Interplanner
Well-known member
Tell us what 'qualifications' are in that verse that means GOD's mercy toward Israel will not last forever.
It would last for several generations (relative to the recent exile), however, unless you think the IT materials like Maccabees etc are totally spurious, they didn't have a great time. It got worse and worse. Herod was an awful tyrant with the contradictory baggage of being obsessed with having the permanent status of the biggest temple ever built. Then came the destruction of Jerusalem. In the 6th century, there is the complicating Islamic layer and all the miserable confusion since then.
The NT says we don't look to an enduring city here but the one that is to come in the NHNE. All created things ALL OF THEM are destroyed in a consuming fire followed by the NHNE, Heb 12:27.
2 Peter 3 does not have a millenium or anything Judaic, so: there is no other meaning to 'forever' in Ezra 3 than the immediate generations, and that is relative to being in exile.
On the other hand, there is a new Israel, and if you follow that line of thought, of course, you have no problem. I don't know that it was on the horizon yet with Ezra; it certainly was in Isaiah.