Temples were built to hold together the divine realm (“heaven”) and the human realm (“earth”). Jerusalem’s Temple, like the wilderness Tabernacle before it, was designed as a small working model of the entire cosmos. This was where the One God of creation would live, dwelling in the midst of his people. When the Temple was destroyed, this vision was shattered, but the prophets declared that God would one day return. Malachi, one of the last of the ancient prophets, several generations after the return of some Jews from Babylon, insists to the skeptics that “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly
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