Eve of Tisha B'Av

Are we willing to be marked by God as an intercessor who shares in His grief and
plead for mercy for His people, Israel?

He is seeking intercessors to stand in the gap for Israel.

God sent a messenger throughout the midst of Jerusalem to “put a mark on the
foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done
within it.” (Ezekiel 9:4)

“There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and
a time to dance.” (Ecclesiastes 3:4)

In his wisdom, King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that there is a season for
everything, and “a time for every purpose under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

On the Jewish calendar, Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av
is the time for mourning.

According to some rabbis, this day of fasting is as significant to the Jewish people
as Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), which is considered the holiest day of the
Jewish year.

Tisha B’Av, the saddest day in Jewish history, primarily commemorates the
destruction of the First and Second Temples.

In synagogues around the world and at the Kotel (Wailing Wall) which is Judaism’s
holiest site, religious Jews gather to mourn the destruction of the Temples and to read from the words of the Prophet Jeremiah and portions of the book of Lamentations.


Other tragic events that befell the Jewish people on this exact same day are also
remembered on Tisha B'Av, most notably the expulsion of Jews from Spain.


In 586 BCE, Solomon’s Temple (the First Temple) was destroyed by the Babylonians,
who sent the Jews into Babylonian exile.

Under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra, construction began on the Second
Temple 70 years later.

In 70 CE, Herod’s Temple (the Second Temple) was destroyed by the Romans,
656 years after the destruction of the First Temple on Tisha B'Av.

Other Tragic Events That Took Place On Tisha B’Av:


In 132 CE, the Romans crushed Bar Kokhba's revolt and destroyed the
city of Betar, killing over 100,000 Jews

In 133 CE, following the Roman siege of Jerusalem, Roman commander
Turnus Rufus plowed the Temple site and the surrounding area

In 1095, the First Crusade was declared by Pope Urban II, killing
10,000 Jews in its first month and annihilating Jewish communities in France
and the Rhineland

In 1290, King Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England

In 1492, an edict of expulsion of the Jews in Spain was carried out

In 1914, World War I broke out, setting the stage for the later devastation
of World War II and the Holocaust

In 1942 on the eve of Tisha B'Av, the mass deportation of Jews from the
Warsaw Ghetto to Hitler’s Treblinka death camp began

In 1994, the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires
killed 86 and wounded 300 others

In 2005, more than 8,500 Jewish residents were expelled from Gaza as part
of Israel’s ill-fated Disengagement Plan, a desperate bid for peace designed
to further relations with Palestinian Arabs.

After the Jewish soldiers left Gaza, the looting began. The synagogues were
desecrated and torched. Gaza became the staging ground for terrorist attacks
against Israel.

And the rockets have been launched from Gaza ever since, raining fear down
on the Jewish towns and cities in southern Israel.

On Tisha B’Av we must ask ourselves how could God’s people be brutally torn
from the Land that He promised in an everlasting covenant to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

Comfort is found in Amos 9: 14-15:

“I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them;…I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them, says the Lord your God.”

How can Believers, as fellow citizens in the commonwealth of Israel
(Ephesians 2:12-13, 19), appropriately respond on Tisha B’Av to the grief of the
Jewish people?


This is the time to weep with those who weep and to mourn with our brethren, the
people of Israel.


Yeshua (Jesus) wept with compassion when he foresaw the destruction of the
Holy Temple and the disaster that would come upon Israel. He said,

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who
are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate.”
(Matthew 23:37-38)


Yeshua knew that not even one stone of the magnificent buildings of the Temple would remain untouched. All would be thrown down. (Matthew 24:2)

Despite this, when Yeshua was asked for a sign, he answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19)

WILL YOU HEAR THE CALL TO PRAY FOR ISRAEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE??