The Hucksters driven from the Temple

Continuing with Fouard's Life of Christ:

Book Third: First Year of the Ministry of Jesus

Chapter I: The First Pasch in the Ministry of Jesus

I. The Hucksters driven from the Temple

John ii. 12-25.

The first sojourn of Jesus at Capharnaum was a short duration.  However at that time He manifested His power by the tone of authority which thrilled in His speech and by His miracles, in so much that only a little later we shall hear the Nazarenes uttering their reproach: "Do some of the great works like those which you performed in Capharnaum here in your own country!"2 We do not know what deeds these were, whose renown had been spread throughout Galilee; no one of the Evangelists has given as any particulars in regard to them, and we are forced to resign ourselves to the bare knowledge of their occurrence, as must be inferred from Saint Luke's allusion to them.

Hardly had the Saviour awakened Capharnaum to a knowledge of His presence by these miracles when He withdrew from their countryside.  The caravans which go up to the Pasch were being formed just at this time, collected from all the lands bordering on the lake.  Jesus joined company with the Pilgrims of Galilee.

Apparently they took the route through Perea, and arrived in Jerusalem or by way of Bethany and the Mount of Olives.  There was nothing at that time to distinguish Him from the crowd of Jews about Him, neither the testimony of the Precursor, which was almost forgotten by this, nor the miracles wrought in Capharnaum, since no report of them had up to this date reached Jerusalem; the Saviour entered the holy City unknown, unnoticed, and with nothing to mark Him out from the throng.  His first act was to go up to the Temple to pray; but it was useless for Him to seek any place on the Holy Hill for silent adoration; for He, being a Son of Judah, might not penetrate within the porches of the Levites; He must remain with His tribe without in the lower courts; but just now and all during the feasts this part of the Sanctuary was given over to the merchants, and was thus profaned by an unhallowed traffic.

This abuse, unheard of before the Captivity, had crept in since the period when the Jews, who had been dispersed over the whole world, thronged into Jerusalem for the Passover.  As they could not bring with them from those far distant lands the animals necessary for the sacrifices, it happened that for a long while the small number of victims was in disgraceful contrast with the multitude of worshippers.  To guard against this dearth of oblations, one of Herod’s favourite courtiers, Bava, son of Bota, gathered thither great flocks of sheep, and generously offered them to the sons of Israel.  What he had done prompted by liberality others continued to do from motives of selfish interest.  The priests were greatly in favour of these enterprises, whence they derived numerous perquisites.  Protected by their political influence, the sellers soon slipped into every avenue of their Temple and all through the Porches of the Gentiles, turning that vast court into a market, where were set out for sale every requisite for the service of the altars, cages full of doves intended for the offerings of the poor; herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, for richer customers.  Indeed, it was not alone the Paschal lamb which had to be immolated at this season; the Jews of the Dispersion, since they came to Jerusalem but once a year, were obliged to wait until this visit to make a presentation of such victims as were required of them, either according to the prescriptions of the Law, or in fulfilment of some pious vow.  And it must be remembered how innumerable the sacrifices were in order to conceive a just idea of the tumult, which was aggravated by the presence of the money-changers.  Seated at their tables, these bankers of the lower classes provided everyone with the half-shekel which he must pay "as the price of his soul;" and this because the greater part of the visiting Jews, having come from Roman Provinces, would have in hand only moneys stamped with idolatrous images, and therefore unworthy of being offered to the Lord.

Necessary as this traffic may have seemed, it profaned the House of God.  Certainly the victims were always immolated and the rites celebrated upon the topmost terraces; but the chanting and the prayers were no longer audible in the lower courts; shrill cries, incessant bellowing s, coin rattling upon the trays of the noisy brokers, a confused rabble of pilgrims and hucksters, with their beasts lying about the mosaic pavement of the porches as though it were the litter of their stables.  This was what Jesus must needs hear and see within the very shadow of the Sanctuary.

Christ cleansing the Temple. J-J Tissot

The spectacle aroused His wrath; seizing a handful of those flexible rushes which Orientals plait together like cords, He twisted them into a whip, and advanced, all suddenly, with uplifted arm, beating before Him both buyers and sellers, cattle and sheep.  Nor were the coin-changers spared; He put them all without the gates, overturning their tables and scattering the piles of money upon the ground.  The sellers of doves were less rudely treated; for as much as they sold the offerings made by the poor, they merited the Saviour’s pity; therefore he did not touch their cages, but was content to say, simply: "Take all these away from here, and do not make a house of traffic out of My Father's House." What must have been the astonishment of the first disciples at the sight of Jesus in His indignation and the multitude flying before Him!  Yet some of them remembered that it was written: "The zeal of Thy House hath eaten Me up." Thus their faith was only the more strengthened.

As for the for throng, it offered no resistance at all, but scattered like the startled sheep before the lash of Jesus.  More than once in the annals of Israel the Prophets had to disclose themselves in like manner, clad in shepherd garb, or as a hardy mountaineer, or other such men of the people; and further, all the while they were dishonouring the Holy Places the Jews knew themselves guilty of sin, and hence they were the more disposed to receive this Voice, ringing out in denunciation of their disorderly conduct, as inspired of God.  Though the usurers and merchants may have cursed the Vindicator of the Temple’s sanctity in secret and cast upon Him dark scowls of hatred, still none of them dared to face Him Who had driven them out in the Name of Jehovah.

Much less could the Scribes, or even the priests themselves (however much to their interest it was to condemn the Galilean), much less could they summon up the necessary courage, so conscious werevthey of the righteousness of His rage.  But as soon as they had recovered from their surprise they came to the Christ and demanded: "What sign He had to show as His warrant for an action of this sort?"

"Overthrow this Temple," Jesus answered, "and in three days I will raise it up again." The thought concealed under these words escaped them; they only understood them in their literal signification, and the source simply an announcement of the destruction of this Sanctuary, whose splendour was one source of their overweening pride.  The enormous blocks of stone, that tessellated mosaics, the precious metals, the silver, the gold, the brass, now blended in beautiful brilliancy before their eyes, in a word, the fair Temple, the wonder of the world, a Galilean dared to talk to them of levelling and rebuilding this splendid fabric with so much ease!  The work which Herod, having at his disposal all the treasures of Judaea, was 46 years in constructing, this royal task a poor Artisan boasted that he could accomplish in three days!  The saying made such an impression upon the Jews that ever after they kept repeating it; in the last hours of Jesus's Life they related it before the Sanhedrin, as a blasphemy and the capital crime of the Saviour; but not content with making a simple accusation of it, they took care to distort it after this fashion: " I can destroy this Temple of God and in three days I will rebuild it." Now note what Jesus really said: "Destroy this Holy of Holies" as you have done by your faithlessness and corruption, "and in three days I will re-establish it." "He spoke of the Temple of His body," the Holy of Holies of the New Testament, which after three days He would rescue from the tomb.  In His wording He merely made use of the enigmatic spirit so familiar to the Oriental thought when they wish to give only a hint of their real meaning.

No one understood Him then.  "What!" Cried out the Jews, "46 years has this Temple been a-building, and you say that in three days you will reconstruct it!" and they retired in impatient contempt of such presumption.  The disciples themselves, without partaking of the Jews’ incredulity, did not comprehend all that this response of the Master implied; "but after the Resurrection, they remembered what He had said, and they believed in the Scripture, and in the word of Jesus."

"While He was" at this time "in Jerusalem, for the festival of the Passover, many believed in His Name, seeing the signs which he did.  But Jesus did not confide Himself to them, because He knew them all, and because He had no need that anyone tender unto Him the testimony of man; for He, of Himself, knew what there is in man." The Gospel does not declare what prodigies the Saviour performed during those days.  Certainly they must have been of a striking character to attract to Him suddenly such a host of disciples; but their faith was only rooted in self-interest and ambition, and thus the Lord "did not entrust Himself to them" as he did to the Galileans.  Having read their hearts, He put no confidence in these new-comers.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam