the Jews of Jerusalem to them that were in Egypt, the following details are given as copied from a writing of Jeremiah: The prophet, being warned by G-d, commanded that the tabernacle and the ark should accompany him, till he came forth to the mountain where Moses went up and saw the inheritance of G-d. And when Jeremiah came thither he found a hollow cave and he carried in thither the tabernacle and the ark and the altar of incense, and so stopped the door. Then some of them that followed him, came up to mark the place; but they could not find it. And when Jeremiah perceived it, he blamed them saying: the place shall be unknown, till G-d gather together the congregation of the people and receive them to mercy. And then the Lord will shew these things, and the majesty of the Lord shall appear, and there shall be a cloud as it was also shewed to Moses, and he shewed it when Solomon prayed that the place might be sanctified to the great G-d. (II Mach., ii, 4-8) According to many commentators, the letter from which the above-cited lines are supposed to have been copied cannot be regarded as possessing Divine authority; for, as a rule, a citation remains in the Bible what it was outside of the inspired writing; the impossibility of dating the original document makes it very difficult to pass a judgment on its historical reliability. At any rate the tradition which it embodies, going back at least as far as two centuries before the Christian era, cannot be discarded on mere a priori arguments.
Side by side with this tradition, we find another mentioned in the Apocalypse of Esdras; according to this latter, the Ark of the Covenant was taken by the victorious army that ransacked Jerusalem after having taken it (IV Esd., x, 22). This is certainly most possible, so much the more that we learn from IV Kings, xxv, that the Babylonian troops carried away from the temple whatever brass, silver, and gold they could lay their hands upon.
At any rate, either of these traditions is certainly more reliable than that adopted by the redactors of the Talmud, who tell us that the Ark was hidden by King Josias in a most secret place prepared by Solomon in case the temple might be taken and set on fire. It was a common belief among the rabbis of old that it would be found at the coming of the Messiah. Be this as it may, this much is unquestionable; namely that the Ark is never mentioned among the appurtenances of the second temple. Had it been preserved there, it would most likely have been now and then alluded to, at least on occasion of such ceremonies as the consecration of the new temple, or the re-establishment of the worship, both after the exile and during the Machabean times. True, the chronicler, who lived in the post-exilian epoch, says of the Ark (II Par., v, 9) that "it was been there unto this day". But it is commonly admitted on good grounds that the writer mentioned made use of, and wove together in his work, without as much as changing one single word of them, narratives belonging to former times. If, as serious commentators admit, the above-recorded passage be one of these "implicit citations", it might be inferred thence that the chronicler probably did not intend to assert the existence of the Ark in the second temple.
That being the case the "glory" of the Temple had long departed before the birth of Jesus and this passage could not refer to him.
Indeed, the Second Temple was destroyed by Israel's enemies in 70 C.E. The forced connection between this verse and Jesus is without justification. We do know, however, that the latter house will be the Temple of the Messianic Era, and that it will be greater than the former, the First Temple.