This is part of a series of meditations on what Scripture teaches about each day of Holy Week, which goes from Palm Sunday until Easter, in which Christians everywhere mark the culmination of Jesus Christ’s ministry, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead.

You can find previous posts here and here.

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

-Isaiah 56:6-7, ESV

“Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.”

-Jeremiah 7:11-12, ESV

After the Triumphal Entry, one of the first stops for Jesus was the Temple.  Throughout His life and ministry, He frequently visited the Temple.  As young as twelve, He had astonished people there by His teaching and understanding.  But this time was different, as He was not there merely to teach.  When Jesus entered the Temple that day, it was busy with the influx of Jews from all over the known world who had travelled to Jerusalem for Passover.  To support this, the Jews had turned the outermost court of the Temple (the Court of the Gentiles) into a market to provide what these worshippers needed in order to worship God there.  They needed animals to sacrifice in obedience to God, and it was much easier for those traveling long distances to purchase them at the Temple rather than transporting them from afar, so an industry sprang up to supply them.  There is nothing inherently wrong with such an industry, as even David insisted on buying the land and animals for his initial sacrifice on that very spot (2 Samuel 24:21-25).  The problem was where they set up shop, since the Court of the Gentiles was the only place in the Temple complex for Gentiles to worship God.  Thus, the Jews’ market set up to help people worship God was preventing non-Jews from worshipping God. 

A House of Prayer for the Nations

Therefore, the Jews were dishonoring God by contradicting one of the main reason the Temple existed in the first place: to cause the Gentiles to glorify God.  Because of this, Jesus was furious with them and began doing something antithetical to the docile caricature of Jesus that is so prevalent in Western Christianity today.  He began flipping over tables and driving out the merchants with a whip.  The scene would have been chaotic, with coins flying everywhere and animals let loose.  With the size of the crowd that would have been there, a stampede was not out of the realm of possibility.  Therefore, when Jesus cleared the Temple he created chaos that significantly disrupted the business being conducted there in one of the busiest times of the year.  The scene would have been shocking to everyone who witnessed it, especially those who knew Jesus.  His intense anger would have bordered on derangement in their perspective.  This scene was unparalleled—almost.  Since John records Jesus clearing the Temple in John 2, it is quite likely that Jesus actually cleared the Temple twice: once at the beginning of His ministry and then this time at the end of it during Holy Week.  In the first incident, John notes that it reminded the disciples of Psalm 69:9, stating that zeal for God’s house would consume Jesus.  Why this zeal?  John records the reason for the first instance: “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:16). 

The Jews were misusing the Temple, the place where God had chosen to make His presence known, by using its outer court for commerce rather than worship.  In the process, they were excluding the Gentiles from worshipping God.  Thus, during this Holy Week cleansing of the Temple, Jesus quotes Isaiah and Jeremiah to explain His reasoning: “Is it not written, ​‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:17).  The Temple, particularly the Court of the Gentiles was the place of prayer for all the nations, so by quoting Isaiah 56:7, Jesus was reminding the Jews that God’s intent all along was for foreigners who feared God to worship Him at His Temple just like the Jews (Isaiah 56:6) and experience the blessings of being part of the covenant people of God.  This promise goes all the way back to the God promising Abraham that all the nations of the world would be blessed through his offspring (Genesis 12:3).  Israel was to point the nations to the glory of God and thus draw them to worship God much like Rahab did.  But Israel missed their calling by keeping the blessings of the covenant community internal while treating foreigners with disdain, which was vividly displayed in the Temple that Monday.  So the very presence of this market in the Temple (and its resulting absence of foreigners worshipping God) was an abomination to God and thus elicited the angry response from Jesus.

The Den of Robbers

The fact that Jesus said they had turned it into a “den of robbers” also suggests that those running this market were extorting the Jews who did come to worship by charging exorbitant prices, similar to how Eli’s sons extorted the faithful Israelites of their day in the Tabernacle at Shiloh by taking more of the sacrifice than they were authorized by God, thus preventing people from properly worshipping God (1 Samuel 2:12-17).  This sin was so egregious to God that it actually overshadowed the fact that they were committing adultery and ultimately resulted in God killing them and removing the Tabernacle from Shiloh.  Jesus was reminding the Jews of this by quoting Jeremiah 7:11, since Jeremiah 7:12 says that God would do to the Temple in Jerusalem just as He did to Shiloh.  Like Eli’s sons at the Shiloh Tabernacle, the Jewish leaders of the Jerusalem Temple failed to grasp God’s purpose not only for the Temple but for Israel as a whole.

The beautiful Temple was not fulfilling its intended function, just like the fig tree Jesus cursed later that day.  Therefore, Jesus cleared the courtyard by overturning the marketplace.  Doubtless the market was back up and running by the next day, but by clearing it that day Jesus was foreshadowing His plan to permanently provide a way for Gentiles to worship God.  While the Jews should have received this with joy, it had the opposite effect.  Forgetting that God had blessed them in order to extend that blessing to the Gentiles through them, they had essentially excluded the Gentiles entirely.  Thus the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus threatened not only the fortunes of the Jewish leaders from the racket of their market, but also the spiritual prominence of the Jewish nation as a whole.  In their minds, this was also desecrating the Temple, which was the most sacred place for them as the place where the presence of God dwelt.  Therefore, the cleansing of the Temple in a very real sense kicked off the chain of events that would ultimately cause the same crowd who had hailed His entrance into Jerusalem with shouts of “hosanna” to shout “crucify him” a few days later. 

The New Temple

While the Jews missed the point of the cleansing of the Temple, at least some of the Gentiles didn’t.  John records that around this time some Greeks came to seek Jesus, causing Jesus to reply: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).  By the end of the week, He would make the Temple obsolete by the once-for-all sacrifice of Himself.  Within a couple months, the Gospel would be preached to the nations at Pentecost.   And about forty years later, the Romans would destroy the Temple.  A mosque stands in its place today as a visible reminder that God’s special presence no longer dwells there.  Like Shiloh, the Name of God has departed Jerusalem, but it has not moved to another geographical place.  Instead, God’s special presence now dwells in the Church, which is not a place but a family of people from every nation.  God’s purposes cannot be thwarted, so God is blessing all the nations through Abraham’s better offspring—Jesus Christ.  Therefore, as Gentiles we need to be thankful that we now have unrestricted access to God through Jesus Christ, which is a blessing that not even the Jews enjoyed.  And since Christians—both individually and corporately—are now the temple of God, we need to make sure we are beckoning people to worship the One True God and not causing them to disregard Him due to our own selfish and sinful actions.  We freely received, so we must freely give by pointing Jew and Gentile alike to the blessings of direct access to God through faith in Jesus Christ.