GOD's People Mourn Over The Ruined Temple

 "O GOD, have YOU rejected us forever?  Why vent YOUR anger on the sheep of YOUR own fold?

Remember the people YOU have formed of old, the tribe YOU have redeemed as YOUR inheritance.  Remember Mount Zion, where YOU once lived.

Climb, and visit these hopeless ruins, the enemy has ravaged everything in the Sanctuary.

YOUR foes have roared triumphantly in the holy place, and set up their banner of victory.

Like lumbermen felling trees, they smashed the carved paneling with hatchets, hammers and axes.

They defiled YOUR Sanctuary and set aflame the dwelling place of YOUR name.

See how they keep YOUR Covenant, in the dark caves of the land.

Do not let the oppressed be put to shame; may the poor and needy praise YOUR name."

- Psalm 74:1-2. 3-5. 6-7. 20-21

(The problem of evil comes up from the nation's point of view.  There is no hint that the nation deserved its punishment.  What is at stake, therefore, is the reputation of GOD HIMSELF.  At least, this is how the psalmist unwittingly puts it.

The occasion of this lament could be the first truly religious persecution in history--under Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 B.C.--but on the whole the arguments favor the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586.  But naturally it is the ruin of the Temple that the psalmist describes: it should move GOD to action if HIS own house has been attacked.  The psalm is unhappily all too opposing at the present day: we pray for the Church of Silence.

But salvation is at hand.  The tears of JESUS over Jerusalem [cf. Luke 19:41-44] link this elegy to HIS death, even though HE had said that there wouldn't be a stone left unturned from the Temple [cf. Matthew 24:2].  The destroyed Temple was rebuilt on the third day [cf. Matthew 26:6; Acts 6:14].  Now, it is greater and more perfect than the Old Temple, since it has been raised by GOD [Hebrews 9:12].  JESUS might cry for humanity today.  The weapons of destruction are no longer the ax and the hammer, but could be, for instance, some present economic systems.  All of humanity is called to enter into the new Temple.  Why not pray with this psalm?)

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