Luke 19:45-46

When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. “It is written,” he said to them, “My house will be a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of robbers.”

From Background Notes [BN] for March 31^st /April 1^st written by Pastor Bob Brown:

It would not be an overstatement to say that the Jewish people venerated their Temple. Thanks to King Herod the Great, it stood as an architectural marvel, gilded with gold and shining like a divine emblem in the noonday sun. All of the main Feasts of Israel climaxed with some Temple rituals, as pilgrims came from all over the Empire to celebrate together. "The Temple, the Temple" could be heard in Jesus' day, much as it was heard in the days of Jeremiah.  And in this veneration lay the tragic danger which led to the destruction of the Temple: twice...

The text from Jeremiah lies in the background of Jesus' Temple action:

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 "Stand at the gate of Yahweh's house and there proclaim this message: "'Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship Yahweh. 3 This is what Yahweh Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, "This is the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh!" 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. 9 "'Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, "We are safe"-- safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares Yahweh (Jeremiah 7:1-11).

First impressions are important. What would a visitor approaching the Temple courts immediately see? He would encounter crowds of people exchanging their currency for the Temple shekel, allowing them to purchase proper sacrifices, or, in the case of the poor, to buy pigeons instead. How did it come about that such commerce was located inside the Temple area? There is good evidence that this practice was a recent innovation started by Caiaphas to counter pre-existing markets, located outside the Temple. The Mount of Olives was home to four markets where the necessary sacrifices could be purchased. But the Temple authorities did not control the commerce in these. And so the High Priest instituted his "counter-market" inside the court of the Gentiles, a decision which led to much controversy with the established markets on the Mount of Olives. Jesus knew that this practice was not needed, since the other markets already existed elsewhere. What he opposed was not the fulfillment of Temple sacrifices, but the unnecessary housing of its commercial apparatus inside the Temple courts.

The zeal with which Jesus carries out his prophetic action seems to be the only act of overt violence committed by Jesus. It parallels the actions of Jeremiah some 600 years before, when he broke a large clay flask to symbolize the coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (Jeremiah 19; see also Jeremiah 26:1-15). In performing the action in the way he did, Jesus effectively fulfilled the predictions of Malachi 3:1-5 in which the Lord comes suddenly to his Temple and accomplishes judgment on the people.

What would lead Jesus to engage in such dramatic action?

He was outraged that money changing was now being conducted in the court of the Gentiles. To this court, Gentiles who had sincere interest in the religious life of Judaism ordinarily came to worship. But under the current circumstances, with people crowded there to exchange currency, there was no room for them to come and pray. Existing Temple regulations prohibited use of this area as a short-cut, and Jesus is, ironically, enforcing the standing rules put in place long before Caiaphas decided to get creative with his innovations. God's purposes, Jesus proclaims forcefully, are to provide a place of prayer "for all nations,” and those purposes must not be thwarted by the trade now taking place in the Court of the Gentiles. Isaiah 56:7 already laid out this purpose: Jesus comes to sanction and enforce it, something the officials of the Temple had failed to do.

Worse than this, Jesus identifies the Temple as having become a "cave of lestes (in Greek).”2 Who are these lestes? Most translations use the word "robbers,” but this is far too weak a word to communicate the meaning found in the Greek literature of the day. In both the writings of Strabo and Josephus, this word has a very specific connotation: "brigand" comes closest in meaning, as Buchanan showed in his 1959 monograph, Mark 11:15-19: Brigands in the Temple.3 He argued then that already in Jesus' time, the Zealots had begun to use the Temple as a stronghold for their subversive activities against Rome. The current innovations started by Caiaphas created a distasteful atmosphere in the Temple that incubated the sort of resistance movement led by these "brigands.” Jesus was saying, then, that due to these outrageous practices, the Temple authorities were contributing to the anti-establishment attitudes embodied in the activities of the anti-government guerrilla groups already marauding throughout the Judean country-side. Rather than being a light to the nations, Second Temple Judaism was becoming a breeding ground for terrorist cells bent on insurrection against Rome. Where could all of this lead? Jesus is clear: just as he overturned the tables, so God would overturn the Temple in judgment as the Old Testament prophets had already foreshadowed.  [BN, 5-7]

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