And he found in the temple the sellers of oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers sitting;
Jesus walked into the temple and found a livestock market with money-changers at their tables. Who had the right to clear it, and what did the scene say about the nation's religion?
The trade was not outside the temple. It filled the court itself with the noise of a market:
No one denied that oxen, sheep, and doves were to be brought to God's altar at set times and under set conditions. But God's revelation gave no permission for them to wait inside the court of the Temple for whatever the offerers needed. Leviticus 26:2, "You shall reverence my sanctuary," points the other way and forbids such a practice. The lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep and the cooing of doves rose above the hum of human voices. The sacred court must have looked like a fair or market, not the holy spot where God was to be worshipped and which people held to be His home on earth. The money-changers' tables and their trade were more out of keeping with that holy place. Man's convenience and man's worldly gain — these were served. But which of the traders or money-changers cared in all this about the honour of their God?
The traders had an answer ready: the law itself let them bring money and buy what they needed. But they bent that allowance:
This shows how the kind provisions of the law could be twisted, and were twisted, to serve man's greed. There was instruction on this point in Deuteronomy 14:22-26, and they might plead that they were only doing what the law allowed. The law told them to bring their money and buy what they needed. It never approved the greedy practices they had brought in, which turned the house of God into a money-making centre.
The animals on sale were not random stock. What they stood for makes their price tag worse:
They may claim with a pious air that they brought the oxen, sheep and doves there to help those who wanted to offer sacrifices, and that money changing helped those who had come from other countries. But the plain truth was that money-making was their aim. The place for this was in the business markets. These creatures of sacrifice all speak of Christ. The ox speaks of His devoted service toward God, the sheep of His submission to God, the dove of His purity before God. How revolting, then, that these should be sold for monetary profit!
Who could act like this in the temple? The answer lies in what He called the building:
Who was this One acting like this? He was the Son of the Father, the only begotten Son of God. It was God's house — so everyone claimed — and there He stood with all that mixed crowd. It was His Father's house, He said. If, then, it was His Father's house, He was undeniably the Son... God, who long ago lived in the innermost sanctuary in thick darkness, was that day seen in the court of the Temple. Here was God in the person of a man, God in human flesh, revealing Himself as the Father's Son and acting as Son in caring for His Father's glory.
The market was a small window into a much larger collapse. One writer separates this scene from the later clearing the other Gospels record, and reads it as a diagnosis of the nation:
This clearing of the temple is not the one the other Gospels report on His last visit; John gives only the first. The temple was in a bad state. Selfishness reigned there. They cared nothing for the true fear, honour and holiness of God, yet they were extremely fussy about a ritual show of their own invention. All this marked the ruined state of a people whom God's favour had called to the highest privilege on earth.
One writer traces the same habit back through Israel's history and on to the day it ends. Some translations read "trader" where the line quoted below reads "Canaanite":
The last sentence in Zechariah is an arresting one: "In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts." This means more than banishing a literal Canaanite. The name means "a merchant," and a spirit of merchandising has plagued the house of the Lord in Israel throughout its history... At last that house will be made fully clean from the defilement of those who use Jewish religion to serve their own greed... May we too in our day hold God's house, the Church of the living God, in proper respect. May we give the Lord Jesus the supreme honour He deserves.
- Found — He met a market in the temple: oxen, sheep, doves and coin tables filling the court built for worship.
- Convenience — The traders could point to Deuteronomy 14:22-26 and call it a service to travellers. Greed turned that allowance into a money-making centre.
- Merchandise — They sold for profit the very animals that pictured Christ's service, submission and purity.
- Father's house — He called the temple His Father's house: that named His right to act, and named Him the Son.
- Cleansed — What He found exposed a nation careful about ritual, careless about God's honour. One day the merchant will be gone for good.
and, having made a scourge of cords, he cast [them] all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the change of the money-changers, and overturned the tables,
At Passover, at the very start of His ministry, Jesus finds the temple court running as a cattle market, and He clears it with His own hands. Why did this stir Him as nothing else did, by what right did He act, and does His example put a whip in our hands?
The traders had an answer ready. Worship called for animals, and travellers needed the right coins. But that excused neither the place nor the motive.
No one could deny that oxen, sheep, and doves should be brought to God's altar at certain times and under certain conditions. But nothing in divine revelation allowed them to stand waiting inside the court of the Temple for the worshippers' needs... The lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the cooing of doves rose above the hum of human voices. The court must have looked like a fair or a market, not the holy place where God was to be worshipped... The trade served man's convenience and man's profit. But which of the traders, or of the money-changers, cared in all that for the honour of their God?
The law itself let them bring money and buy what they needed. That provision was twisted for gain.
The law told them to bring their money and buy what they needed. But it gave no support to the greedy practices they had introduced, which turned the house of God into a money-making centre. We can see the same thing in principle in our day.
He made the whip first, then worked through the court piece by piece. Nowhere else do we see Him act like this.
Here we see Him doing no fewer than four things: making the whip, driving out the animals, pouring the changers' money onto the ground, and overturning the tables. Nowhere else do we find Him showing such strong outward marks of indignation as when He saw men profaning the temple. The whole event is a striking picture of what Christ will do at His second coming. Remembering that, we may get some idea of the deep meaning of that remarkable phrase, "the wrath of the Lamb."
One man against a crowded marketplace, and the marketplace gave way.
He acted with authority, and no one resisted Him... The sheep and the oxen went out at His bidding. Were they not His creatures? ... However crowded the court had been, He cleared it at once. No trader, no money-changer refused to comply.
Jesus cleared the temple twice, and the two accounts strike a different note.
In Matthew's Gospel it is an act of Messianic power, where He cleanses His own house, or at least acts for God as His King. In John it is rather zeal for the injured honour of His Father's house — "do not make My Father's house a house of trade." John also tells of this first cleansing early in his Gospel because he treats Israel's rejection as settled from the start.
The scene looked back to a psalm and forward to a cross.
"Do not make My Father's house a house of trade," He says, and His disciples remember the words of Psalm 69 — one of the sacrificial psalms — "Zeal for your house has consumed me." This very zeal and devotion to His Father's glory was a pledge of His death. So the Pharisees asked Him by what authority He did these things. His reply shows He knew exactly where such zeal was leading Him: "Destroy this temple" — take My life — "and in three days I will raise it up."
Critics have asked in mockery: does this give anyone licence to horsewhip a religious man out of his pulpit? The answer turns on who was holding the whip.
Such a question overlooks the divine authority completely — the divine authority of righteousness over God's acknowledged house... Jesus did it with the declaration that "something greater than the temple is here"; that if they destroyed "the temple of His body, He would raise it up in three days." He was Jehovah.
So the act is not a template for our tempers — though what drove it is still needed.
He did that alone; we could have no part in such divine and holy indignation. But in these reproaches we may share, and shall share if we are like Him. What causes the reproaches is as necessary to the well-being of God's house on earth now as the zeal that cleansed the Temple then.
- Zeal burns. He acted out of devotion to His Father's honour, not annoyance at noise. That same devotion was a pledge of His death.
- Zeal claims. The trade had turned a place of worship into a place of profit. He cleared the court as the Son claiming His Father's house.
- Zeal acts. He made the whip, drove out the animals, scattered the coins, upended the tables. Nowhere else does He show such open indignation.
- Zeal commands. A packed market emptied at one man's word. No one resisted: the creatures and the court were His.
- Zeal is His to wield. We cannot copy the whip, but the concern for God's house that held it is still needed today.