The sighting of a fox near the southern wall of The Temple Mount in Jerusalem this week is being heralded by some as a sign of a prophecy that is coming true.
The fox was seen on Wednesday, while Tish B'Av, a day of mourning on the Jewish calendar including remembrance of the two Temples of Jerusalem that were destroyed, was marked, reports The Jerusalem Post.
The social media users claiming the animal's sighting were alluding to a reference in Tractate Makkot (24b) in which Rabbi Akiva, Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya, and Rabbi Yehoshua visited the site where the Second Temple was destroyed.
The rabbis saw a fox emerge from the site of the Holy of Holies and all started crying except for Akiva, who laughed, and told them of a teaching from the prophet Uriah, which stated that "for your sake, Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become rubble, and the Temple Mount as the high places of a forest (where foxes are found)."
He added that the prophet Isaiah linked Uriah's prophecy to that of Zechariah, who had been a prophet during the period of the Second Temple, which read that "there shall yet be elderly men and elderly women sitting in the streets of Jerusalem."
Foxes have been spotted near the walls of the Temple Mount in recent years, including in 2019, when the animals were seen near the Western Wall.
At that time, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz, the rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Places, said that it was "impossible not to cry at the sight of the fulfillment of the prophecy of 'Foxes walked in it' on the evening of Tisha B'Av."
"We, who were Rabbi Akiva's students, remember how he consoled his friends when they saw the same image, immediately after the destruction of the Temple," Rabinovitz said. "May it be that just as we were privileged to see with our own eyes what Rabbi Akiva and his friends saw, so we will be privileged to witness what Rabbi Akiva promised his friends, soon in our time, Amen."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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