Gil Bailie’s lecture “Famished Craving” argues that “the experience of secular desacralization is the experience of Ichabob.” In Ichabod the glory has departed (the opposite is the Hebrew chabod, glory); there is, however, a type of desacralization that is good. In the days of Jeremiah, the people were acting arrogantly because of the presence of the temple. Their dependence on the temple, rather than on Yahweh was their downfall; their ichabod. They needed to desacralize their temple. In other words, they needed to place the temple in its proper context of dependence. Jeremiah, however, prophecies of a day when dependence on the true temple–Jesus Christ (John 1)–will be our chabod; our glory.
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