LF: Foxes Spotted on Jerusalem Temple Mount in Claimed Prophetic Sign About Third Temple

The site of the Jewish temple is still considered holy by believers. There is a prophecy that promises the temple will one day be rebuilt. A glimmer of hope that the foretelling could come to pass has arisen after a connected prediction about foxes heading to the remains of the Second Jewish Temple, the Western Wall, was fulfilled literally.

Foxes snooping around in Jerusalem ahead of a religious festival have inspired Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites Shmuel Rabinowitz to recall a prophecy about the Jewish temple being rebuilt on the Temple Mount, a site sacred for Jews.

“One cannot refrain from crying at the site of the fulfilment of the prophecy of ‘foxes will walk on it’”, he said as cited by The Jerusalem Post, making a reference to the Book of Lamentations (5:18).

The religious text, which tells the story of the first temple that stood in Jerusalem but was destroyed by the Babylonians, contains a prophecy saying that the site would be inhabited by foxes. As the Israeli outlet points out, a Talmudic tractate suggests that if this prophecy is fulfilled, then another prediction, made by the Prophet Zechariah, saying that the Temple will be rebuilt might also come true.

The fox sighting came ahead of the Tisha B'av festival, which is set to begin on 10 August and commemorates tragic events in Jewish history, includes reading from the Book of Lamentations.

Well, it's kinda biblical. But the "prophecy" said foxes amid desolation on Mount Zion. I wouldn't call the modern Temple Mount site a "desolate" area. The bible tends to use "desolate" in a very absolute sense, like in the destruction of Jerusalem with not a foundation stone left unturned by the invading Romans who just killed everyone. Actually, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have become less desolate every year since the Jews returned and established the Israeli state.

As the Jewish world is counting the days to the ninth of Av (Tisha Be'Av), the date on which Jews mourn the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem following its destruction by the Romans, foxes have been spotted walking near the Western Wall, a press release reported on Thursday.

It is written in the Book of Lamentations (5:18), which is read on Tisha Be'Av, that Mount Zion – where the Temples stood – will be so desolate that “foxes will walk upon it.” The understanding, according to the Talmud in the tractate Makkot (24b), is that if the prophecies of destruction have been fulfilled, so will be the ones by the prophet Zechariah about the Temple being rebuilt.

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites, referred to photos of the foxes and commented, “One cannot refrain from crying at the site of the fulfillment of the prophecy of 'foxes will walk on it.'”

Currently The Dome of the Rock (an Islamic shrine) sits atop the site of the Jewish Temple. Could it be that the term "desolation" in this instance refers to the blasphemous occupation of the site?

Same thing with the red calf that was born a couple of years ago. I don't recall that being biblical either but the Jews attach some spiritual meaning to it.

Hmmmm...the prophecies do speak rather plainly of an abomination of desolation set up in the holy place (the alleged Temple site).

However, the phrase "abomination of desolation" mostly refers to idolatry. In this case, committing idolatry inside the sacred Jewish temple. A historical legend, for instance, holds that Antiochus Epiphanies sacrificed a pig on the altar of the Jewish temple, surely the most cruelly profane act possible under Judaism. [Antiochus Epiphanies was a Seleucid conqueror a few hundred years before Jesus, the books of Maccabees are about his attempt to conquer Israel.) And the Revelation contains some further writing of the Antichrist instituting an abomination of desolation in a (rebuilt) Temple, the ultimate blasphemy.

So an abomination of desolation in the prophetic sense would seem to require a Temple for such blasphemy to be enacted inside of. Anyway, that's the sense you get from various bible passages. It seems to involve a dire blasphemy of Temple rites on its own premises.

Ancient Jews were very volatile on issues like this involving the Temple(s). Another historical legend tells of a Roman soldier who took a leak from his guard post on a Temple wall. An ensuing Jewish riot left 25,000 dead before the Roman garrison could put down the revolt. Very volatile indeed, in a way that I think most of us find hard to imagine realistically. We just aren't those kind of people any more. They were probably both a little more and a little less than we imagine them to be from the stories about them that have been handed down to us for many centuries.

I suppose that a case could be made that Muslim worship (in some form, prayers, et cetera. I assume so anyways.) goes on at the Dome of The Rock, the original site of the Temple.

I see your point, but apparently these Jewish Rabbis know more about this than you or I do.

It has been claimed that the Trump administration's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel is a sign of the end times.