Temple as God’s presence (Jeremiah 7)

Do you have a favourite text from Jeremiah? By setting the verses you already know in context, you’ll have a better appreciation of this prophet.

“Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?” God asked through Jeremiah (7:11). And Jesus asked the same question about his Father’s house (Matthew 21:13 || Mark 11:17 || Luke 19:46). Understanding Jeremiah’s context makes powerful sense of both settings.

Jeremiah lived at the most tragic time of Israel’s history, when everything fell apart. Babylon was about to invade Jerusalem, destroy the temple, and take anyone of standing into exile.

The leaders didn’t want to hear Jeremiah’s message. They were sure he was a false prophet — speaking for the enemy, not for God. They said no one could conquer God. If the Lord was in Jerusalem, the city was safe. To echo the words of Psalm 46:4-5, Jerusalem was the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall.

But Jerusalem was no longer the city of God according to Jeremiah. The temple was no longer a house inviting God’s kingship. God had moved out because his house was already occupied — not by a foreign army but by bandits robbing God of his authority so they could dominate the people with their own:

Jeremiah 7 (NIV)
⁴ Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” …
⁹ Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, ¹⁰ and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? ¹¹ Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? …
¹⁵ I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your fellow Israelites, the people of Ephraim.’

Not God’s house! A haunt for criminals! The temple was no longer God’s house where his servants implemented God’s justice for his people. It was occupied by thieves, deceiving the people into serving them. God would not stand for it. Neither would the temple!

They thought God’s presence was in the temple. Jeremiah inverts that. The temple was in God’s presence. If God found it offensive, he could remove it — and the offenders — from this presence (verse 15).

There was a precedent. For a long time, the ark that represented God’s throne was housed in a tent at Shiloh in the tribe of Ephraim. Where were those northern tribes now? The Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah was left, and even Judah did not keep the commands of the Lord their God. … So the people of Israel were taken from their homeland into exile in Assyria (2 Kings 17:18-19, 23). Yes, God could cast Judah from this presence too, into exile in Babylon.

So, was this the final tragedy? If the whole land was captured and the last of the tribes was exiled, was it the end of the nation? If the house for God’s kingship was gone because the covenant was violated beyond repair, was this the end of God’s dealings with the Abrahamic family?

No, says Jeremiah. God wasn’t abdicating. God would start over: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.” (Jeremiah 31:31). We’ll talk more about that in a coming post.

Jesus and the temple (Matthew’s Gospel)

Jeremiah was right. Babylon destroyed Solomon’s temple. Seventy years later, some returned and rebuilt the temple. This second temple stood for more than 500 years. But through that whole time, they were never a nation under God’s rule, always under foreign rule.

Then, one day, God’s anointed came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The crowds recognized the king who’d come to save them: “Son of David … arriving in the name of the Lord! Hosanna!” (Matthew 21:9).

The king went straight to the temple. He found it occupied by bandits who would kill to rob him of his authority, just like when Jeremiah proclaimed the demise of the first temple: “You are making it a den of robbers” (Matthew 21:13).

Like Jeremiah, Jesus announced the fall of the temple that rejected the divine authority given to the Messiah (the anointed king). Like their ancestors, those in charge in the temple would kill for power (Matthew 23:33-36).

Like Jeremiah, Jesus announced the temple would fall, while heaven would give him the kingship (Matthew 23:38 – 24:31). The new covenant was established in his bloodshed, restoring his Father’s reign (26:28-29). He died as King of the Jews (27:11, 29, 37, 42), but was raised up as Lord of heaven and earth (28:18).

The whole of Matthew 21–28 confronts this conflict between temple and king, the demise of the temple that rejected God’s reign, the restoration of God’s reign by overturning death and raising up his anointed to reign over all nations.

Jesus and the temple (John’s Gospel)

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ prophetic act in overturning the temple is found at the start of his ministry (John 2:13-17). The demise of the temple is an enigma that God enters to restore his people. How could the Son fall if he is the divine presence?

The sovereign Word became flesh, dwelling among us in the body of Jesus (John 1:14). But if Jesus’ body is the temple where God is present, how could this temple fall? And how could the destruction of this temple restore the sovereign presence of heaven to the earth?

Jesus warns them that their rebellion against God’s presence will not overturn his authority: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” … He was speaking about the temple of his body (John 2:19, 21 ESV).

So what?

The temple’s rejection of God’s authority was the reason it was destroyed and the capital fell in 586 BC.

The temple’s rejection of God’s authority in the Messiah was the reason it was destroyed and the capital fell in AD 70.

The gospel is the good news that the fallen kingship has been raised up in God’s Anointed. In the new covenant inaugurated by his execution and exaltation, heaven’s reign has come back to earth.

That’s how Jesus understood and applied Jeremiah’s prophetic words. In his Anointed, God has ended the war between his people and the nations, restoring the whole world from the power of evil into the reign of his Son. This is the gospel of the Lord.

What others are saying

J. A. Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 281:

The result of such reckless disregard of Yahweh was that the temple (this house) came to be regarded as a robbers’ cave (m^eʾāraṯ pāriṣîm) (v. 11). The figure is an apt one. Robbers and bandits who sally forth for robbery and plunder secure for themselves a hideout in some secluded area, to which they retire for protection and safety away from the eyes of the authorities until the hue and cry dies down, only to issue forth again when the pursuit ceases, to commit fresh robberies. Yahweh’s people too are lawbreakers, i.e., covenant-breakers. Their misdeeds merit divine judgment. They flee to the temple for protection, thinking to be safe there, believing that participation in the formal rituals of the cult would somehow deliver them from the Judge. But the temple was no sheltering place for covenant-breakers. There was no security there from the searching eyes of Yahweh. Yahweh declares, I myself have seen. He was not blind; the temple would not shelter covenant-breakers. It was, in any case, not inviolable as the next verse shows.

R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 888:

Jesus’ prediction of the physical destruction of the temple plays a significant role in the story of his trial and death: it will be used against him in 26:61 and as a taunt when he is on the cross (27:40). It remained a central charge against Jesus and his movement (Acts 6:13–14). In making this prediction Jesus stood in a prophetic tradition: the possibility of the destruction of the temple is already envisaged in 1 Kgs 9:6–9, and Micah (Mic 3:12), Jeremiah (Jer 7:11–14; 26:1–19) and Uriah (Jer 26:20–23) all warned that Solomon’s temple would be destroyed, as indeed it was in 586 bc.

Apostle Paul, addressing how God has done right by his people and the nations (translated by Scot McKnight, The Second Testament, IVP, 2023):

Romans 3 ²¹ Now, apart from the Code, God’s rightness is made apparent — being witnessed by the Code and the prophets — ²² God’s rightness through Yēsous-Christos-allegiance [Jesus-Christ-faith] for everyone who is allegiant (For there is no distinction ²³ for all sinned and lack God’s splendor.), ²⁴ being righted as a gift by his grace through the liberation that is in Christos Yēsous.

Related posts

• How do the Prophets apply to Christ?
• How do the Prophets apply to us?
• How to approach the Prophets
• Two powers (Mt 21–28)
• Olivet Discourse: temple and king (Mt 24)
• Greater than the temple? (Mt 12:6)

[Photo by Philip Evans: “Model of the First Temple, showing the Temple façade and the so-called Sea of Solomon in the foreground.” Leen Ritmeyer, The Quest: Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Carta, 2015), 278.]