Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

The Temple was therefore also the focal point of Israel’s hope. The One God, so the prophets had said, abandoned his house in Jerusalem because of the people’s idolatry and sin. But successive prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Malachi) had promised that he would return one day. That list is significant, since the last two prophets named, Zechariah and Malachi, were writing after some of the exiles had returned from Babylon, after they had rebuilt the Temple and restarted the regular round of sacrificial worship. We will never understand how someone like the young Saul of Tarsus thought—never mind how he prayed!—until we grasp the strange fact that, though the Temple still held powerful memories of divine presence (as does Jerusalem’s Western Wall to this day for the millions of Jews and indeed non-Jews who go there to pray, though they do not think that the One God actually resides there now), there was a strong sense that the promise of ultimate divine return had not yet been fulfilled.