What does it mean that the house of prayer had been turned into a den of thieves?

As a consequence, everything in Jerusalem was in disorder. Entering the city, the Lord went straight to its very centre, and in the temple found evil enthroned. The house of Jehovah, intended to be an house of prayer for all nations, was just a den of thieves, so that any stranger, coming up there as a seeker after God, was swindled in the obtaining of the necessary sacrifices. Thereby he would be repelled from the true God instead of being attracted to Him. Thus in the hands of men the house of God had been wholly perverted from its proper use. Moreover the men who held authority in the house were potentially murderers, as verse 47 shows: so it had become a stronghold of murderers as well as a den of thieves. Could anything be much worse than this? No wonder God swept it away by the Romans forty years later!

The Holy Spirit therefore, in quoting the word of the prophet, only quotes so much as the Lord took upon Himself to fulfil at that time. Jesus then enters into the temple as prepared to fulfil the promise of the Lord by Isaiah (Isa. 56), which was made conditional upon the keeping of equity and the doing justice, but finds that, instead of being fit for a house of prayer for all people, into which place of honour and glory He would then have brought it, they had made it a den of robbers, according to the word of the Lord by Jeremiah. (Jer. 7:11.) They had refused to amend their ways and their doings — had refused to execute judgment between a man and his neighbour — had continued to oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow — had trusted in lying words while keeping up all the outward forms of religion, coming into the house of God as though it were their place, yet all the while filling their hearts with their covetousness: thus making it in truth in God's sight, and treating it in their own hearts, as being a den of robbers, laying themselves and the sanctuary open therefore to the curse which Jehovah had pronounced upon it in such a case. The Lord however comes in in this extremity of evil, casts out all that sold and bought, and makes what had been a den of robbers a place of healing and blessing; but this only brings out a more determined rejection of Him and the salvation He brought, for the scribes and Pharisees were indignant, and show how utterly they denied His claims by drawing attention to the acknowledgment of them as a thing worthy of rebuke, even though it proceeded from the mouths of children, so sensitive had jealousy made them. Replying to them, Jesus shows to them from Psalm 8 that God had expressly revealed His purpose to bring in the promised universal salvation and blessing upon the acknowledgment of His glory by the weak and ignorant ones, choosing the foolish and the weak things of the world to put to shame the wise and strong.

Jesus had just presented Himself to them as King, so, having arrived in the city, He went straight to the temple, the very centre of their religion, and asserted His kingly power in cleansing it. He had done this at the very beginning of His ministry, as recorded in John 2; He did it again at the end. The trafficking and money-changing in the temple had doubtless sprung out of the kindly arrangements of the law, which Deuteronomy 14:24-26 records. Ungodly men had taken advantage of this provision to turn the temple precincts into a den of thieves. God intended His temple to be the house where men drew near to Him with their requests. Its custodians had turned it into a place where men were swindled, and so the name of God was maligned. To defile or corrupt the temple of God is a sin of tremendous gravity. 1 Corinthians 3:17 shows this, in its application to God's present temple.

Following this, verses 15 - 19, we have the Lord's action in cleansing the temple. God's thought in establishing His house at Jerusalem was that it might be a place of prayer for all nations. If any man, no matter what race he belonged to, was feeling after God, he might come to that house and get into touch with Him. The Jews had turned it into a den of thieves. This was the appalling spectacle that met His holy eye when He inspected the house the evening before.

The Jews would doubtless have furnished good reasons for permitting these abominations. Did not the strangers need to change their varied monies? Were not the doves a necessity for the very poorest who could afford no larger sacrifice? But the whole thing had been debased into a money-making concern. The man who came from afar seeking God might easily be repelled when he got to the house by the rascality of those who were connected with it. A terrible state of affairs! The custodians of the house were a pack of thieves, and the Lord told them so. This roused the scribes and priests to fury, and they determined upon His death.

In perfect consistency with His rightful dignity as King, He purged the temple from the pollution of those who bought and sold in it. Earlier in His ministry He had done the same (John 2:13-17). but the greed of man is determined even to corrupt the sanctuary of God for personal gain or advantage. He quotes from Isaiah 56:7 to fasten on these men the shameful quilt of what they were doing. God's house was a house of prayer, but they had made it a den of thieves, He tells them. This was scathing, solemn language, but they could not resist Him, for their own consciences bore witness that He was right. In lovely contrast to their grasping character, He heals the blind and the lame in the temple, a beautiful picture of how things will change in the temple when this blessed Messiah is manifested to Israel at the end of the great tribulation compare Malachi 3:1-4.

For the second time (Jn.2:13-17) the Lord found in the temple those who bought and sold, and again He acted with firm decision for His Father's glory in expelling them from His Father's house. His words were solemn and scathing: God's house was a house of prayer, but men were showing their contempt for God promoting their selfish practices there, taking advantage of those who came for prayer. He did not hesitate to accuse these merchants of making God's house a den of thieves (v.46).

The next thing the Lord does is, with just indignation, to purge the temple, indeed He went out to Bethany, and returned, and did this on the morrow. But here it was the morally consequent act, the judgment pronounced of the King entered. God's house was a house of prayer; that was its moral character, not of sacrifice. It was not thus God designated His house, though that were done there, but in grace to need of those that had need. Where His presence and ear was was a house of prayer, where all wants were told to God, and He was there the Depositary of all grief and all need; and they had made it a den of thieves. Note it is the sin against the gracious character of God that the Lord notes as the sin against the temple of God. His charge is very general: "Ye have made it." For all evil thus permitted, and gone along with, is really common guilt on all, for the heart allows and concurs in it. But the spirit which lusts to envy soon showed itself. The people, who were nobody, gladly heard; they had no reputation, and externally they sought the good, but the chief priests, scribes, and principals of the people, the chiefs of religion, learning, specially religious learning, and of place or power, sought to get rid of Him. It was natural they should, for He was true, and all their state and place was false, and they traitors to what was of God in it, using the divine honour of it to their own glory. To the people, good was good, because they needed good; to the rulers, and priests and scribes not, because it displaced their pretensions, detected their hypocrisy, and wounded their pride. Yet Satan had power over all this, one and the other, for it needs an absolute and real deliverance to be out of his power, an actual deliverance of God. God working in us to set us free, by making Himself the only Object. Otherwise, the habits of religion and pre-eminence rest in force over the mind, and, though convinced in conscience that Jesus is true and the Lord, there is no power to resist what has power over the flesh, for the life which emerges from out of it all, strengthened in the Holy Ghost, is not there. The time was not yet come for Him to be offered up, and He was there in the dignity of His untouched Person till the full time of divine counsel was come, that the people might have the full witness and testimony of grace and perfectness, and the iniquity of the rulers and great men ripen to its conclusion and accomplishment. The position, and total want of conscience, and selfishness, in His rejection, of their rulers and religious authorities, is brought out in what follows.

The first errand of the King in His city is the temple. "And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and cast out all that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those that sold the doves. And He says to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of robbers" (verses 12-13). This is the second time that the Lord acted in cleansing the temple. The first is recorded in the Gospel of John 2:13, 17, and it took place at the beginning of His ministry. There it is the zeal for God's house, but here He acts in all His Kingly authority. How great and awful must have been the defilement of God's temple in those days. Money changers were undoubtedly in the foreground, for money played then in the days of the Jewish apostasy as important a role as it does in the apostasy we witness about us. "We can picture to ourselves the scene around the table of an eastern money changer -- the weighing of the coins, deductions for loss of weight, arguing, disputing, bargaining, and we realize the terrible truthfulness of our Lord's charge that they had made the Father's house a mart and a place of traffic." (Edersheim: Life of Christ, Vol. I., 369.) And besides the money changers were those who bought and sold. All that which was required for the meat and drink offering was for sale by the Temple authorities. With the sale much speculation was connected; covetousness, as Jewish talmudical writings prove, was the ruling passion in this blasphemous traffic. And the most awful fact was that the priesthood, especially the High-priestly family earned riches from it. The Bazaars and the Temple markets were controlled and owned by the sons of Annas.

Into this scene of desecration He enters. No whip of cords is in His hands; the King does not need it. The tables are turned over in wild confusion; the coins roll over the pavement, while the sacrificial animals and birds are driven out, perhaps in a wild stampede, followed by their owners and the officials of the temple. And what He uses is His own Word. "It is written my house shall be called an house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of robbers." It was His house, as well as His Father's. Of old in the first house His own Glory appeared and dwelt there. The words "mine house shall be called an house of prayer" are found in Isaiah 56:7. "For all people" which is in Isaiah, the Lord does not quote. That temple was not meant to be a house "for all people;" the temple in Is. 56:7 is the millennial temple, and that future temple will be the house to which the nations of the earth will come during the coming age, to worship the Lord of Hosts. And so the Lord came suddenly to His temple to cleanse it (Mal. 3:1-3). But this again is only a shadow of another coming and the final fulfilment of the prophecy contained in the third chapter of Malachi. Another temple will stand in Jerusalem during the great tribulation and there will be even greater defilement. In that temple one will sit who is clearly pictured in the Word. "That man of sin, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing Himself that He is God" (2 Thess. 2:3, 4). Him the Lord will destroy with the brightness of His coming.

Verses 1-15. We call this next address of the prophet "the temple address," because he was commanded to stand in the gate of the LORD's house. There he stood, a solitary figure, and said: "Hear the Word of the LORD, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship Jehovah." Their worship was but external. They trusted in the temple of the Lord, as if with the house itself some kind of a blessing was connected and the house would shield them from disaster. Micah gives the same delusion of the apostate people: "Yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, is not the LORD among us? no evil can come upon us" (Micah 3:11). Such a false trust in ordinances and outward worship is only too evident in Christendom also. The masses of unsaved people with their religious observances think it is a protection and insures the Lord's help and blessing. They trusted in lying words. They were thieves, murderers, adulterers, perjurers and idolators, and they thought if they go to the house of the LORD they would be delivered from these abominations. The Lord calls upon them to amend their ways and their doings, to work a better righteousness. They had made His house a den of robbers. This verse (verse 11) was quoted by our Lord in Matt. 21:13. He tells them of the fate of Shiloh when it was overthrown on account of the wickedness of Israel; such would be the fate of the temple (Psa. 78:60). They would be cast out as the whole seed of Ephraim had been cast out.

The temple, too (and the house of God in a wider sense, linking the thought with Shiloh where the tabernacle was), Jeremiah shows in harmony with Old and New Testaments, becomes a den of robbers, and is to be made desolate. A hypocritical set may “enter in at these gates to worship the Lord,” trusting in “lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these” (Jer. 7:4); but such sayings did not take the place of inward reality before God. It only made their case worse. “They that handle the law knew Me not,” says the Lord (Jer. 2:8); and though “the oracles of God” were committed to them (Rom. 3:2), and they said, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us” (Jer. 8:8), yet again we hear an answering echo in Romans, “Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God” (Rom. 2:23). Indeed the whole context breathes the one Spirit.