There are plenty of explanations about which sins led to the destruction of the Temple. My question is not about which sins they were, but what does the destruction of the Temple do to solve the problem?
Surely there are other punishments that could have been given. If one purpose of the Temple is to be a means to reconcile and procure forgiveness, then what good is it to have it destroyed when the nation sins?
Answer
Jewish historian Josephus records in Antiquity of the Jews Ch. 20,
Certain of these robbers went up to the city, as if they were going to worship God, while they had daggers under their garments; and, by thus mingling themselves among the multitude, they slew Jonathan [the high priest]; and as this murder was never avenged, the robbers went up with the greatest security at the festivals after this time; and having weapons concealed in like manner as before, and mingling themselves among the multitude, they slew certain of their own enemies, and were subservient to other men for money; and slew others not only in remote parts of the city, but in the Temple itself also; for they had the boldness to murder men there, without thinking of the impiety of which they were guilty.
And this seems to me to have been the reason why God, out of his hatred to these men's wickedness, rejected our city; and as for the Temple, he no longer esteemed it sufficiently pure for him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it; and brought upon us, our wives, and children, slavery - as desirous to make us wiser by our calamities.
The reason the Temple was destroyed may have been because it was no longer clean, no longer suitable to be inhabited by God's presence.
In addition to murders occurring in the Temple, there had been corruption in the priesthood in the decades prior. Combined with Roman rule and oversight of the whole city, with hooks in the political and religious system, the Temple may have been destroyed because of its unsuitable state for the divine presence.
Likewise, Josephus records in War that the revolutionary party of the Zealots, joined by the Idumeans, who were Edomites forcibly converted to Judaism, slaughtered 8500 in the Temple outer courts. Josephus suggests this was an irrevocable pollution of the Temple:
The Zealots also joined the the shouts raised by the Idumaeans; and the storm itself rendered the cry more terrible; nor did the Idumaeans spare anybody...and acted in the same manner as to those that supplicated for their lives, as to those that fought them, insomuch that they ran those through with their swords who desired them to remember the kinship there was between them and begged of them to have regard to their common Temple. There was no place for flight nor any hope for preservation; they were driven one upon another in heaps, so were they slain. Thus the greater part were driven together by force, as there was now no place of retreat, and the murderers were upon them, and having no other way, they threw themselves down headlong into the city, undergoing a more miserable destruction, in my opinion, than that which they avoided, because it was voluntary. And now the outer Temple was all of it overflowed with blood; and that day, as it dawned, saw eight thousand five hundred dead there.
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