Let’s begin with a chapter in Tehillim—Psalm 79. It’s a tefillah for Klal Yisrael to be restored to its land, and for Hashem’s glory to once again be recognized in a world that doubts His presence. It’s a frightening chapter. But it opens with a phrase that has long intrigued me.
It begins with the words, “Mizmor l’Asaf—A song of Asaf.” That alone should catch our attention. Asaf was a Levi, and here he composes a mizmor. But what’s shocking is what follows: “Elokim, ba’u goyim be’nachalasecha..” The nations have invaded Your inheritance, they’ve defiled Your sanctuary, and they’ve turned Yerushalayim into heaps of rubble. The corpses of Your servants, Your chassidim, were left for the birds and beasts. Blood was poured like water around Yerushalayim with no one left to bury the dead.
Pasuk after Pasuk describes horror, desecration, despair, disgrace. So why, the Midrash in Eicha Rabbah (4:14) asks, is this called a mizmor, a song? Why not a kinah, a lament? How could there be any joy in the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash?
The Midrash answers with a mashal.
There was once a king who loved his son dearly and built him a magnificent chuppah, complete with tapestries, rods, and artistic flourishes. But the son rebelled and abandoned his father’s path and joined bad influences. The king, in his fury, rushed in and tore the chuppah to pieces. He ripped it down, smashed the poles, and destroyed every piece.
The king’s son had a tutor who was a wise, loving mentor. When he saw the king destroy the chuppah, he reached for his flute and began to play music. People were shocked. “Do you not see the king’s rage? This is a time for weeping, not singing!” But the tutor replied, “That’s precisely why I sing. Because look where the king poured his anger—not on his son, but on the chuppah. The king spared the child.”
That, says the Midrash, is mizmor l’Asaf. Klal Yisrael sinned, and Hashem had every reason to destroy us. But instead, He took His wrath out on the stones and wood of the Beis Hamikdash. And so Asaf sang not because of what was lost, but because of what was saved.
Rav Shimshon Pincus zt”l extends this idea. “Why take out anger on the Beis Hamikdash?” he asks. If Hashem simply wanted to “release” His anger somewhere other than Klal Yisrael, couldn’t He have chosen something else? Why destroy the holiest place on earth?
The answer, Rav Pincus says, lies in a terrifying pasuk in Yirmiyahu (7:9–11). Hashem says: “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, and swear falsely... and then come and stand before Me in this house, upon which My name is proclaimed, and say, ‘We’re saved!’ so you can continue doing all these abominations?”
In other words, Bnei Yisrael were abusing the Beis Hamikdash. They sinned freely, and then ran to the Mikdash with a korban and a few words of vidui, assuming they were “clean” again. Teshuva became a loophole, and the Beis HaMikdash wasn’t inspiring transformation; it was enabling spiritual corruption.
So Hashem destroyed it not out of vengeance, but out of love.
If the Beis Hamikdash had become a place that prevented true teshuva, then its continued existence endangered our neshamos. And Hashem, our Father, would rather take away the building than lose His children. He destroyed the structure to preserve the relationship.
This, in turn, reframes Tisha B’av. Yes, we mourn destruction. But what we truly mourn is distance. We are orphans, lost in a world without our Father’s house. And just like a child misbehaving in school whose issues are traced back to a broken home—“He doesn’t have a father at home”—so too, all the tragedies of exile trace back to one central cause: we don’t have our Father.
Every war, every illness, every struggle is a symptom. The root cause is galus (exile). And galus means the absence of clarity, of closeness to Hashem. We’re flailing not because we are bad, but because we are far.
So how do we fix it?
The answer is not complicated. But it’s not easy either.
We need to take life seriously. We need to stop treating sin lightly. We need to stop assuming we can always “deal with it later.” Hashem didn’t want our korbanos; He wanted our hearts. When we abused the system, He took the Beis Hamikdash away. And now, He waits for something real.
