Foxes snooping around in Jerusalem ahead of a religious festival have inspired Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites Shmuel Rabinowitz to recall a prophecy about the Jewish temple being rebuilt on the Temple Mount, a site sacred for Jews.
“One cannot refrain from crying at the site of the fulfilment of the prophecy of ‘foxes will walk on it’”, he said as cited by The Jerusalem Post, making a reference to the Book of Lamentations (5:18).
The religious text, which tells the story of the first temple that stood in Jerusalem but was destroyed by the Babylonians, contains a prophecy saying that the site would be inhabited by foxes. As the Israeli outlet points out, a Talmudic tractate suggests that if this prophecy is fulfilled, then another prediction, made by the Prophet Zechariah, saying that the Temple will be rebuilt might also come true.
The fox sighting came ahead of the Tisha B'av festival, which is set to begin on 10 August and commemorates tragic events in Jewish history, includes reading from the Book of Lamentations.