Matthew 23:38

“Behold, your house is left to you desolate.”

And because they had refused Him there was nowhere else to turn. They were so intense about their possession of God's house that they could not see beyond it, and the sad consequence would be its desolation. It would both lose its significance and be destroyed, for God had deserted it. Note that it is the desertion that is emphasised here Compare ‘I have forsaken My house, I have cast off My heritage' (Jeremiah 12:7). It was His earthly dwellingplace no more. (See 1 Kings 9:6; Isaiah 64:10; Jeremiah 12:7. It is quite remarkable how in a resurgent Israel the rebuilding of the Temple has been made impossible by the presence of the Mosque of Omar. Only God could have thought that one out. There is no future for an earthly Temple).

It is of some interest in the light of this chapter to recognise that the later Rabbis when making their declaration about the reason for the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD stated that it was ‘because in it prevailed hatred without cause'. They too recognised that Jerusalem had bought its destruction on itself.