He has laid waste his booth like a garden;
laid in ruins his meeting place;
the Lord has made Zion forget
festival and Sabbath,
and in his fierce indignation has spurned
king and priest.

The Lord has scorned his altar,
disowned his sanctuary;
he has delivered into the hand of the enemy
the walls of her palaces;
a clamor was raised in the house of the Lord
as on a day of festival.
—Lamentations 2:6–7

Interesting that the text makes a point of saying that God himself is the one who has destroyed his own Temple. That has got to be pretty shocking. Not only were they so deeply shattered by the destruction of the Temple, but the writer here is saying that God himself destroyed the thing because it had become that corrupt. And all of the holiest parts of the Temple are described here as things God himself has destroyed. That’s crazy.

It does foreshadow the ultimate Temple to come—Christ himself, who tabernacled among us. God himself will utterly destroy that Tabernacle as well in an act of justice and judgment. Except while this one ushers in a time of exile, that one ends it and brings the exiles home.

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