The Mekhilta tells a parable. Robbers break into a king's palace. They despoil everything of value. They kill the king's courtiers — his loyal servants, the people who maintained his household and enforced his rule. Then they raze the palace itself, reducing it to rubble. The destruction is total.
But the story does not end there. After some time — the parable is deliberately vague about how long — the king sits in judgment. He seizes the robbers. Some he kills outright. Some he impales as a public warning. And then he returns to his palace and rebuilds it, and his reign endures forever.
The application is unmistakable. The palace is the Temple. The robbers are the nations who destroyed it. The courtiers are the priests and righteous ones who served there. And the king is God Himself, who does not forget, does not forgive the destruction of His house, and whose judgment is certain even if it is delayed.
The parable concludes with the verse: "The sanctuary, O Lord, did Your hands establish. The Lord will reign for ever and ever." The destruction of the Temple is not the end of the story. It is the middle. The king's eternal reign is the end. And that reign begins precisely at the moment when the robbers face their reckoning and the palace stands again — rebuilt, this time, by the king's own hands.