Temple-Cleansing: Jesus on Sacrilegious Innovation
Days before his crucifixion, Jesus came to a Temple awash with commerce (Matt 21:12–13). Nothing inherently sinful about business—though by most accounts the currency exchange and monopoly on officially kosher animals was rife with exploitation and abuse. Something may be legitimate in its own context which, when mingled with worship, results in a pollution and prostitution that twists the sacred into something sordid. The Temple was supposed to furnish an atmosphere of dignity and sanctity; it had become a circus of clamor and corruption.
This enterprising desecration seems to have been instigated by Caiaphas, who became High Priest when Jesus was in his early 20s. Approved markets already existed outside the city where kosher items could be procured for Temple sacrifice; but Caiaphas apparently “wished to set up a market which would be in punitive competition with the traditional markets on the Mount of Olives” (Lane, Mark, 403). The Bazaars of the Sons of Annas they came to be named (Caiaphas was Annas’s son-in-law), after the high priest whose infamy is detailed not only in the NT but by the ancient historian Josephus as well. This market was located in the large and outermost precincts of the Temple known as the Court of the Gentiles. The volume of animals necessary to service the sacrifices for this massively attended sacred feast was staggering. “The Court of the Gentiles was a virtual stock market of animal dealers and money changers” (Edwards, Mark, 341-42). Even aside from the financial shenanigans, the noise and smell and commotion can only be imagined.
Jesus protested on the grounds of Isaiah 56:7, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’” (Matt 21:13). In the same breath, he pulled a phrase from Jeremiah 7:11 to highlight the contrast between what God intended the Temple to be and what they had made it: “a den of thieves.”
Jesus was not merely condemning the raw commercialization and dodgy dealing going on in this unholy bazaar. He was accusing them—as God had accused their forefathers through Jeremiah seven centuries earlier—of turning the house of God into their lair and base of operations. It was not uncommon for bands of robbers to hole up between raids in a remote cave for secrecy and security. The wicked and the unprincipled of Jesus’ day were treating the Temple as their communal refuge, “believing that participation in the formal rituals of the cult would somehow deliver them from the Judge” (Thompson, Jeremiah, 281)—again, just like their fathers did in Jeremiah’s day (Jer 7:1ff.). What Jesus did (“He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it,” Luke 19:45) is exactly what God said he would do in the Jeremiah passage—“I will cast you out of my sight as I have cast out all your brethren” (Jer 7:15).
Mark notes that Jesus cited the fuller version of Isaiah 56:7: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations?’” (Mark 11:17). It wasn’t just Jewish worshippers that God cared about; his Temple was supposed to provide a welcoming refuge for everyone from the surrounding nations who sought the true God (cf. 2 Chr 6:32-33). That point becomes significant when combined with another detail that is easily overlooked. Have you ever noticed that Jesus targeted not only the sellers but also the buyers (Matt 21:12; Mark 11:15)? Jesus’ action was not primarily an economic statement against the merchants (the “sellers”) for monopolizing the market and fleecing poor worshippers. Jesus was just as angry with the buyers themselves! Why?
The use to which the forecourt was devoted entrenched the entire people in disobedience to God. . . . The installation of stalls for the sale of animals and of other requirements for the sacrifice . . . had the effect of transforming the Court of the Gentiles into an oriental bazaar and a cattle mart. Jesus was appalled at this disregard for the sanctity of an area consecrated for the use of Gentiles (Lane, Mark, 404-06).
Both sellers and buyers were marginalizing, insulting, and imposing on Gentile worshippers and seekers (like those in John 12:20), by turning the Court of the Gentiles into a zoo.
By allowing the Court of the Gentiles, the only place in the temple area where Gentiles were allowed to worship God, to become a noisy, smelly, public market, the Jewish religious leaders were preventing Gentiles from exercising the spiritual privilege promised them. How could a Gentile pray amid all that noise and stench? (Wessell, “Mark,” EBC, 727-28).
Priests and people had turned worship into a racket (in more ways than one). And both leaders and laymen were culpable. As it turns out, there is nothing new under the sun.
Think about what Jesus was doing with Scripture here. He was not asserting any fulfilled prophecy. He was not citing a breach of any specific OT law. He was taking two historic OT descriptions and applying them to a contemporary situation. Jesus was neither spiritualizing nor moralizing these texts. He was making authoritative modern applications and taking authoritative actions grounded in the assumption that God’s words are timelessly relevant. (I do not choose the word “authoritative” randomly; that is precisely the point on which the Jews challenged him the next day, Matt 21:23.)
The last several decades have seen a growing disdain for the practical application of God’s words in preaching as invasive and legalistic. Jesus’ applicational use of Scripture in this incident both models and underscores the reliability of God’s words to diagnose and speak to contemporary issues.
Note: This post is excerpted and adapted from the author’s book The Trustworthiness of God’s Words: Why the Reliability of Every Word from God Matters (Christian Focus, 2022), Chapter 6.
