Monday
Monday
The Cleansing of the Temple
He [Jesus] said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Mark 11:17
As soon as Jesus entered Jerusalem, so Mark tells us, and before he took any action, he went to the temple and “looked around at everything” (v. 11). Then, because it was late, he and the Twelve went out of the city for the night. Thus Jesus had time to reflect on what he had seen and what had profoundly shocked him, namely the commercialism of the sanctuary of God, the very center of the religious life of Israel.
The business of the money changers related to the half-shekel temple tax and to the merchants who were selling cattle and sheep for the sacrifices. This lucrative business had become a monopoly in the hands of the high priests and had led to the gross exploitation of poor pilgrims. It had turned God’s house of prayer into a den of thieves, as Jesus said, quoting from Isaiah and Jeremiah. So he acted with calculated violence. John says he made a whip of cords, which it seems clear he used on the animals (“both sheep and cattle” [John 2:15]), not on human beings. In addition, he overturned the tables used by the money changers and the vendors of doves. He also prevented people from carrying merchandise through the temple courts.
The portrait that the evangelists are painting of Jesus has now received a further perspective. For the Christ who rode into Jerusalem in humility, and who wept over the city on account of its willful blindness, now brandishes a whip, a symbol of judgment. It is only after we have seen the tears in his eyes that we are ready to see the whip in his hand.
For further reading: Mark 11:15–18