12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts?
14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary of bearing them.
15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
17 learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the (case of the) fatherless, plead for the widow.
18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
Psalm 40
7 Then said I, Lo, I am come; In the roll of the book it is written of me:
8 I delight to do thy will, O my God; Yea, thy law is within my heart.
9 I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great assembly; Lo, I will not refrain my lips, O Jehovah, thou knowest. 10 I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation; I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great assembly.
11 Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O Jehovah; Let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me.
Psalm 50
"15
O Lord, open thou my lips; And my mouth shall
show forth thy praise.
16
For thou delightest not in sacrifice; else would
I give it: Thou hast no pleasure in
burnt-offering.
17
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: A
broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not
despise.
18
Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: Build
thou the walls of Jerusalem."
Hosea 6:6 "For I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings."
Jesus may have been referring to Hosea as recorded in Matthew 9:13.
11 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Teacher with the publicans and sinners?
12 But when he heard it, he said, They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.
13 But go ye and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."
In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John there were records of Jesus going into the temple and casting out the vendors of sacrificial animals and money changers.
Mark 9
16 and he would not suffer that any man should carry a vessel through the temple.
17 And he taught, and said unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? but ye have made it a den of robbers."
Christians abolished the ritual sacrifice of animals and the worship of Greco-Roman idols.
According to Josephus', Antiquities Book XX, Chapter 9, vs. 7; about 6-7 years before the temple was destroyed construction of the temple was completed:
"7. And now it was that the temple was finished. So when the people saw that the workmen were unemployed, who were above eighteen thousand and that they, receiving no wages, were in want because they had earned their bread by their labors about the temple; and while they were unwilling to keep by them the treasures that were there deposited, out of fear of [their being carried away by] the Romans; and while they had a regard to the making provision for the workmen; they had a mind to expend these treasures upon them; for if any one of them did but labor for a single hour, he received his pay immediately; so they persuaded him to rebuild the eastern cloisters. These cloisters belonged to the outer court, and were situated in a deep valley, and had walls that reached four hundred cubits [in length], and were built of square and very white stones, the length of each of which stones was twenty cubits, and their height six cubits. This was the work of king Solomon, who first of all built the entire temple. But king Agrippa, who had the care of the temple committed to him by Claudius Caesar, considering that it is easy to demolish any building, but hard to build it up again, and that it was particularly hard to do it to these cloisters, which would require a considerable time, and great sums of money, he denied the petitioners their request about that matter; but he did not obstruct them when they desired the city might be paved with white stone. He also deprived Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, of the high priesthood, and gave it to Matthias, the son of Theophilus, under whom the Jews' war with the Romans took its beginning."
It is assumed there were yet plans for further additions and renovations up until the time the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. There was much gold decoration used in the temple. The Romans torched the temple and the gold melted and flowed into places between the stones. By one account the Romans had the stones torn down in order to try to find gold. Not one stone was left upon another stone.
