Forgotten in Zion

One verse seems to end the argument. It comes from Lamentations, the book of tears written over Jerusalem after Babylon burned it:

Lamentations 2:6-7 And he has done violence to his booth like a garden, he has destroyed his appointed place (moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade'); the LORD has caused to be forgotten in Zion appointed time (moed) and Shabbat, and in the indignation of his anger he has spurned king and priest. My Lord (Adonai) has rejected his altar, he has abhorred his sanctuary; he has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have raised a voice in the house of the LORD, as in the day of an appointed time (moed).

“The LORD has caused to be forgotten in Zion appointed time (moed) and Shabbat.” This time it is not an enemy who acts, but the LORD Himself. If God caused the appointed times and the Sabbath to be forgotten, so the reasoning goes, then God is finished with them, and there is no reason for us to remember what He chose to erase.

As a reading of one line, that may sound fair. But the line sits within a book, and the book tells us both why this happened and how it ends.

A Judgment, Not an Upgrade

Consider first the words around it: “in the indignation of his anger,” and “My Lord (Adonai) has rejected his altar, he has abhorred his sanctuary.” This is not the language of a calm reform, as though God had found a better system and retired an old one. It is the language of anger, and in Scripture anger of that kind is the answer to sin. Lamentations names the sin itself:

Lamentations 1:18 Righteous is the LORD, for I have rebelled against his mouth; hear, please, all you peoples, and see my pain: my virgins and my young men have gone into captivity.

Jerusalem confesses, “I have rebelled against his mouth.” The moed was lost because the city rebelled against God’s commands. Something lost has not been abolished.

Think of a man who is caught driving drunk and loses his license. The state takes the card from his wallet, and for a year he may not drive. No one concludes from this that driving has been abolished, that the roads are closed, or that the traffic laws have been repealed. The roads are still there, and so is the law. What has changed is that this man, because of what he did, has lost his place on those roads. Lamentations 2 is the license being taken away, not the road being torn up.

How the book ends confirms it. A people who believed the feasts were finished would not pray to have them back, yet this is the last prayer of Lamentations:

Lamentations 5:21 Turn us back to you, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

“Renew our days as of old.” Even the enemy’s shout in the ruined house is likened to the sound of those days, a voice raised “in the house of the LORD, as in the day of an appointed time (moed)” (2:7). The book that grieves over the loss closes by asking for the days of old to be given back. Lamentations does not announce that the feasts have ended. It grieves over feasts that were taken away.

Those Who Grieved

Grief of that kind does not go unanswered, and God answered it through the prophet Zephaniah:

Zephaniah 3:18-20 Those grieved away from the appointed time (moed) I have gathered—from you they were—a burden upon her, a reproach. Behold, I am dealing with all who afflict you at that time; and I will save (yasha ישע yeh'-shah) the lame one, and the driven-away one I will gather; and I will make them for a praise and for a name in all the land of their shame. At that time I will bring you in, and at the time of my gathering you; for I will make you for a name and for a praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, says the LORD.

“Those grieved away from the appointed time (moed) I have gathered.” In Hebrew the phrase is built on mimmoed מִמּוֹעֵד mo-ade', meaning “from the moed.” These are people who were pushed away from God’s appointed times and who ache over it. God sees them, He calls their reproach “a burden,” and He promises to gather them and to make them “for a praise and for a name in all the land of their shame.”

Set the two verses side by side: “The LORD has caused to be forgotten,” and “I have gathered.” These are two words from the same God, and they come in order. Through judgment the moed was lost, and through restoration His people are gathered back to it. To use Lamentations as proof that the feasts are abolished is to read the first word and cover up the second. If losing the moed is grief and being gathered to it is restoration, then together these two passages show how precious the moed is to God.

The Times He Will Try to Change

In the last chapter we saw what the enemy aims at. He roars in the midst of the moed, burns it, and sets up his own signs. Daniel saw a power at the end of days doing the same, in a verse we read in Chapter 9:

Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak words against the Most High (Elyon), and he shall wear out the saints of the Most High (Elyon); and he shall think to change times (zimnin זִמְנִין zem-awn', Aramaic) and decree (dat). And they shall be given into his hand until an appointed time (iddan, Aramaic) and appointed times (iddanin, Aramaic) and half a time.

“He shall think to change times (zimnin, Aramaic) and decree (dat).” This part of Daniel is written in Aramaic, and zimnin (זִמְנִין) means set times. Which times are meant? Daniel’s later vision, written in Hebrew, describes the same span:

Daniel 12:7 And I heard the man (ish אִישׁ eesh) clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, and he lifted up his right hand and his left hand to the heavens, and swore by the One who lives (chai חַי khah'-ee) forever, that it shall be for an appointed time (moed), appointed times (moadim מוֹעֵד mo-ade'), and a half; and when the shattering of the power of the holy people is finished, all these things shall be finished.

The span is “an appointed time (moed), appointed times (moadim), and a half.” Where chapter 7 speaks of time and times, chapter 12 speaks of moed and moadim. The mark of that power is that he thinks to change times and decree, and in Daniel the changing of times belongs to God: “He changes the appointed times (iddanin, Aramaic) and the times (zimnin, Aramaic)” (Daniel 2:21). Read beside chapter 12, it is a very persuasive reading that the times he thinks to change are the moed. John shows us whom the dragon goes after in the last days:

Revelation 12:17 And the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring — those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Yeshua.

The dragon goes after “those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Yeshua.” The two belong together, the commandments and the testimony, and the war is aimed at people who hold both.

The Same Shape in Our Own Day

This pattern did not end with the Bible. Three wars of our own time fell on God’s calendar.

The Six-Day War was fought from June 5 to June 10, 1967, during the counting of the Omer, the seven weeks counted from the wave sheaf to Shavuot. It ended on June 10, and Shavuot came on June 14. In those days Jerusalem was reunited.

The Yom Kippur War began on October 6, 1973. That was the tenth day of the seventh month, 10 Tishri, the Day of Atonement, when the nation was fasting and gathered in prayer.

The Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, fell on Shemini Atzeret, the eighth day that follows Tabernacles, a day also kept as Simchat Torah. It was the solemn assembly of Numbers 29:35, the day we met in Chapter 39 with its one bull, one ram, and seven lambs.

The attacks of 1973 and 2023 came on the moed itself. This is the same shape that Psalm 74 records, with the adversary roaring in the midst of God’s appointed place. And in 1967, in the weeks of counting toward Shavuot, the city of the moed was made one again.

Come Out of Her

So when we hear that keeping the appointed times is legalism, we should know what company that teaching keeps. It walks alongside the ambition recorded in Isaiah 14: to take God’s mountain and God’s calendar and write other dates into them. That is the spirit of Babylon, and Scripture’s word to God’s people about Babylon is not a call to stay and adjust. It is this:

Revelation 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, "Come out of her, my people, so that you do not synkoinoneo συγκοινωνέω soong-koy-no-neh'-o(co-participate) in her sins and so that you do not receive her plagues,

“Come out of her, my people.” If the mark of Babylon is changing times and law, then coming out of her means leaving her times and her laws behind and returning to the times that God appointed.

The spirit of Babylon removes the moed, and the LORD gathers His people to it. Zephaniah’s promise still stands, and those who grieve to be far from God’s appointed times are the very ones He says He will gather.

The appointed times belong to the holy, and the holy has boundaries. Before we close this book, we need one more page, the one that tells us what Scripture means by holy and common, and by unclean and clean.