The Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit
MidrashThe Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit
Midrash
THE
CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE
By
Rav Yitzchak Levi
Translated
by
Why
was the
An examination of the relevant scriptural passages and rabbinic
statements reveals additional reasons for the destruction, aside from the three
mentioned above. In this shiur, we will explore the first half of
I.
THE DAYS OF SHELOMO
The
prophet Yirmiyahu says:
For
this has been to Me as a provocation of My anger and of My fury from the day
that they built it and to this day; that I should remove it from before My
face. (Yirmiyahu 32:31)
"From
the day that they built it" implies that the sinfulness began in the days of
Shelomo.
Chazal and the Rishonim pinpoint two main sins of Shelomo.
The Gemara in Nidda understands that Shelomo's marriage to the daughter
of Pharaoh was the major cause of God's anger against the
city:
One
verse says: "For the Lord has chosen
The Radak adopts a similar approach in his commentary to this verse in
Yirmiyahu, only that he emphasizes the idolatry practiced by Shelomo's
wives:
For
it was during the days of Shelomo who built the city and the
In this context, it is interesting to note the Radak's argument (in his
commentary to Divrei Ha-yamim 35:3) that Shelomo himself already prepared
a place to conceal the ark, since he knew that the
Chazal's understanding (alluded to by the Radak in the
aforementioned passage) that Shelomo's marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh took
place on the day of the Temple's dedication (Vayikra Rabba 12, 5)
illustrates Shelomo's blurring of the boundaries between his own kingdom and the
kingdom of God, a phenomenon that would find expression in various ways over the
course of the entire First Temple period. This blurring, which was based upon,
among other things, Shelomo's arrogance and his understanding that his wisdom
was greater than the wisdom of the Torah itself (see Sanhedrin 21b),
found expression in various areas: the unmediated closeness between the house of
the king and the house of God (to the point that Yechezkel [43:6-9] conditions
the building of the future Temple and the everlasting resting of God's
Shekhina therein on a distancing between the two); the dimensions of the
royal house, which were greater than the dimensions of the house of God;
Shelomo's taking foreign women as his wives, which, even if his intention was to
draw them in under the wings of the Shekhina, led in the end to the
establishment of bamot in honor of idols in Jerusalem on the mountain
to the right of the Mountain of Corruption which stood from the days of
Shelomo until they were removed in the days of Yoshiyahu, that is to say, almost
until the end of the First Temple period.
Shelomo's multiplying of wives, horses, silver and gold also stemmed from
his inflated view of his own greatness and that of his kingdom. Similarly, his
idea that the Temple was meant to serve the entire world and that it would stand
forever, never to be destroyed, was based on exaggerated self-confidence and
seeing his own greatness as a central component of this
eternity.
Already in the next generation, Shelomo's sins led to the division of the
kingdom, a division which in and of itself was calamitous during the entire
II. THE
KILLING OF ZEKHARYA THE SON OF YEHOYDA THE PRIEST
II
Divrei Ha-yamim
22-23 describes the great kindness performed by Yehoyada the High Priest and his
wife Yehoshavat for Yoash the son of Achazyahu and the House of David. Following the death of her son King
Achazyahu, Atalyahu killed all of Achazyahu's sons and assumed the throne
herself. However, one son, Yoash,
survived surreptitiously.
Yehoshavat hid Yoash in the House of God for six years, after which
Yehoyada arranged a coup to depose the evil Queen Atalyahu and restore the
rightful heir Yoash to the throne.
As part of the coup, Yehoyada also restored the worship of God to its
rightful place:
And
Yehoyada made a covenant between him, and between all the people and between the
king, that they should be the Lord's people. Then all the people went to the
house of the Ba'al, and broke it down, and broke his altars and his images in
pieces, and slew Mattan the priest of the Ba'al in front of the altars. And
Yehoyada appointed the offices of the house of the Lord under the hand of the
priests the Levites, whom David had given charge over the house of the Lord, to
offer the burnt offerings of the Lord, as it is written in the Torah of Moshe,
with rejoicing and with singing, as ordained by David. And he set the
gatekeepers at the gates of the house of the Lord, so that no one who was
unclean in anything should enter in
And all the people of the land rejoiced:
and the city was quiet, after they had slain Atalyahu with the sword. (II
Divrei Ha-yamim 23:16-21)
Yehoyada's action and the spiritual revolution that he brought about with
the coronation of Yoash endured until the end of his life, and the kingdom
expressed great appreciation of his efforts:
Yoash
was seven years old when he began to reign
And Yoash did that which was right
in the sight of the Lord all the days of Yehoyada the priest
But Yehoyada grew
old, and was full of days, and he died; a hundred and thirty years old was he
when he died. And they buried him in the City of
Following the death of Yehoyada, however, the situation utterly
changed:
Now
after the death of Yehoyada the princes of Yehuda came, and prostrated
themselves before the king. Then the king hearkened to them. And they left the
house of the Lord God of their fathers, and worshipped asherim and idols.
And anger came upon Yehuda and
Chazal understood that the prostration of the officers before
Yoash was not merely a display of honor before the king, but rather prostration
as part of a religious ritual:
From
where do we know that Yoash made himself into a god? For it is written: "Now
after the death of Yehoyada the princes of Yehuda came, and prostrated
themselves before the king. Then the king hearkened to them." What is meant by,
"And they prostrated themselves before the king"? They made him a god. They said
to him: Were it not that you are a god, you would not have come out after seven
years in the Holy of Holies. He said to them: Thus it is, and he accepted upon
himself to become a god. (Tanchuma, Vaera)
This Midrash is based on another Midrash, according to which the
"bedchamber" in which Yoash hid for six years was in the Holy of Holies (see
Shir Ha-shirim Rabba 1:2; Rashi, II Melakhim 11:2; and the
commentary attributed to Rashi, II Divrei Ha-yamim 22:11). Yoash's
extended stay in the sanctified quarters brought his officers to attribute to
him Divine qualities, and in his arrogance, Yoash accepted what they said and
allowed them to worship him.
Zekharya, the son of Yehoyada the priest, arose to admonish the people
about their sudden spiritual deterioration:
And
the spirit of God came upon Zekharya the son of Yehoyada the priest, and the he
stood above the people, and said to them, Thus says God, Why do you transgress
the commandments of the Lord, though you cannot succeed? Because you have
forsaken the Lord, He has also forsaken you. (II Divrei Ha-yamim
24:20)
Yoash then repays Yehoyada's kindness with evil and gives the order that
his son be killed:
And
they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the
king in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Yoash the King did not remember
the faithful love which Yehoyada his father had shown him, but slew his son. And
when he died, he said, May the Lord see and revenge. (ibid.
21-22)
According to the Midrash, Zekharya was put to death because he had tried
to keep idol worship out of the
Yoash
was about to bring an idol into the sanctuary. Zekharya stood at the entrance to
the sanctuary and said to him: You will not bring it in, unless you kill me. He
stood up and killed him. (Midrash Shir Ha-shirim 3, 2 [ed.
Gruenhut])
Neither Chazal nor the Rishonim relate directly to the
connection between the killing of Zekharya the son of Yehoyada the priest and
the destruction of the
Now, while there is no direct reference to a connection between the
killing of Zekharya and the destruction of the
Midrash about the boiling of Zekharya's blood two hundred and
fifty two years before the destruction.
You
find that when Nevuzaradan went up to destroy
When
Nevuzaradan went up and saw it, he said to them: What is this blood that it
should bubble so? They said to him: It is the blood of bullocks, rams and sheep
that they would slaughter and offer as sacrifices. He brought bullocks, sheep
and rams, and slaughtered [them], but [the blood] did not quiet down, rest or
stand. He immediately ordered them to be brought and hung on the gallows. He
said to them: What is the nature of this blood? If you do not tell me, I will
comb your flesh with iron combs. They said to him: Since the Holy One, blessed
be He, demands his blood from us, we will tell you. They said to him: A priest
and a prophet and a judge would prophesy concerning us about all these things
that you are doing to us, but we did not believe him, and we stood up against
him and killed him for having reprimanded us.
Immediately,
he brought eighty thousand young priests, and slaughtered them, but it did not
rest. And the blood would issue forth until it reached the grave of Zekharya. He
then brought a great Sanhedrin, as well as a minor Sanhedrin, and slaughtered
them, but it did not rest. At that very hour, that wicked man came and cried out
about the blood and said to him: What good are you, and how is your blood better
than all these bloods? Do you want me to destroy your entire nation on its
account? At that very moment, the Holy One, blessed be He, became filled with
mercy and said: Now, if this wicked man the son of a wicked and cruel man, who
has come to destroy My house, has became filled with mercy, I
all the more so.
At that moment, the Holy One, blessed be He, hinted to the blood and it was
swallowed up in its place. (Kohelet Rabba 3, 16; see also parallel in
Gittin 56b)
Another Midrash that draws a connection between the killing of Zekharya
and the destruction of the
Behold,
O Lord, and consider to whom You have done this. Shall the women eat their
fruit, their cherished babes? Shall priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary
of the Lord? (Eikha 2:20)
The
Midrash relates:
It
once happened that Doeg the son of Yosef died and left a young child to his
mother, and every year she would measure him with handbreadths and donate his
weight in gold to Heaven. When
III.
UZIYAHU
One
of the most important historical events in the second half of the
Therefore
She'ol has enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure. And their
glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that is joyful, shall go down
into it. (Yishayahu 5:14)
We learn about the importance of the event from the way it was used to
date the prophecy of Amos:
The
words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Teko'a which he saw concerning
In the continuation of his prophecy, Amos makes several allusions to the
earthquake (see Amos 3:14-15; 6:1; 9:1). So great was the impression left
by the earthquake that its memory was still alive in the period of the return to
Then
shall the Lord go out, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the
day of battle. And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives,
which is before
The author of the Seder Olam Rabba draws a connection between the
earthquake and the vision with which Yishayahu was consecrated for prophecy, in
which he foresees the removal of the Shekhina from the
In
the year that King Uziyahu died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
lifted up, and His train filled the
In
Amos it says: "Two years before the earthquake," and in Yishayahu
it says: "In the year that King Uziyahu died, etc." That was the day of the
earthquake, as it is written: "And the posts of the door moved, etc." (Seder
Olam Rabba 20)
Rashi, in his commentary to this prophecy (Yishayahu 6:6),
connects it and the earthquake to King Uziya's entry into the sanctuary in order
to burn incense:
"At
the voice of him that cried" at the voice of the angels who were crying out.
Now this occurred on the day of the earthquake, about which it is stated:
"And you shall flee, just as you fled from before the earthquake in the days
of Uziya" (Zekharya 14:5). On that very day Uziya stood up to burn
incense in the sanctuary. The heavens thundered to burn him, that is to say,
he was liable to death by burning
The earth thundered to swallow him; it
thought that he was liable to be swallowed up like Korach who challenged the
priesthood. A heavenly voice issued forth and said: "To be a memorial to the
children of
(The
Midrash cited by Rashi appears in a very similar formulation in Tanchuma
[Tzav 70], and with changes in Yalkut
Shimoni.)
What
led to the earthquake and to the removal of the Shekhina from the
Sixteen
years old was Uziyahu when he began to reign, and he reigned for fifty two years
in
But
when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction. For he
transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the
Then
Uziyahu was angry, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense. And while he
was angry with the priests, the tzara'at broke out on his forehead before
the priests in the house of the Lord, beside the incense altar. And Azaryahu the
chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and behold, he was diseased
in his forehead, and they thrust him out quickly from there; and he himself
hastened to go out, because the Lord had smitten him. And Uziyahu the King was
afflicted with tzra'at to the day of his death, and dwelt in the house of
separation, being diseased; for he was cut off from the house of the Lord. (II
Divrei Ha-yamim 26:1-21)
Uziyahu's enormous military and political strength (alluded to by his
name), his mighty army, his victories, his grand construction projects, and the
international esteem which he had earned all these planted pride and arrogance
in his heart "to his destruction," which reached their climax when he entered
the sanctuary to burn incense. The Midrash recounts:
Regarding
Uziyah it is written: "For he loved the soil" (II Divrei Ha-yamim 26:10)
he was king and he abandoned himself to the soil, having no connection to
Torah. One day he came to the bet midrash, and said to them: In what are
you occupied?
They
said to him: Regarding "And the stranger that comes near shall be put to death"
(Bamidbar 1:51).
Uziya
said to them: The Holy One, blessed be He, is King, and I am king. It is
appropriate for a king to serve a King and
burn incense before Him. Immediately, "he went into the
This Midrash once again emphasizes the sin appearing among various kings
of Yehuda - the blurring of the difference between the kingdom of flesh and
blood and the
Yishayahu's prophecy thus opens with great wrath and with the beginning
of the Shekhina's departure in the wake of Uziyahu's pride, his
confidence in his own strength and greatness, and his comparing himself to
God. All of these factors brought
Uziyahu to try to take control of the priestly service and enter the sanctuary
in order to burn incense.
A connection exists, then, between the sins of Shelomo, Yoash and
Uziyahu. All of them failing to limit their monarchy to its original objectives,
blurring the difference between their kingdom and the
IV.
ACHAZ
Chazal
and the Rishonim do not directly connect the actions of Achaz to the
destruction of the
Achaz
was the first king to serve the Molekh (II Melakhim 16:3). Thus, without
a doubt, Achaz served as poor example for the entire people, who also began to
serve the Molekh. This abominable rite, which combines elements of idol
worship, incest, and bloodshed, we find again in Yehuda in the days of Menasheh
and Yehoyakim, and it is not by chance that the prophet Yirmiyahu sees it as
inevitably leading to the destruction of the city (Yirmiyahu
19).
Achaz
also rejected the word of God as found in the Torah and in the mouth of His
prophets. He refused to ask God for a sign (Yishayahu 7:10-12); and it is
about his days that the prophet said: "Bind up the testimony, seal the Torah
among My disciples" (Yishayahu 8:15).
Achaz's
absolute political subjugation to the King of Assyria ("I am your servant and
your son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of
How
did Achaz come to this terrible state? Perhaps he understood that with the
removal of the Shekhina from the
V.
CHIZKIYAHU
Despite
his righteousness, it was in the days of Chizkiyahu that the first explicit
prophecy concerning the destruction of the
Despite
the impressive beginning of Chizkiyahu's reign, which found expression in the
renewal of the Temple service and the king's close connection to the prophet and
the Torah, Chizkiyahu decided apparently, already at an early point in his
life to fight against the Assyrian superpower, and for this purpose he entered
into an alliance with Egypt (Yishayahu 30-31). The spiritual meaning of
this act is the negation of the Exodus from
With
Sancheriv's invasion of Yehuda and his conquest of its fortified cities,
Chizkiyahu begged forgiveness from the King of Assyria and paid them tribute
from Temple funds, from the doors of the sanctuary and from the pilasters that
he himself had overlaid with gold (II Melakhim
18:14-15).
Moreover,
by focusing on this international activity, Chizkiyahu abandoned his primary
mission, an internal spiritual, moral and social mission to establish the
kingdom upon justice (Yishayahu 9:6) and in large measure he left the
internal arena in the hands of his officers, Shevna the scribe standing out as
the most evil among them. As a result, moral corruption spread through all the
institutions of the regime the priests, the prophets, and the officers and
it stands to reason that in their wake also through a large part of the nation.
It was this corruption that brought about the first prophecy concerning the
destruction of the city (Mikha 3; we find similar criticism about the
corruption of the city, but without a prophecy concerning its destruction, in
Yishayahu 1).
Chizkiyahu
was also guilty of arrogance: "But Yechizkiyahu did not pay back according to
the benefit done to him; for his heart was proud: therefore wrath came upon him,
and upon Yehuda and
The
blurring of the boundaries between human kingdom and the
VI. THE ABSENCE
OF THE JUSTICE IN THE CITY OF
As
we saw above, two harsh prophecies were delivered during the days of Chizkiyahu
regarding the consequences of the cessation of justice in
And
I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the
beginning. Afterwards you shall be called the city of justice, a faithful city.
It is not by chance that Scripture sets
The name of the kings of the city even became identified with the name of
the city itself (as we see from the parallel between Yirmiyahu 23:5-6 and
33:14-15). It includes the word tzedek, justice as in the names
Malkitzedek (Bereishit 14:18), Adonitzedek (Yehoshua 10:1) and
Tzidkiyahu (II Melakhim 24:17 and it constitutes an adjective for the
king of
The idea that the
Since the
SUMMARY
The common denominator of the actions of all the kings discussed above
which constitute, in my opinion, the background for the destruction of Jerusalem
and the Temple is arrogance and inflated self-importance, which impair the
relationship between the king and God, and thus pervert also the standing of the
king in his own eyes and in the eyes of his subjects.