by Brian Godawa
Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 710.
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The shekinah glory leaving the temple: Biblically, the shekinah had left Israel in Ezekiel’s day, along with the ark. However, it is an interesting footnote of history that the following legends support the idea of the shekinah leaving right before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70:
“Rabbi Jonathan (a few years after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D.70) reported that the Shekinah glory of God left the inner Temple in A.D.66. For three and a half years, he said the Shekinah...
"abode on the Mount of Olives hoping that Israel would repent, but they did not; while a Bet Kol [a supernatural voice from heaven] issued forth announcing, Return, 0 backsliding children [Jeremiah 3:14]. Return unto Me, and I will return unto you [Malachi 3:7], when they did not repent, it said, I will return to my place [Hosea 5: 15]" (Midrash Rabbah, Lamentations 2:11).
Early Jewish Christians in Jerusalem would have known about this event mentioned by Rabbi Jonathan which both Jewish Christians and ordinary Jews reckoned as a miraculous sign concerning the holiness of the Mount of Olives. Christians in particular would no doubt have seen in this miraculous event much more significance than may meet the eye today. And indeed they did! Eusebius mentioned the importance of this removal of the Shekinah glory from the Temple mount to the Mount of Olives in his Proof of the Gospel (Bk. VI. ch.18).
"Believers in Christ congregate from all parts of the world, not as of old time because of the glory of Jerusalem, nor that they may worship in the ancient Temple at Jerusalem, but...that they may worship at the Mount of Olives opposite the city, whither the glory [the Shekinah Glory] of the Lord migrated when it left the former city."
To Eusebius, it was a sign that God had departed from the Temple on the western hill and had retreated to the Mount of Olives on the east as the new place of his divine residence. This event of the Shekinah glory leaving the Temple and abiding on the Mount of Olives became highly significant to Christians because this was the mountain where Jesus did most of his teachings in Jerusalem (and telling the Jews to repent in his day).
Ernest L. Martin, Secrets of Golgotha (Second Edition): The Lost History of Jesus' Crucifixion (Portland OR: Associates for Scriptural Knowledge, 1996), 167-168. http://www.askelm.com/golgotha/Golgotha%20Chap%2000.pdf
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The spiritual harlotry of Israel:
“Ortlund points out regarding this harlotry theme that “what begins as Pentateuchal whispers rises later to prophetic cries and is eventually echoed in apostolic teaching.” Eventually this harlotry image is especially employed by the prophets Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel who “exploit it to the fullest.” Hosea develops the theme of harlotry throughout his entire book, even marrying a harlot himself to illustrate Israel’s sin (Hos 1:2; 3:1–3). For instance, Hosea 2:2 reads: “Contend with your mother, contend, / For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; / And let her put away her harlotry from her face, / And her adultery from between her breasts.” Jeremiah 3:6 speaks similarly: “Then the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king, ‘Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there’” (Jer 3:6). Jeremiah and Ezekiel particularly develop it “into elaborate images.” The harlot metaphor is applied to Israel dozens of times in the Old Testament.18 The prophets speak of Israel’s unfaithfulness through idolatry as hurtful to her husband: “Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols” (Eze 6:9a). Consequently, “in a number of passages in the Old Testament, therefore, the ‘lovers’ after whom Israel went were other deities who were making a bid for her allegiance” (J. Thompson 1997: 476).
We must realize that although the charge of Israel’s spiritual harlotry tends to focus on its most egregious manifestation in idolatry, it is not limited to idol worship. In the biblical view of marriage, the wife’s faithfulness involves a wholesale relationship of loving obedience to her husband (Nu 5:29; Jer 31:32; Eph 5:22–23; 1Pe 3:1, 6), not just the avoidance of adulterous relations. Consequently, there are places where charges of harlotry against Israel speak of situations not involving actual, formal idolatry. For instance, when lawlessness (not idolatry) prevails in Jerusalem, the “faithful city” becomes a “harlot” (Isa 1:21–23). Here Isaiah declares that the “faithful city has become a harlot” because she was “full of justice” and “righteousness” but “now murderers.” The “faithful [Heb., amen] city” is now acting like a “harlot,” the most unfaithful of women.”
Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation Vol. 1 (Dallas, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2016), 526-527.
Israel has become a symbolic Sodom, Egypt:
Revelation 11:8 …and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.
Israel called by the name of Sodom: Isaiah 3:8–9; Jeremiah 23:14; Lamentations 4:6; Ezekiel 16:46, 48–49, 55–56; Amos 4:11; John 11:8 Matthew 10:15; 11:23–24).
Israel likened to Egypt: Amos 4:10-11.
The Great City of Babylon in Revelation 17 is Jerusalem:
Revelation 18:21–24 21 “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more;.. 24 And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on the land.”
The Great City was previously introduced as the place of the crucifixion, which is Jerusalem.
Revelation 11:8 …and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.
Jerusalem was the one guilty of the “blood of all the prophets and saints who have been slain on the land.” (Rev 18:24):
Matthew 23:35–37 35 so that on you [Jerusalem] may come all the righteous blood shed on the land…. 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!!
Old Testament prophets call Jerusalem the Great City: Jeremiah 22:8 “ ‘And many nations will pass by this city, and every man will say to his neighbor, “Why has the LORD dealt thus with this great city?”
Lamentations 1:1 How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.
Josephus calls Jerusalem a great city:
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, 7.4.
“This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind.”
Flavius Josephus, Jewish Wars 7:8:7 §375
"And where is now that great city, the metropolis of the Jewish nation, which was fortified by so many walls round about, which had so many fortresses and large towers to defend it, which could hardly contain the instruments prepared for the war, and which had so many ten thousands of men to fight for it? (376) Where is this city that was believed to have God himself inhabiting therein?"
Roman historians Tacitus and Pliny call Jerusalem a great city: "However, as I am about to describe the last days of a famous city, it seems proper for me to give some account of its origin." Tacitus, Histories 5.2
“Jerusalem, by far the most famous city, not of Judæa only, but of the East, and Herodium, with a celebrated town of the same name.” Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, 15.15, ed. John Bostock (Medford, MA: Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, 1855), 1428.
The Great City is Jerusalem. Extra biblical sources: Sibylline Oracles 5:154, 226, 413.
Babylon in Revelation 17 and 18 is Jerusalem, not Rome: “Several textual indicators suggest that John is focusing o
n Jerusalem rather than Rome (cp. Provan 1996: 94). (1) In this very Judaic book the language of religious defilement in 18:2 would suggest a Jewish city is in view. (2) Babylon’s double punishment reflects the Old Testament prophetic witness against Jerusalem (18:6; see below). (3) The “great city” (18:10, 16, 18, 19, 21; cp. 18:2) was previously introduced as the place of the crucifixion (11:8). (4) In 18:24 the killing of the prophets by Babylon reflects a familiar sin of Jerusalem (Neh 9:26; cp. 1Ki 19:10, 14; 21:13; 2Ch 24:19, 21; 36:14-16; Isa 1:15; Jer 2:30; 25:4; 26:20-23). (5) The bowl judgments in Revelation 16 are being expanded upon in Revelation 17-18. In the latter bowls “Babylon the great” was distinguished from the cities of the nations (16:19).”Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation Vol. 2 (Dallas, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2016), 506-507.
“It might be objected that the great city in Revelation appears too important among the nations to be identified with Jerusalem rather than Rome. However, Jerusalem was thought to be the “navel” or center of the earth (Gen R 59:5), “destined to become the metropolis of all countries” (Exod R 23:10), and the Psalms (e.g. 48:2–3, 50:2); Lamentations (e.g. 1:1, 2:15) and Prophets (e.g. Zech 14:16–21, Isa 2:2–4, Micah 4:1–3) speak in the loftiest terms of Jerusalem’s place among the nations. Rev 17:18 is probably a similar hyperbole; cf. 4QLam which describes her as “princess of all nations.”
J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, vol. 38, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), 285
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Mount Bashan as location of the fall of the Watchers and place of the serpent: “Bashan was a deeply significant spiritual location to the Canaanites and the Hebrews. And as the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible puts it, Biblical geographical tradition agrees with the mythological and cultic data of the Canaanites of Ugarit that “the Bashan region, or a part of it, clearly represented ‘Hell’, the celestial and infernal abode of their deified dead kings,” the Rephaim.
“Mount Hermon was in Bashan, and Mount Hermon was a location in the Bible that was linked to the Rephaim (Josh. 12:1-5), but was also the legendary location where the sons of God were considered to have come to earth and have sexual union with the daughters of men to produce the giant Nephilim. The non-canonical book of Enoch supports this same interpretation: “Enoch 6:6 And they were in all two hundred [sons of God]; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.” Brian Godawa, When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed (Embedded Pictures, 2014), 75.
“Bashan/Bathan both also mean “serpent,” so that the region of Bashan was “the place of the serpent.” As we saw earlier, the divine serpent (nachash, another word so translated) became lord of the dead after his rebellion in Eden. In effect, Bashan was considered the location of (to borrow a New Testament phrase) “the gates of hell.” Later Jewish writers understood these conceptual connections. Their intersection is at the heart of why books like 1 Enoch teach that demons are actually the spirits of dead Nephilim.
“Lastly, aside from Bashan being the gateway to the underworld, the region has another sinister feature identified in the Deuteronomy 3 passage: Mount Hermon. According to 1 Enoch 6:1–6, Mount Hermon was the place where the sons of God of Genesis 6 descended when they came to earth to cohabit with human women – the episode that produced the Nephilim. Joshua 12:4–5 unites all the threads: “Og king of Bashan, one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei and ruled over Mount Hermon.”
“Just the name “Hermon” would have caught the attention of Israelite and Jewish readers. In Hebrew it’s pronounced khermon. The noun has the same root as a verb that is of central importance in Deuteronomy 3 and the conquest narratives: kharam, “to devote to destruction.” This is the distinct verb of holy war, the verb of extermination. It has deep theological meaning, a meaning explicitly connected to the giant clans God commanded Joshua and his armies to eradicate.”
Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, First Edition (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 200–201.
Mount Sinai replacing Mount Hermon through conflict: Psalm 68:15-22
Psalm 68:15–22 (ESV)
15 O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan;
O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan!
16 Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain,
at the mount that God desired for his abode,
yes, where the Lord will dwell forever?
17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand,
thousands upon thousands;
the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
18 You ascended on high,
leading a host of captives in your train
and receiving gifts among men,
even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.
19 Blessed be the Lord,
who daily bears us up;
God is our salvation. Selah
20 Our God is a God of salvation,
and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.
21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies,
the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.
22 The Lord said,
“I will bring them back from Bashan,
I will bring them back from the depths of the sea,
Installing Messiah on Mount Zion as God’s cosmic mountain:
Psalm 2:6–8
6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
Jesus builds his church upon the rock of Hermon: Matthew 16:13-20. “We’ve seen already that the Jewish tradition about the descent of the Watchers, the sons of God of Genesis 6:1–4, informed the writings of Peter and Jude. Now we see that the transfiguration of Jesus takes place on the same location identified by that tradition. Jesus picks Mount Hermon to reveal to Peter, James, and John exactly who he is – the embodied glory-essence of God, the divine Name made visible by incarnation. The meaning is just as transparent: I’m putting the hostile powers of the unseen world on notice. I’ve come to earth to take back what is mine. The kingdom of God is at hand.” Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, First Edition (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 286.
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Mount Zion, Jerusalem and the temple have all been spiritually fulfilled in the Body of Christ:
Hebrews 12:12–24 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.
Ephesians 2:19–22
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
1 Peter 2:4–5
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
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Drain the cup of the
wine of the fury of his wrath: Revelation 16:19.
Relocation of Mount Zion and Jerusalem to the Body of Christ:
Hebrews 12:22–24
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.
Destruction of temple as the sign of the Son of Man in heaven and the new covenant access:
Matthew 23:35–24:2
35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ” 1 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
