The Temple’s Destruction

This brief post will make a single point—Jesus used standard prophetic imagery to describe the Temple’s destruction.

The need to establish this point is clear. In the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13:1–27), Jesus spoke about the Temple’s destruction. His disciples asked two questions about this prophecy: when would “these things” happen and what would be their sign (Mark 13:3–4).

Jesus gave his signs in groups. The first group would not be signs of the Temple’s end (Mark 13:5–8). The second would directly affect the disciples (Mark 13:9–13). In his third group, Jesus gave tribulation-signs that would precede the Temple’s fall (Mark 13:14–23). The intensity level increased with each new group.

Jesus’s use of figurative language also increased. The first two groups contain simple declarative sentences. As our last post showed (here), Jesus used hyperbole to describe the tribulation signs in the third group. 

Jesus then gave his fourth and final group of signs. We will call them post-tribulation signs. They related to the Temple’s fall. In them, the intensity and figurative language both reach a crescendo. Jesus said,

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. (Mark 13:24–25)

We have noticed that the hyperbole of the tribulation signs causes many commentators to think Jesus has switched subjects. We might address those writers with a paraphrase from Jeremiah: “If you have run with the footmen of hyperbole, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses of cosmic-collapse imagery?” (Cp. Jer 12:5). 

And so it is. This hyper-symbolic language has led a host of commentators to conclude Jesus was speaking about a catastrophe in our future. The Temple’s fall, in their estimation, had fallen by the wayside as the topic of conversation.

This is a needless mistake. Israel’s prophets had used this language on several previous occasions. It described events similar to those of which Jesus was speaking, the events surrounding God’s judgment of Israel and her Temple. Let’s consider three examples. 

Isaiah had described God’s coming judgment in his “burden against Babylon” (Isa 13:13:1–14:21). He used cosmic-collapse imagery to do so:

Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He will destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine. (Isa 13:9–10)

This manner of speaking did not mean history would end when God judged Babylon.¹ John Gill said, 

This [is] to be understood, not literally, but figuratively, as expressive of the dismalness and gloominess of the dispensation, of the horror and terror of it, in which there was no light, no comfort, no relief, nor any hope of any; the heavens and all the celestial bodies frowning upon them, declaring the displeasure of him that dwells there.²

Nothing in this passage (or any other) suggests the prophet thought literal stars were about to fall. 

Here is another example from Isaiah. It also uses cosmic-collapse imagery. God said, “My sword shall be bathed in heaven; indeed it shall come down on Edom, and on the people of My curse, for judgment” (Isa 34:5). The prophet wrote,

Their slain shall be thrown out; their stench shall rise from their corpses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll; all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls from the vine, and as fruit falling from a fig tree. (Isa 34:3–4)

As with Babylon, Isaiah was not saying the physical cosmos would end when God judged Edom.

Our final example comes from Ezek 32:1–32. God told Ezekiel to “take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Ezek 32:2). Judgment was coming on that nation. God would “make the land of Egypt desolate” (Ezek 32:15). This is like the way Daniel and Jesus described God’s coming judgment of Israel and the Temple’s fall (cf. Dan 12:11 KJV; Mark 13:14).

Here is the language God used to describe the coming judgment of Egypt:

I will lay your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcass. I will also water the land with the flow of your blood, even to the mountains; and the riverbeds will be full of you. When I put out your light, I will cover the heavens, and make its stars dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of the heavens I will make dark over you, and bring darkness upon your land,’ says the Lord GOD. (Ezek 32:5–8)

Here again, this cosmic-collapse imagery described God’s judgment of a nation. It does not mean the world would end as we know it. 

David Brown agreed with this assessment of these passages. Speaking of Mark 13:25, he said,

Nearly every expression will be found used of the Lord’s coming in terrible national judgments: as of Babylon (Is 13:9–13); of Idumea (Is 34:1, 2, 4, 8–10); of Egypt (Ez 32:7, 8); compare also Ps 18:7–15; Is 24:1, 17–19; Joel 2:10, 11, &c. We cannot therefore consider the mere strength of this language a proof that it refers exclusively or primarily to the precursors of the final day.³

Conclusion

Jesus used cosmic-collapse imagery in Mark 13:24–25 to describe God’s coming judgment of Israel. That judgment would bring the Temple’s fall. 

We must not let the richness of the figure—nor the intensity of the other signs—lead us astray. The Olivet Discourse (Mark 13:1–37) was about the Temple’s destruction (Mark 13:1–3) and nothing else.

1. The image in this post depicts the fall of Babylon. It is a woodcut from The Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
2. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (1809–1810; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 5:80.
3. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental and Practical on the Old and New Testaments of A commentary, critical, experimental and practical on the old and new testaments, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 3.1:194.