Day 246: Tisha B’Av (Ezekiel 24:1-2)

In the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: ² “Son of man, write down the name of this day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day.

Ezekiel 24:1-2

Through the Bible: Ezekiel 23-24

Every country has their days of infamy. Japan has August 6 and 9, 1945, the days Nagasaki and Hiroshima had the atomic bombs dropped on them. Rwandans would tell you their worst day was April 7, 1994, the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. Russians might say April 26, 1986, when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened.

And of course, we Americans can think of a lot of bad days. December 7, 1941 , November 22, 1963, January 28, 1986 (the Challenger explosion), and of course, 9/11.

For Jews, the day of Infamy is the 9th of Av, or Tish’a B’Av in Hebrew. Av is the fifth month of the biblical Hebrew calendar (and the eleventh month of the civil calendar). Because the Hebrew calendar is lunar-solar, Av usually falls sometime in July or August on our Gregorian calendar.

The 9th of Av is considered the saddest day in Judaism. According to the Talmud, it marks the day Solomon’s Temple was destroyed.

Second Kings 25 dates Nebuzaradan’s arrival in Jerusalem to the seventh of Av, while Jeremiah 52 dates it to the tenth. The Talmud reconciles the accounts by describing the destruction as a process: the Babylonians entered the Temple precincts on the seventh, set the Temple on fire late on the ninth, and it continued burning into the tenth.

Even today, Jews still commemorate the 9th of Av. The fast begins at sunset on the eighth of the Hebrew month of Av and concludes at nightfall the following day. To observe this day of mourning, Jews abstain from food, water and sources of joy. They customarily recite traditional elegies called kinot. They read the book of Lamentations.

Jewish tradition also remembers Tisha B’Av as the date of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in AD 70. And over the centuries, other Jewish tragedies have become associated with the same date.

• The Mishna marks the 9th of Av as the day the 12 spies returned from Canaan and spread the bad report to the Israelites, resulting in their 40 years of wilderness wanderings (see Numbers 13)
• On the 9th of Av in 1290, King Edward I of England issued the Edict of Expulsion, expelling all Jews from England.
• On the ninth of Av in 1914, Germany declared war on Russia, helping turn the European crisis into World War I—a conflict whose aftermath would profoundly reshape Europe and Jewish life.
• In 1941, on the 9th of Av, German SS commander Heinrich Himmler was given approval for the “Final Solution,” the beginning of the Holocaust.
• A year later, on Tisha B’Av in 1942, the Nazis began the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. Over the following weeks, approximately 265,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka.

So then, if all this happened on the 9th of Av, why was God so adamant that Ezekiel write down the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year? Because that was the day Nebuchadnezzar began the siege (see 2 Kings 25:1). The siege would take two years. God wanted Ezekiel to mark the beginning of the siege, more than the end of it, because He wanted His people to remember the beginning of the end. The siege may have taken two years, but the 10th of the 10th was the point at which God said,

¹⁴ I am the Lord. I have spoken; it shall come to pass; I will do it. I will not go back; I will not spare; I will not relent; according to your ways and your deeds you will be judged, declares the Lord God.”

Ezekiel 24:14

What do we take from this? For me, it is a reminder that once the Lord determines to do something, it will be done. God had given His rebellious children so many opportunities to repent and return. Judah had seen Israel be destroyed; they could have repented then. The prophets had been sounding the same alarm for decades before this. And God used the tenth day of the tenth month to remind people that while God is slow to anger, he does get angry; and so that on the 9th day of the 11th month, the 9th of Av, no one would be able to say, “We never saw this coming.”

Every Tish’a B’Av, every 9/11, ought to be a reminder that what has happened before can happen again. There will come a day when it is too late to repent, but until that day, return to God.

For Further Reading:

• “Tish’a B’Av” Wikipedia
• “The Destruction of the First Holy Temple” chabad.org
• “The Jewish Calendar” ReformJudaism.org
• “The Second Temple” Wikipedia
• Rabbi Lori Koffman, “Tisha B’Av and 9/11” JewishWomen’s Archive (online)
• “Tish’a B’av 2023: What the Jewish Summer Fast Day is All About” Jerusalem Post (online)

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