Four rabbis were walking together on Mount Scopus, looking down at the ruin of Jerusalem. They saw a fox running out of the Holy of Holies. The three older sages began to weep. Rabbi Akiba began to laugh.
The others turned on him. "How can you laugh? A fox walks where the High Priest once trembled. Why are you smiling?"
Akiba answered with a piece of prophetic logic so precise it has been retold for two thousand years.
The Torah, he said, speaks of two witnesses sealing its prophecies: Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Berechiah (Isaiah 8:2). Why pair them? Uriah prophesied during the First Temple. Zechariah prophesied during the Second. Their fates are linked.
Uriah had proclaimed: "Therefore for your sake Zion will be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem will become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest" (Micah 3:12, quoted in Jeremiah 26:18, tradition attributes to Uriah). A dark prophecy of ruin.
Zechariah had proclaimed: "Old men and old women shall yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age, and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof" (Zechariah 8:4-5). A bright prophecy of return.
"Now," said Akiba, "until today I was afraid that Zechariah's sweet promise might never come true. But now that I see Uriah's harsh prophecy fulfilled in every detail — foxes in the sanctuary itself — I know with certainty that Zechariah's prophecy will also come. Ruin has kept its word. Redemption will keep its word too" (Makkot 24b).
The three sages stopped weeping. "Akiba, you have comforted us," they said. "Akiba, you have comforted us."