In that day I will raise up the tent of David who is fallen, and close up its breaches, and I will raise up its ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old;
"I will raise up its ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old ..." This is alleged to mean that God will reproduce in the history of Israel another period reflecting the same kind of pride and glory that characterized the old Davidic and Solomonic empire; but this is definitely not the thing to be rebuilt.  "The tabernacle" stands for the time when God's communion with his people had been established upon an intimate and continual communication, in short, for "their fellowship with God."  It was that fellowship which had been destroyed by the sins and wickedness of the people; and it was preeminently the "broken fellowship with God," which would be restored in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which, alone, is foretold in this promise to "rebuild," as "in the days of old."  It was the great error of Israel, during our Lord's ministry, that led them to identify the blessed Messiah himself as one who would recreate their old Solomonic empire, which, in reality, was the scandal of forty generations, and the very last thing on earth that God would have promised to "rebuild." Christian interpreters today ought not to fall into the same error that was fatal to Israel.