A Tale for Tisha B’Av
By Ben & Sarai Kerido
“Eikha…”
The choked sound was little more than a desperate whisper from an old man. Tears streamed down from the eyes of the renowned prophet of the Jewish kingdom, tracing the wrinkled lines in his worn face and disappearing into his flowing, white beard.
Yermiyahu HaNavi (Jeremiah the Prophet) had collapsed to the ground at the summit of Har HaZeytim (the Mount of Olives) just east of Yerushalayim (Jerusalem). He moved back and forth in a swaying motion, clutching at the remaining hair on his balding head and knocking his head covering askew. His robes were dirty; his tzitzit (religious fringes) were mangled and frayed. The prophet tightly gripped a wooden board with a roll of parchment sprawled across it. He dipped his pen into a small jar of ink and began to write. The usually beautiful and exquisite handwriting that had lovingly and carefully transcribed countless words of Torah was now a frantic, jagged scribble.
Yermiyahu began to write with a trembling, shaking hand.
Eikha! How the city sits solitary, that was full of people!… Yehudah (Judah) is gone into exile!… Yerushalayim has sinned very grievously…
Dark, acrid smoke billowed from the ivory-colored stone walls and structures of the capital of the Jewish kingdom. Screams of pain and wails of grief mingled with the taunting cheers of victory and even cruel laughter. Blood flowed through the stone streets, trickling down the steps and collecting in grotesque pools.
The Babylonians had previously laid siege to Yerushalayim, reducing the walled city to appalling starvation and disease. Tall, wooden siege towers loomed over the fortified stone walls of the Jewish capital. Now, countless thousands of Babylonian soldiers clad in white garments and protected by iron armor and bronze, dome-shaped helmets stormed past the breached walls of Yerushalayim. Some climbed over the walls, hopping off of the siege towers. Others pulled themselves up on ropes and ladders, facing no opposition. And still more invaders poured through openings in the walls, the result of an incessant pounding by massive catapults. Wielding sword and spear, they surged through the narrow alleyways of the prestigious Jewish capital. Their round metallic shields fashioned in honor of the false pagan deity of the sun reflected the bright morning sunlight.
Human bodies – little more than skin covering skeletons – littered the streets. Most were dead, but some still lived, waiting for their inevitable fate at the end of an iron Babylonian weapon. They were joined by others dying from pestilence and disease; their bodies dripped with sweat and tremorred with chills from raging fever.
A young toddler wailed, begging for something to eat. The child’s mother glared viciously down at her daughter while greedily clinging to a pot of cooked flesh. She pulled out the remains of a small human hand – the older sibling of the child that the mother had already killed, cooked, and consumed… and refused to share.
Babylonian troops rushed towards the mother and child, their swords dripping in blood. In an instant the mother and child joined the mounds of corpses already lining the streets of Yerushalayim. Other soldiers tore the clothing away from young Jewish women, ravishing them repeatedly only moments before their execution. Elderly men vainly tried to shield themselves with worn, crooked walking sticks. Young men resisted feebly with makeshift weapons like kitchen knives and farming utensils, but their efforts merely provoked further wrath from the invading force as they were all slain mercilessly.
Fires had erupted all throughout the city. Flammable tar covered the stones, spreading flames to consume wooden and material structures and objects while shrouding the city in stinging black smoke. Desperate coughing and choking was silenced only by the slashing of Babylonian weaponry.
Babylonian soldiers surrounded the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple erected by Shlomo HaMelekh (King Solomon). The large double doors of bronze had been heavily barricaded by the kohenim (priests) and nevi’im (prophets) inside, and the combatants positioned themselves with battering rams. Calling out and counting in the Akkadian dialect of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, the soldiers pounded against the heavy metallic doors. The clamor of banging metal and splintering wood immediately followed every blow. Eventually the Babylonians began to pry the bronze doors open. Jewish persons who had clustered inside of the Beit HaMikdash for safety now desperately attempted to push back while whimpering, wailing, and shrieking in panic. Another blow from the Chaldean battering ram forced the doors wide open. The Babylonian troops pushed their way inside, striking all inside with their weapons. The pure white linen garments of the kohenim were stained with dark red blood as the Levitical priests were slain inside of the Beit HaMikdash.
Serayah (Seraiah), a frail, older man wearing the vestments of the Kohen HaGadol (the High Priest), huddled behind a large golden menorah (lampstand) along with his deputy, Tzfanyah (Zephaniah). Blood filled the throats and dampened the screams of their fellow kohenim and also the nevi’im as the Babylonian intruders killed them all.The commanding general of the Babylonian forces entered the hall of the Beit HaMikdash. He had left his black stallion outside of the structure. Ornate bronze armor adorned with imagery honoring a host of pagan Babylonian false deities covered his muscular body. His dark eyes adjusted to the dim interior; he coldly surveyed the carnage. Priests and prophets alike along with their wives lifelessly clutched sacrificial altars and incense tables, as if desperately pleading for the mercy that was never shown. The Babylonian soldiers prepared to pounce on Serayah and Tzfanyah.
“Wait!” the Babylonian general, Nebuzaradan, ordered sternly. “Capture them alive and present them to our lord and king, Nebuchadnezzar. He will no doubt bring them to Babylon, and execute them before an audience of Jewish captives to make an example of them.”
The soldiers complied with the commander’s order. They pulled the menorah over. It clattered to the marble floor while they dragged the trembling kohenim out from their futile hiding spot.
See, O Almighty, and behold, to whom You have done this! Yermiyahu scrawled on the parchment further as he watched the scene of unspeakable destruction unfold before him. His flowing tears mixed with both ink and falling ashes. Women eat their own fruit, their newborn infants!… With their own hands, tenderhearted women have cooked their own children!… Kohen and nevi are both slain in the Beit HaMikdash of the Almighty! Prostrate in the streets lie both young and old; maidens and youths are fallen by the sword. You slew them on Your day of wrath; You slaughtered without pity!”
A man and a woman darted out from behind a tall bronze pillar of the Beit HaMikdash, heading towards a side exit. The man, an alleged “nevi” who had falsely prophesied against Yermiyahu that the Almighty would spare Yerushalayim from Babylon’s wrathful destruction, gripped the hand of his adulterous lover. She was the wife of a kohen who vainly watched the pair flee. The light faded from his dying eyes as the blood drained from his twisted body crumpled next to the shulchan lechem panim, the table for the bread of display – which had been left empty and neglected due to famine long before.
Seeing the “prophet” and his lover flee, Nebuzaradan sprinted back to his horse and mounted the black steed. The “prophet” pushed through the piles of bodies already lining the streets while his colleague’s wife glanced over her shoulder with panicked shrieks. The Babylonian general barked out orders to his troops as he pursued the pair.
“The Jews are trying to escape by fleeing southward and eastward. Send orders to flank them. Surround them in the Valley of Hinnom; then kill them all!”
Vultures and other carrion eaters already circled overhead in massive swarms. Residents of Yerushalayim filtered through breaches in the outer walls of the fortified city in a frenzy. They poured into the ravine-like valley surrounding the mountain of the Beit HaMikdash to the south and east. In the Valley of Hinnom, hordes of fleeing Jews crammed between pagan shrines dedicated to Ba’al and other false gods and goddesses as well as the sacrificial altars where their own children had been burned alive as an offering to the abomination of Molech.
Babylonian soldiers encircled the valley, trapping the escaping Jews inside. A volley of arrows launched by expert Babylonian archers mingled with iron spears and rained down on the fugitive population. The “prophet” gripped his adulterous lover tightly, pulling her body into a position to shield him from the incoming arrows. She shrieked as arrows pierced her flesh. A heavy Chaldean spear soared towards the pair, first thrusting her through and then striking the body and lungs of the “prophet.” Together they collapsed to the ground in the Valley of Hinnom, drowning in their blood as they clutched each other in unholy union.
An arrow struck the thigh of another Jewish man as he ran, still holding a small idol of Ba’al in his hand. He crumpled to his knees in front of the sacrificial altar of Molech – the same altar where he had sacrificed his infant son in the idolatrous flames years before. Wounded and kneeling in a manner similar to how he had gleefully worshiped the pagan abominations, his life of rebellious devotion to idolatrous evil was ended in a moment by a Babylonian sword.
The bodies of the residents of Yerushalayim piled on top of each other in the Valley of Hinnom – or the Valley of Slaughter – as Nebuzaradan methodically directed his soldiers. The corpses of women gripping tapestries woven to honor “the queen of heaven” formed a grisly mound along with men who had died while attempting to escape with bags of silver and false weights and balances, which served as a final testimony to their corrupt and oppressive business practices. Birds of prey swooped down and began tearing away at the eyes and flesh of the victims before their life force had fully left their bodies.
Satisfied with the completeness of the carnage, Nebuzaradan kicked his heel into his horse and sped away towards the Babylonian garrison. He soon dismounted, and bowed low before a golden chariot adorned by figures of eagles and pulled by two muscular white horses. A man clothed in blue and purple garments offset with gold trim and wearing a cylindrical gold crown flanking black hair and a beard braided with golden beads, pearls, and jewels reclined within the royal chariot. His black eyes squinted in the sunlight as he watched his chief general approach him.
“May my lord and master, King Nebuchadnezzar, live forever.”
Ignoring the ritual of respect, Nebuchadnezzar demanded bluntly, “Where is the king, and where is his army?”
“Tzedekiyahu (Zedekiah), the king of Yehudah, has taken what remains of his army and fled in the night towards the Arabah,” Nebuzaradan explained. He then added with a sneer of disdain, “The great ‘Shepherd of Yehudah’ has abandoned his flock to be slaughtered while he tries to escape.”
“Dispatch a cavalry force at once and capture him alive at Yericho (Jericho),” Nebuchadnezzar ordered immediately. “Execute his sons, the princes of Yehudah, right in front of him and make him watch. Then gouge out his eyes. Make those images the last thing that treacherous coward ever sees. Then bring him to Babylon and throw him into the dungeon – blind and suffering – until the day he dies of natural causes. May the light of Shamash, the sun god, never grace his face ever again.”
“And what of their temple to the Hebrew Deity?”
“Strip it of everything that has value,” Nebuchadnezzar ordered flippantly. He then turned to his chariot driver and entourage. “Bring me into the House of their G-d.”
Tziyon (Zion) spreads out her hands; she has no one to comfort her, the weeping prophet jotted down onto his roll of parchment. The Almighty has summoned against Yaakov (Jacob) his enemies all about him. Yerushalayim has become among them a thing unclean.
Yermiyahu HaNavi glanced up from the scroll of his lamentations. He peered with his prophetic vision above the Beit HaMikdash. In a dimension that only he could perceive, a spiritual cloud hovered above the Kadosh HaKadoshim, the Holy of Holies, as if pushed out by the Babylonian invaders. An intense spiritual cloud and flames of fire swirled around the Merkavah (Throne) of the Almighty in a whirlwind, surrounded by an electrical storm of chashmal and a network of glowing coals. Visible thunder and audible lightning emanated from the Merkavah of the Most High. Four chayot, immensely powerful spiritual creatures, flanked the Throne with their assorted wings touching one another. They each had four dimensional faces – those of a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle. Together they rotated, pivoted, and shifted to and fro in accordance with the will of the Spirit of the Almighty.
“Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,…” the four creatures called out in a mighty voice to one another. “Holy, holy, holy is the Almighty of Hosts! The Glory of His Presence fills the entire earth!”
Countless thousands of malakhim, angelic beings of light and fire serving the Most High by the performance of Divinely appointed tasks, clamored around the Merkavah of the Almighty Creator. Malakhei HaSatanim, angels of prosecution, withdrew scrolls of spiritual parchment, furiously shouting the names of the inhabitants of Yerushalayim and Yehudah along with a list of transgressions.
“They have trespassed, betrayed, stolen, slandered, and maligned!” declared one satan.
“They have caused others to sin and be wicked!” added another.
“They have intentionally sinned, even prostituting themselves, extorting others, and making false accusations!” yet another Malakh HaSatan insisted.
“They have given ill advice, lied, contradicted, acted foolishly, and scorned!” said another.
“They have rebelled, disobeyed Your good and righteous words, and provoked!” The accusing angel shifted in a single motion down towards the Valley of Hinnom and stood over the corpses of the lying “prophet” and his illegitimate lover. “Do you see this?” the Malakh HaSatan announced in a rage while pointing down at the pair already being pecked at by vultures.
“They have committed the most vile forms of adultery!”
“They have sworn in vain and falsey!” another satan continued.
“They have been deviant, sinning willingly and deliberately!”
“They have tormented and have been obstinate!”
“They have strayed and led others astray!”
“They have been wicked, perverted, and committed abominations!” another accusing angel railed from the Valley of Hinnom. “The indisputable evidence of their wickedness lies all around them and underneath their corpses! They have engaged in the most grievous idolatry, worshiping the most heinous false ‘deities’ and even sacrificing their children to them!”
One of the most fearsome of the satanim stood forward and approached the Merkavah of the Almighty. “They have descended into deplorable sinat chinam!” he bellowed with a voice that drowned out all others. “They have hated each other without any cause with no shame or remorse! The Almighty is righteous in all that has come upon them!”
All of the malakhim fell completely silent at the final pronouncement. Malakhei HaChesed, angels of mercy, who generally pleaded on behalf of humanity – and in particular the Jewish people – stood shamefaced and silent. After centuries of Divine warning through righteous nevi’im like Yermiyahu (Jeremiah), Yeshayahu (Isaiah), and Yechezkel (Ezekiel), there was no longer any possible defense for the descendants of Yisrael (Israel) who had impudently rebelled against the Almighty and His Torah.
From the center of the Merkavah and from behind the wings of the chayot, a Voice emanated from the Throne. There was no shape or form to be perceived; only a soft, murmuring whisper that thundered and roared beyond all human comprehension.
“Ayehkha? Where are you?”
It was the same question the Almighty asked in Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden), calling out to the first man and woman after their own disobedience. It was the same phrase that the Almighty asks every human being at every moment of their lives to determine the status of their relationship with Him. And it was a similar word with the same Hebrew letters – albeit with different vowels – as Eikha, the resounding cry of Yermiyahu’s lament recorded in his scroll.
The Voice continued. “I set this city of Yerushalayim in the midst of nations, with countries round about her. She rejected My rules and disobeyed the laws of My Torah, becoming more evil even than the nations surrounding her! Assuredly, I will execute judgment against you in the sight of the nations on account of your abominations in a manner which I have never before done. I will vent all of My fury upon you, to make you a mockery, a derision, a warning, and a horror, to the nations round about you. I have spoken.”
The faces of the chayot shifted, expressing themselves as the countenances of eagles while the entire Merkavah shuddered.
“The Almighty will bring a nation against you from afar, from the ends of the earth,” one of the creatures called out to the next, while the others echoed the words in unison recorded by Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our Teacher) in the Torah. “It will swoop down like the eagle – a nation whose language you do not understand, a ruthless nation, that will show the old no regard and the young no mercy… You have failed to observe faithfully all the terms of this Torah, to revere the honored and awesome Name of the Almighty Creator.”
The Merkavah linked with the Shekhinah Presence of the Almighty receded deeper into the thick spiritual cloud of the whirlwind, fading from Yermiyahu HaNavi’s view. Beneath the whirlwind, the chariot of King Nebuchadnezzar approached the Beit HaMikdash. His entourage bore the flags of Babylon – emblems of victorious eagles fluttering in the breeze. They were all completely unaware of the spiritual phenomenon taking place above him.
King Nebuchadnezzar dismounted from his chariot, enraptured by the immense carnage and the ramifications of his pending victory. With Nebuzaradan at his side, the Babylonian king and conqueror stepped into the Beit HaMikdash. His Babylonian troops had already begun to tear down the tall, bronze pillars decorated with carvings and pomegranates, and to carry out the golden, silver, and bronze objects of worship. The large golden menorah where the kohen hagadol had been hiding not long before was ripped out of the Holy Place and brought out into the plaza, surrounded by other holy items regarded as little more than plunder and booty. Tapestries woven to Asherah in secret by the women of Yehudah that had been hidden in the Beit HaMikdash were flung away and abandoned by the Babylonians, as though even the invaders perceived the worthless nature of the idolatrous objects.
Nebuchadnezzar’s eyes glowed with unbridled arrogance as his soldiers tore down the parokhet (curtain) separating him from the Kadosh HaKadoshim.
“I will climb to the heavenly realms,” Nebuchadnezzar began first in a whisper. His voice rose in a furious crescendo. “I will set my throne higher than the stars of the Almighty!” Nebuchadnezzar raised his hands mightily as he kicked at a golden utensil used in the korbanot (offerings) of the Beit HaMikdash. “I will sit in the mountain of assembly on the northern summit of the gods! I will mount the back of a cloud, and I will be equal to the Most High!”
The fearsome satan appeared in the Beit HaMikdash, eyeing Nebuchadnezzar and the rest of the Babylonian plunderers with rage and disgust.
Nebuchadnezzar continued, addressing his soldiers and unaware of the presence of the accusing angel. “This is the greatness of Babylon, which I have created by my vast power for the glory of my majesty!”
The invisible satan stood before the grinning king of Babylon, who knew nothing of the accuser’s presence. The spiritual fire and light of the malakh glowed furiously as he wrote in a scroll with a pen of flame.
“Your day of judgment from the Almighty will come,” the heavenly accuser announced. “The time of your own doom is certain. The sentence is decreed and the verdict is commanded. All creatures shall know that the Most High is sovereign over all the realms of man, and He gives it to whomever He wishes, and He may set over it even the lowest of men.”
“Nebuzaradan,” the Babylonian king called to his general with sinister impudence, completely ignorant of the ominous decree against him. “After all the wealth has been taken from this temple, raze it to the ground and destroy it by fire.”
Nebuzaradan nodded and relayed the orders. Soon the Babylonian catapults had been brought into their firing positions around the Beit HaMikdash; they were prepared with loads of boulders and flammable tar.
On Har HaZeytim, Yermiyahu HaNavi continued to write as he heaved with sobbing.
We have transgressed and rebelled, and You have not forgiven. You have clothed Yourself in anger and pursued us. You have slain without pity. You have screened Yourself off with a cloud, that no prayer may pass through. You have made us filth and refuse in the midst of the peoples.
A small band of about a dozen Babylonian soldiers approached the aging prophet. The elderly man huddled over his wooden board and parchment, his eyes stained red with tears. He glanced at the incoming troops. They approached him with outstretched weapons, scrutinizing the old Jewish man curiously.
Yermiyahu slowly rose to his feet. He displayed his empty hands to the Babylonians.
“The Almighty has sent His servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, against our land and its inhabitants,” the prophet choked out bitterly in choppy Akkadian, “because we refused to listen to His words and we rejected His Torah.”
The soldiers brandishing daggers and weapons of archery paused, staring in suspicious surprise at the unexpected words from the religious Jewish man. They then glanced at one another, and ultimately looked to their commanding officer.
“Bind this one in fetters and take him to Nebuzaradan,” the officer ordered. “Let him decide what to do with him.”
Yermiyahu extended his hands in submissive compliance. The soldiers bound the prophet in bronze shackles and led him down from the mountain covered with olive trees past the nearby collection of bloody carcasses.
Yermiyahu joined a procession of thousands of Jewish inhabitants of Yerushalayim who had barely survived the Babylonian onslaught. Bound and shackled, they shuffled towards the southern road away from the Jewish capital and towards Beit Lechem. Some collapsed to the ground, weak from famine or ravaged by illness. The Babylonian masters immediately executed them, flinging their bodies to the side of the road as a warning to the other captives. At Nebuzaradan’s order, the catapults fired, hurling their ignited loads towards the holiest place on earth. Boulders drenched in flaming tar soared towards the Beit HaMikdash, striking the stripped-down stone structure. The earth shook with the impact of the catapult loads against the Jewish Temple while the Babylonians hooted and jeered. A collection of foreigners from Edom, Moav, and Ammon observing from afar likewise cheered and threw up their hands with gloating delight.
One piece at a time, the Beit HaMikdash collapsed inwardly while the flames and smoke from the burning tar rose ever higher. The parokhet separating the Kadosh HaKadoshim that had been carelessly tossed aside ignited along with the pagan tapestries woven to honor the false goddess of Asherah. The faint remaining vestiges of the Shekhinah Presence of the Almighty hovering above the Beit HaMikdash disappeared, leaving a dull, ominous vacuum instead.
“Eikha!” Yermiyahu wailed as he dropped to his knees. The rest of the surviving remnant of Yerushalayim echoed his mourning. “The Almighty has rejected His mizbeach (altar), and disdained His Mikdash (Sanctuary)! He has handed over to the foe the walls of its citadels! They have raised a shout of triumph in the House of the Almighty as on a festival day!”
The survivors wallowed on the ground, throwing dust into the air and on their heads. Ranging from the prestigious elders to the simple maidens, all released a cry of grief followed by an eerie silence. The silence was short-lived; the cracking whips and taunting rage of the Babylonian masters forced the Jewish captives back to their feet. Amidst flowing tears and sobs of grief, the remains of the Jewish people marched towards their exile in Babylon.
Nearing Ramah in the tribal land of Benyamin, Yermiyahu peered through his spiritual vision and beheld a feminine figure appear in a flash of light. The neshamah (soul) of a petite, middle aged woman manifested itself near the throngs of Jewish captives. But only Yermiyahu HaNavi could perceive the appearance of Rachel Imanu (Rachel the Matriarch).
Rachel howled with a bitter wail of grief matched only by the weeping of the mothers of Egypt after the death of their firstborn sons in the tenth and final plague. No words were formed. She merely shrieked with a primal, maternal moan. Malakhei HaChesed, angels of mercy, likewise appeared, trying in vain to console her. Rachel Imanu pushed the beings of fire and light approaching her away frantically, continuing to roar in wordless emotion.
The soft, still murmuring Voice returned. The deafening roar of the Divine Whisper silenced even the grief-laden screaming of Rachel Imanu mourning for her children.
“Restrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from shedding tears,” the invisible, imperceivable Voice declared. “For there is a reward for your labor. They shall return from the enemy’s land. And there is hope for your future. Your children shall return to their country.”
Still blubbering with sobbing and weeping, yet much more constrained, the neshamah of Rachel Imanu receded back into the dimensions of the afterlife and the world beyond.“Eikha,” Yermiyahu moaned in a choking whisper. “Behold, the precious children of Tziyon! The finest gold is debased, and the sacred gems are spilled! Because of this our hearts are sick! Because of these our eyes are dimmed! Because of Har Tziyon (Mount Zion), which lies desolate, with jackals prowling over it!”
“You there!” a voice called out to Yermiyahu HaNavi, interrupting his lamentations. “Step aside and come forward to me.”
The Babylonian guards nearby pulled the elderly prophet out of the procession headed towards the land of the Chaldeans and presented him to their commander. The weeping, aging man stood before Nebuzaradan. His dirty, torn clothing contrasted the shimmering bronze armor of the Babylonian general.
“Are you Yermiyahu, the legendary prophet of the Jews?” Nebuzaradan asked while he scrutinized the sharp, tear-stained eyes hidden behind strands of greasy white hair. “Are you the one they speak of amongst the exiles of Yehudah? Are you the colleague of Daniel and Yechezkel?”
Yermiyahu said nothing for a long moment, holding his head downward. With a heavy sigh, he raised his piercing brown eyes to meet the dark eyes of the general, and he nodded in the affirmative.
Nebuzaradan examined the elderly prisoner before him quietly, then stated, “As you and your colleagues have prophesied, the Almighty Whom you worship threatened this place with this disaster. And now the Most High has brought it about because of the sins of Yehudah. And now I am releasing you.”
The general motioned to the nearby troops. Soon the Babylonian guards had removed the bronze fetters from Yermiyahu’s wrists. Nebuzaradan spoke further to the Jewish prophet.
“If you would like to come with me to Babylon, I will look after you there. But if you do not wish to go, you are not required to. You may remain here instead.”
Yermiyahu hesitated and didn’t say a word.
Nebuzaradan continued. “King Nebuchadezzar has appointed Gedaliah Ben Achikam as the subordinate authority over what’s left of the towns and population of Yehudah. I will give you a small allowance of food and provisions. You may go to Gedaliah, or wherever else you like. You are hereby released and dismissed from my presence.”
Without another word, Nebuzaradan turned away from the prophet. He made his way back to his deputy officers, continuing to organize the military campaign and the transport of the Jewish survivors to their exile in Babylon.
Yermiyahu HaNavi staggered back towards Yerushalayim, stepping over the bodies of his countrymen along the way. He stumbled back to the summit of Har HaZeytim and located his tear-stained scroll of parchment still resting on the wooden board. The sun hung low in the sky as the fires in the smoldering ruins of the holy capital of the Jewish people began to subside. The prophet peered into the rubble, still hazy with smoke. The vision was blurry and indistinct, but no less tangible. He glimpsed a time in the future when Yerushalayim would be rebuilt and repopulated. The Beit HaMikdash would stand once again, and people from all over the world – both Jews and otherwise – would stream to the eternal capital of the Jewish nation. Voices of children playing in the streets would once again be common in the squares. The joy of bride and groom would one day again echo off of the walls of narrow alleys. The sound of the canes and walking sticks of elderly men and women would in the future again click on paved stone roads. Indeed, the forlorn city lying in ruins would again teem with people to the point of being overcrowded.
Lowering himself to the ground, Yermiyahu retrieved his pen and the spilled jar of ink to conclude his scroll of lamentations.
The Almighty does not reject forever. He first afflicts, then pardons in His abundant kindness. For He does not willfully bring grief or affliction to man… Of what shall a living man complain? Each one of his own sins! Let us search and examine our ways, and turn back to the Almighty. Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to the Most High in the heavens… Why have You forgotten us utterly, and forsaken us for all time? For truly, You have rejected us, and bitterly raged against us… Take us back, O Almighty, to Yourself, and let us return. Renew our days as of old.
Yermiyahu HaNavi lifted his eyes from the parchment as the sun dropped below the horizon. The colors of the sky matched the flames that had consumed the holy Beit HaMikdash. The long shadows cast by the setting sun ominously revealed the crumbling destruction of what once comprised the city walls and house of worship built by David, Shlomo, and the other great Jewish kings of centuries past.
One final tear slid down the prophet’s wrinkled cheek as the sun disappeared. Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, had finally ended. Yerushalayim plunged into a mourning darkness illuminated by glowing fires and faint, sorrowful starlight.
The weeping prophet repeated the final lines of his scroll one last time in a scratchy, pleading whisper.
“Take us back, O Almighty, to Yourself, and let us return. Renew our days as of old!”