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Chapter XV.
JESUS DRIVES THE SELLERS OUT OF THE TEMPLE.
HIS DISCOURSE WITH NICODEMUS.
[John 2, 13 to 3, 21.]
THE Passover of the Jews being now at hand, Jesus went up to Jerusalem (Fig. 69)[1]. Finding in the court of the Temple men that sold oxen, sheep and doves for sacrifice, together with money-changers[2], He made a whip of small cords and drove them all out of the Temple. He overthrew the money-tables, and said to them that sold doves[3]: “Take these things[4] hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic.” Then the disciples remembered that it was written: “The zeal of Thy house hath eaten me up.”[5]
- ↑ Jerusalem. From Cana Jesus with His disciples went to Caphamaum on the Lake of Genesareth, and from thence He passed on to Jerusalem to keep the Pasch, meaning to come forward there openly as the Messias (John 2, 12).
- ↑ Money-changers. In the great outer court of the Gentiles there were cattle-dealers who sold beasts for the sacrifices, and money-changers who changed Roman and Greek money into Jewish, because offerings for the treasury of the Temple, which every Jew was bound to make, could only be paid in Jewish coin. The beasts defiled the sacred precincts: the haggling and bargaining of the mercenary dealers and dishonest money-changers, the shouts of the cattle-drivers, the lowing of the oxen and the bleating of the sheep, all this caused a great deal of noise, and not only made any worship in the outer court of the Gentiles an impossibility, but even disturbed the worshippers in the other courts. When Jesus saw this unholy traffic going on, He was seized with a righteous indignation, and, making a scourge, He drove the dealers and beasts out of the Temple. No one ventured to resist Him! All, even the stubborn oxen, retreated before Him and obeyed His word of authority. His angry glance exercised a supernatural power. “Heavenly fire gleamed from His eyes, and Divine Majesty shone on His countenance" (St. Jerome).
- ↑ Doves. Jesus treated these more gently, both because their business was less noisy, and because the sellers of doves were poor people, who sold the birds to the poor at a cheap rate.
- ↑ These things. The cages of the doves.
- ↑ Eaten me up. This passage occurs in Ps. 68, 10. The Psalm relates to the Messias and His sufferings. When the disciples saw with what holy zeal Jesus purified the Temple, this passage which speaks of the zeal of the Messias for the house of God came to their memory, and they found in it a fresh proof that Jesus was the Messias.
