Prophecy watchers are on excessive alert after a gaggle of foxes had been noticed frollicking on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, probably auguring the long-prophesied reconstruction of the Jewish Temple.
The foxes had been noticed forward of the Tisha B’av spiritual competition, which begins on August 10 and commemorates the destruction of the 2 temples in Jerusalem, first by the Babylonians and later by the Romans.
“One cannot refrain from crying at the site of the fulfilment of the prophecy of ‘foxes will walk on it’”said Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall and holy websites. He was referring to the Book Of Lamentations (5:18), a passage which tells the story of the Babylonians’ destruction of the primary temple in Jerusalem and a prophecy that the location would someday be inhabited by foxes.
This explicit passage is, in flip, tied to a prophecy by the Prophet Zechariah as defined within the Talmud (Makkot 24b) that the temple will someday be rebuilt.
“Until the prophecy of Uriah with regard to the destruction of town was fulfilled, I used to be afraid that the prophecy of Zechariah wouldn’t be fulfilled, as the 2 prophecies are linked,” Tractate Makkot 24b reads.
The group of about a dozen foxes had been seen within the southwestern space of the Western Wall over the previous few days. This is the one surviving part of the Second Jewish Temple. The Book of Lamentations (5:18) is historically learn in the course of the upcoming spiritual competition.
The Temple Mount is one of the holiest spots in Jerusalem and is a focal level for the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths alike.
