The First Temple Cleansing - John 2:10-25

 

 

I was thinking about why the account of the miracle in Cana and the cleansing in the temple are only recorded in John, then it occurred to me that when those events happened, John was the only disciple of the gospels who had been called at that point. He was probably there at the wedding feast, he was probably there at the temple cleansing, so we get his firsthand account, and I can only imagine how that would have been. It’s so abstract, and listening to the recorded scripture, it’s so difficult to understand because the context is so off, so I’m grateful that we have more modern instruction and insight to help us understand because I couldn’t imagine only having the regular Christian Bible and basing all of my faith and understanding of the gospel on what I could glean from that.

From the marriage feast in Cana, Jesus went “down to Capernum” with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, though they did not stay there for very long, and then continued on to Jerusalem for the Passover. We remember that this is a tradition that all Jews who could make it to Jerusalem for the Passover would do so. Jesus heads to the temple, and he always does while in Jerusalem, and is not pleased with what he sees. This event is commented on by President Howard W. Hunter who says, “Never did Jesus show a greater tempest of emotion than in the cleansing of the temple.” What was it that infuriated the Lord so much that he displayed more emotion than any other time in his recorded history? Animal sellers and money changers. When I hear money changers in the temple, I think of our temples today and having animals and all that inside our temples would just be ridiculous, but the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem was constructed differently and so I included a picture of it here to the left. I’m not sure exactly where the money changers would have been but it looks like the court of the gentiles would have been the natural place for people to be selling animals and changing money.

This begs the question, why would people be selling animals in the temple courtyard and why would there be a need to change money? We know that the Law of Moses calls for the sacrifice of many different types of animals, calves, lambs, birds, etc. Animals would have been necessary for many of the temple ceremonies and we know that Jerusalem was not home to most of the Jews there for the Passover, a good percentage were visitors from surrounding areas. In order to participate in the ceremonies these visitors would have had to bring their sacrificial animals with them from home. Considering that the journey to Jerusalem usually consisted of several days it would have been difficult to travel with an animal intended for sacrifice, because you not only would have taken care of a traveling animal but also carried the food for it, cleaned up after it, etc. Then we have to consider all the requirements for an animal to be acceptable for the sacrifice. Take Jesus’s family, they were carpenters, they probably had animals, but that wasn’t their occupation, they probably didn’t have a breeding system in place in order to optimize their chances of having a temple acceptable animal in their small village. It would have made much more sense for there to be a program put into place near the temple in Jerusalem where people made it their profession to provide the proper animals for temple sacrifices. That just makes sense for convenience and efficiency, so the fact that there were people selling animals for temple sacrifice in Jerusalem is not the problem here. We have certain clothes needed for temple ceremonies and many temples have a rental service where patrons can borrow temple clothing for a price, but that price is very small, less than $5 for the whole set I think, and only covers the cost needed to launder the clothing between uses. Now imagine there being tons of people in front of the entrance of the temple renting out temple clothing but charging $50 for the use. This isn’t a perfect example because clothing is not animals and the Jews that raised the temple animals as their profession needed to eat and pay their bills too, so they couldn’t raise the animals as volunteers and sell them for the bare minimum and live in abject poverty. They had to make some profit so that they can live, and clearly the Lord isn’t telling everyone to live in poverty, but to live modestly. The prices that they were charging for these animals was exceptionally inflated, and the sellers knew that the temple patrons had no other choice than to either take their chances that they would get a temple animal on their own at home, with all of its accompanied inconveniences. Because they had a monopoly on the animal sacrifice market, they took advantage of it with price gouging, and that’s what Jesus had a problem with, and they weren’t very discreet either. The temple is to be a place of reverence, they weren’t selling animals down the street, they were right in front of the temple doors hawking their wares. The IM says, “When the Savior entered the temple, He encountered a chaotic display of ‘stalls of oxen, pens of sheep, cages of doves and pigeons… Crowded on every hand were the tables of the money-changers who, for a profit, changed the Roman and other coins into temple coins so that sacrificial animals could be purchased.” Animals are loud and messy and smelly, it would have been like walking into a barn instead of going to the temple.

The ironic part is that those who sold the animal in the temple would not accept the roman currency that Israel was using as a vassal state to Rome. Between the need to buy the animals and the need to pay a temple tax, which was also only accepted in Hebrew money, there had to be a currency exchange, but the exchange rate was not fair at all. I have no idea how Roman and Hebrew exchange rates worked anciently, but I know that having traveled internationally recently, exchanging money can be expensive. But what was nice for me was that I had many options of where to change my money, but the Jews here did not. As far as I know, they only used Hebrew money for this time in the temple so it would have been impractical to have it at their home in any large quantity, so they were at the mercy of these financiers.

This couldn’t have been the first time that Jesus had seen this display, he would have seen it every year as he grew up, and it would have sickened him every time, but as far as we know, he had never attempted to throw these miscreants out of the temple before, he had never disrupted business before that we know of. Why now? It is apparent that if his ministry had not official begun already, it was rapidly approaching. He had never been given permission by Heavenly Father to cleanse the temple before now, as much as I’m sure that he wanted to. It wasn’t a onetime thing where all of a sudden there are people doing business and taking advantage of others and he gets mad and does something about it, this has been years in coming and it’s finally time.

Jesus makes “a scourge of small cords,” basically like a whip. If this was a “oh my gosh I’m so infuriated by these people that I’m going to immediately kick everything over” he would have done just that, make a mess of everything. But he stops to construct his weapon, that show premeditation, this wasn’t about a man out of control, but a man who needed to make a situation right. There’s a book series by Gerald N. Lund called “The Kingdom and the Crown” that actually sheds a lot of light on this event for me. With his whip “he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money and overthrew the tables.” Knowing the Savior as I do, I doubt that he went in there whips blazing and knocking stuff over, I’m confident that he reminded those wrongdoers that they were being disrespectful of the temple and invited them to leave first. My guess is that they failed to respond correctly, so he responded in a more aggressive manner. The insight that came from the book was as the characters were sitting around after the event discussing what had happened. One character calls Jesus a madman who was out of control but another character questioned whether he was really out of control.  Jesus knocked over the fences containing the animals and they were able to escape unharmed, as well as the people, but he didn’t physically do anything to the birds, he “said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence.” Take these birds, if Jesus had knocked over the table what would have happened to these birds? They are in a cage and therefore cannot fly away, they would have been stuck in the cage as the table and other cages fell on top of them. The character in the book points out that he was in complete control because he only did damage to things, but had the presence of mind to not physically touch the birds because if he did, they would have been hurt. Hurting the birds wasn’t his goal, clearing the people and animals out was, so he did that without physically hurting anyone. He physically made the people leave, but didn’t hurt them, that’s an interesting thought. JTC says, “with tender regard for the imprisioned and helpless birds he refrained from assaulting their cages; but to their owners He said: ‘Take these things hence.’”

Imagine if this happened on the temple property today, imagine that there were people selling temple stuff in the yard surrounding the entrance to the temple and someone came over and started kicking things over and making a mess, what would happen? The temple president and all the temple workers would have been out there trying to take control of the situation, the police would have been called. Why? Because the temple president presides over the temple and the police, in their secular capacity, are there to maintain security. In this situation the Jewish leaders go to Jesus and ask the same question they asked John the Baptist when they found him baptizing in the wilderness, they ask him for his authority, saying, “what sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?” To me that is them saying “what authority do you have to do this?” The IM says, “After the Savior cleared the money changers from the temple, some of the leaders of the Jews asked Him to show them a sign to prove He had the power to force those who were desecrating the temple out of His Father’s house.” Let’s think for a second what that questions means coming from them. First, it demonstrates that these Jewish leaders did not preside over the temple. I’m not exactly sure how all that worked, surely someone must have been in charge of running things and keeping everything clean, but it clearly wasn’t these guys. If they had been in charge of the temple they would have told him to leave, not “who told you that you could do this?” Second, this demonstrates that they knew that what they were doing was wrong. It’s an example of “if there is no punishment, then there is no law.” You can’t make a rule and then not enforce it because then there really isn’t any rule at all, is there? I was sitting in the foyer during sacrament meeting a couple of weeks ago because after the sacrament I go and set up the nursery to get ready for the kids to come in. During the sacrament I was talking to someone sitting in another chair and a guy I know, and really like, turned and said “we shouldn’t be talking during the sacrament, it’s sacred.” He’s right, of course he’s right and we all recognized that and stopped talking. There was no set rule “no talking during the sacrament” but it’s implied that because it’s a sacred ordinance reverence is required. I was talking during the sacrament, which can be akin to selling animals outside of the temple. Maybe there is no “don’t sell animals outside of the temple” rule, but we know that it’s not conducive to the sacredness that the temple requires. There might not have been a hard and fast rule about what they were doing but they would have surely known that they were wrong. The IM quotes President Howard W. Hunter as saying, “Love of money had warped the hearts of many of Jesus’ countrymen. They cared more for gain than they did for God. Caring nothing for God, why should they care for his temple? They converted the temple courts into a marketplace and drowned out the prayers and psalms of the faithful with their greedy exchange of money and the bleating of innocent sheep.” JTC says, “The Jews… dared not protest this vigorous action on the ground of unrighteousness; they, learned in the law, stood self-convicted of corruption, avarice, and of personal responsibility for the temple’s defilement. That the sacred premises were in sore need of a cleansing they all knew; the one point which they dared to question the cleanser was as to why He should thus take to Himself the doing of what was their duty. They practically submitted to His sweeping intervention, as that of one whose possible investiture of authority they might be yet compelled to acknowledge. Their tentative submission was based on fear, and that in turn upon their sin-convicted consciences.”

Jesus, of course, answered their question saying, “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John tells us that “he spake of the temple of his body.” The IM quotes Elder Russell M. Nelson as teaching, “This great priesthood power of resurrection is vested in the Lord of this world. He taught that ‘all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.’ This power he subtly proclaimed when he said unto the Jews “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up… But he spake of the temple of his body.’ The keys of the Resurrection repose securely with our Lord and Master. He said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’” By what authority does He have to clear the temple? The authority of God as will be demonstrated by his resurrection, the first ever, the culmination of the atonement and the most powerful event to ever occur, that is the sign that will signify his power to do demand respect for His Father’s house.

The Jews were enraged “forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?” It must have been an outrageous statement at the time, and it would make sense that the Jewish leaders would initially think that Jesus was referring to the physical temple of Herod, in which they stood. But that’s not what he meant and they eventually came to understand that because JTC reminds us, “the priestly Jews were not as dense as they appeared to be, for we find them coming to Pilate while the body of the crucified Christ lay in the tomb, saying: ‘Sir, we remember that the deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.’… The Jews who waited upon Pilate almost certainly had in mind the utterance of Jesus when they had stood, nonplussed before Him, at the clearing of the temple courts.”

This is also the first reference we have of Jesus foretelling of his death and subsequent resurrection. He went into His ministry far more aware of what his mission would entail than I had initially imagined.