St John Chapter ii : Verses 12-25
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| Make not the house of my Father a house of traffic. J-J Tissot. Brooklyn Museum. |
13 And the pasch of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 And he found in the temple them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting.
15 And when he had made, as it were, a scourge of little cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and the money of the changers he poured out, and the tables he overthrew.
16 And to them that sold doves he said: Take these things hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic.
17 And his disciples remembered, that it was written: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.
18 The Jews, therefore, answered, and said to him: What sign dost thou shew unto us, seeing thou dost these things?
19 Jesus answered, and said to them: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
20 The Jews then said: Six and forty years was this temple in building; and wilt thou raise it up in three days?
21 But he spoke of the temple of his body.
22 When therefore he was risen again from the dead, his disciples remembered, that he had said this, and they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had said.
23 Now when he was at Jerusalem, at the pasch, upon the festival day, many believed in his name, seeing his signs which he did.
24 But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men,
25 And because he needed not that any should give testimony of man: for he knew what was in man.
12 Μετὰ τοῦτο κατέβη εἰς Καφαρναοὺμ αὐτὸς καὶ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ ⸀ἀδελφοὶ καὶ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐκεῖ ἔμειναν οὐ πολλὰς ἡμέρας.
12 Post hoc descendit Capharnaum ipse, et mater ejus, et fratres ejus, et discipuli ejus : et ibi manserunt non multis diebus.
13 Καὶ ἐγγὺς ἦν τὸ πάσχα τῶν Ἰουδαίων, καὶ ἀνέβη εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα ὁ Ἰησοῦς.
13 Et prope erat Pascha Judæorum, et ascendit Jesus Jerosolymam :
14 καὶ εὗρεν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοὺς πωλοῦντας βόας καὶ πρόβατα καὶ περιστερὰς καὶ τοὺς κερματιστὰς καθημένους,
14 et invenit in templo vendentes boves, et oves, et columbas, et numularios sedentes.
15 καὶ ποιήσας φραγέλλιον ἐκ σχοινίων πάντας ἐξέβαλεν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τά τε πρόβατα καὶ τοὺς βόας, καὶ τῶν κολλυβιστῶν ἐξέχεεν ⸂τὰ κέρματα⸃ καὶ τὰς τραπέζας ⸀ἀνέστρεψεν,
15 Et cum fecisset quasi flagellum de funiculis, omnes ejecit de templo, oves quoque, et boves, et numulariorum effudit aes, et mensas subvertit.
16 καὶ τοῖς τὰς περιστερὰς πωλοῦσιν εἶπεν· Ἄρατε ταῦτα ἐντεῦθεν, μὴ ποιεῖτε τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρός μου οἶκον ἐμπορίου.
16 Et his qui columbas vendebant, dixit : Auferte ista hinc, et nolite facere domum patris mei, domum negotiationis.
17 ⸀ἐμνήσθησαν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ὅτι γεγραμμένον ἐστίν· Ὁ ζῆλος τοῦ οἴκου σου καταφάγεταί με.
17 Recordati sunt vero discipuli ejus quia scriptum est : Zelus domus tuae comedit me.
18 ἀπεκρίθησαν οὖν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ· Τί σημεῖον δεικνύεις ἡμῖν, ὅτι ταῦτα ποιεῖς;
18 Responderunt ergo Judæi, et dixerunt ei : Quod signum ostendis nobis, quia hæc facis?
19 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· Λύσατε τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον καὶ ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις ἐγερῶ αὐτόν.
19 Respondit Jesus, et dixit eis : Solvite templum hoc, et in tribus diebus excitabo illud.
20 εἶπαν οὖν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι· Τεσσεράκοντα καὶ ἓξ ἔτεσιν οἰκοδομήθη ὁ ναὸς οὗτος, καὶ σὺ ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις ἐγερεῖς αὐτόν;
20 Dixerunt ergo Judæi : Quadraginta et sex annis ædificatum est templum hoc, et tu in tribus diebus excitabis illud?
21 ἐκεῖνος δὲ ἔλεγεν περὶ τοῦ ναοῦ τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ.
21 Ille autem dicebat de templo corporis sui.
22 ὅτε οὖν ἠγέρθη ἐκ νεκρῶν, ἐμνήσθησαν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ὅτι τοῦτο ἔλεγεν, καὶ ἐπίστευσαν τῇ γραφῇ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ ⸀ὃν εἶπεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.
22 Cum ergo resurrexisset a mortuis, recordati sunt discipuli ejus, quia hoc dicebat, et crediderunt scripturæ et sermoni quem dixit Jesus.
23 Ὡς δὲ ἦν ἐν τοῖς Ἱεροσολύμοις ἐν τῷ πάσχα ἐν τῇ ἑορτῇ, πολλοὶ ἐπίστευσαν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, θεωροῦντες αὐτοῦ τὰ σημεῖα ἃ ἐποίει·
23 Cum autem esset Jerosolymis in Pascha in die festo, multi crediderunt in nomine ejus, videntes signa ejus, quae faciebat.
24 Ipse autem Jesus non credebat semetipsum eis, eo quod ipse nosset omnes,
24 αὐτὸς ⸀δὲ Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἐπίστευεν ⸀αὑτὸν αὐτοῖς διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν γινώσκειν πάντας
25 καὶ ὅτι οὐ χρείαν εἶχεν ἵνα τις μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐγίνωσκεν τί ἦν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ.
25 et quia opus ei non erat ut quis testimonium perhiberet de homine : ipse enim sciebat quid esset in homine.
Annotations
12. After this he went down to Capharnaum, he and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they remained there not many days. After the marriage Jesus returned with His Mother and friends to their house at Nazareth. Nazareth was situated upon higher ground, so that He would descend from it to Capharnaum, which was on ground sloping down to the Sea of Galilee. The reason why He went was because He did not wish to make Nazareth, a poor and ignoble town, and by whose inhabitants He was despised as a carpenter, and the son of a carpenter, the headquarters of His preaching. For this He destined Capharnaum, which was by the sea-side, and famous for its commerce and concourse of people, so that He might have more fruit of His ministry.
Now this journey of Christ took place before the imprisonment of John the Baptist, as may be clearly gathered from chaps. iii. 24 and iv. 1. It was different therefore from that of which S. Matthew speaks (iv. 13). For that took place after John was put in prison, when Christ actually transferred His place of abode to Capharnaum, and there opened a public school of His doctrine and teaching. The present occasion was only preparatory. This visit was only by the way, as it were in transitu, intending to proceed from hence to Jerusalem to keep the Passover, which was now high at hand. So Jansen.
and his disciples, i.e., His cousins, James the Less, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Matt. xiii. 55). Also John and James the Greater.
13. And the pasch of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. This was the first Passover after Christ’s baptism.
14. - 16. And He found in the temple, &c. I have explained all these things in S. Matthew xxi. 12. Observe, however, that this was a different driving out of the buyers and sellers from that recorded in S. Matthew, which occurred very shortly before Christ’s passion. But this took place at the very beginning of His ministry.
17. And his disciples remembered, that it was written: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up. This zeal of Christ was righteous indignation, says Euthymius, or rather ardour to do away with what was repugnant to God’s honour, so that He boldly exposed Himself, His life and His good name, to defend the honour of God, whom He loved above all things. For Christ did this before the proud and covetous Scribes and Pharisees, who opposed Him. The meaning then is, “The zeal, that is, the burning desire, of caring for the glory of Thy Temple, in which thou, O Lord, dwellest as Thine abode, and the indignation which I have conceived against the traders who profane it, have eaten, that is, have absorbed Me.” Symmachus translates eaten me up, as fire eats away iron, and so transmutes it into itself, that it no longer seems to be iron, but fire itself.
S. Augustine asks, “Who is eaten up with zeal for the house of God?” and answers, “He who strives to amend everything which he sees amiss. He does not rest if he cannot rectify it. He groans and says within himself, ‘My zeal hath made me pine away: because my enemies forgot thy words. ’ ” (Ps. cxviii. 139). Wherefore Bede saith, on this passage,
“Let us have zeal for the house of God, my brethren. If we see a brother who belongs to the house of God swelling with pride, given to detraction, a slave to drunkenness, enervated with luxury, disturbed by anger, or subject to any other fault, let us strive, so far as in us lies, to rebuke him, to amend what is corrupt and perverse. And if we are powerless to amend any of these things, let us not endure them without the most bitter grief. And especially in the house of prayer, where the Body of God is consecrated, where without doubt the angels are always present, let no folly take place, let us strive with all our might that nothing may hinder our own, or our brethren’s prayers.”
18. The Jews, therefore, answered, and said to him: What sign dost thou shew unto us, seeing thou dost these things? Meaning, what miracle dost Thou show, that Thou takest upon Thyself, contrary to the custom, to cast the sellers out of the Temple, as having received authority from God: for from man, that is, from pontiff or governor, we know Thou has none? For Christ had intimated that He was sent by God, yea, that He was the Son of God; for He had said (ver. 16), make not the house of my Father a house of traffic. They ask Him therefore to prove that He was the Son of God, and Messiah, even as Moses had shown signs and prodigies from heaven, by which he demonstrated to Pharaoh and the Egyptians that he was sent by God. So Ruperti.
19. Jesus answered, and said to them: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Appositely does He prove His authority over the Temple by His power of rebuilding the Temple.
this temple, viz., His body, which Christ pointed out by moving His hand to His breast. Observe: the Body of Christ is called a temple because in It dwelt the fulness of the Deity, not merely by grace as it dwells in us, but corporeally and personally (Col. ii. 9). So S. Cyril. As though He said,
“You, O ye incredulous Jews, ask of Me a sign, or a miracle; lo, I give you one, even My resurrection from the dead. This thing is now indeed dark unto you, because ye are unbelieving. But after a little while ye will understand it, or at least ye might easily understand, when ye shall see that I am risen on the third day. For then ye shall understand who I am, and how great I was, that I was in truth the Lord of My own Body, that of My own will I gave Myself to die, and rose to life again. Thus, in consequence, ye may understand that much more am I the Lord of this Temple, which is only a type and shadow of My Body; and therefore that I have power to cast out of it the buyers and sellers.” So Bede.
Moreover, Christ calls his Body a temple rather than anything else because this contention took place in the Temple and about the Temple. As though He said, That ye may know, O ye Jews, that I am Lord of the Temple, loose ye, that is, I permit you to destroy the temple of My Body, which ye will do when ye kill and crucify Me, and I rise again by My own power on the third day. “Destroy ye,” not as inciting them to His destruction; but predicting in figurative language what He knew they were about to do. So Euthymius.
[Ed. Destroy this temple: 1) If you destroy the temple (body) of the Messiah, I will raise it from the dead on the third day; 2) by rejecting and destroying the body of the Messiah, you will bring about the destruction of this temple (the building), which indeed took place in A.D. 70. The old worship in the Temple was replaced by the new Christ-centred (Christian) religion, where the central act of worship focuses on the Body of Christ.]
20. The Jews then said: Six and forty years was this temple in building; and wilt thou raise it up in three days? There were three buildings of the Temple of Jerusalem. The first was by Solomon, and occupied seven years. The second was the rebuilding after its destruction by the Babylonians, by Zorobabel and his companions, under Cyrus, King of Persia. This rebuilding occupied fifteen years only, though many ancient and modern writers have erroneously supposed it to have occupied forty-six years, and to have been here referred to by the Jews. The third was the rebuilding of the Temple by Herod of Ascalon, who murdered the innocents of Bethlehem. He built the Temple afresh for the Jews, in order that he might secure the kingdom for himself and his posterity, and that he might be accounted by them as the true Messiah. And it is exceedingly probable that the Jews were here referring to this rebuilding from their use of the pronoun this. For “this” points out an existing Temple. And inasmuch as the two former Temples were destroyed, they could not be thus pointed out. Herod began his erection of the third Temple in the eighteenth year of his reign. For it was at that time he made known his intention of rebuilding the Temple, as Josephus testifies (Ant., lib. 15, c. 14). Wherefore, since Christ was born in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Herod, as I have shown on Luke ii. 1, it follows that from his beginning to build until the birth of Christ, sixteen years had elapsed. Add thirty years of the life of Christ and you have forty-six. For it was in His thirtieth year, in which also He was baptized, that Christ had this disputation with the Jews.
You may say that Josephus, in the passage cited above, says that Herod completed the building of the Temple in eight years instead of forty-six. I answer that he finished building as far as the most important parts of the Temple, such as the holy place and the Holy of Holies, were concerned: but both he himself and his successors laboured for many years after, even to Christ’s thirtieth year, in adorning the same. For in constructing the courts, the porticoes, and in beautifying the whole, inside as well as out, eighteen thousand men laboured all that time, as the same Josephus records (Ant. 20, 8).
Finally, some think that the Jews spoke of both Temples, viz., Zorobabel’s and Herod’s. For Herod did not so much build a new Temple as adorn the old Temple of Zorobabel, so as to make it loftier and grander. This Vilalpandus clearly proves from Hegesippus and other authors. The Temple then of Zorobabel occupied fifteen years in building. It was afterwards for several more years enlarged and adorned by the Maccabees, by Simon the son of Onias the High Priest (Ecclus. i.1), and by Herod. If you reckon up all these years you will easily make them come to forty-six years. Similarly the Basilica of S. Peter at Rome, the ancient one of Constantine the Great having been destroyed, has occupied a hundred years in building, and even at the present time we see continually in process of erection turrets, altars, pillars, chapels, &c.
Symbolically, the forty-six years of the building of the Temple signify that the Body of Christ was built up in as many days. Hear S. Augustine (de Trin., lib. 14, c. 5.): “This number answers to the perfection of the Body of Christ; for forty-six times six make two hundred and seventy-six, that is, nine months and six days; for in so long time was the Body of Christ coming to perfection.” The same (in Joan, tract. 10) says, “Christ received a body from Adam. Now the Greek for the east is ἀνατολὴ, for the west δύσις, for the north ἄρχτος, for the south μεσημβρία, which four letters form Adam’s name, even the elect who are to be gathered from the four winds when the Lord shall come to judgment. The letters also of Adam’s name count for forty-six, according to the Greek numeration; for alpha signifies one, delta four, alpha one, and mu forty, in all forty-six. Thus Bede, S. Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, and others.
21. But he spoke of the temple of his body. S. Chrysostom asks, “Why He did not explain to them, being in doubt, that He called His flesh the Temple?” and answers that “since they had no belief in Him, even if He had explained the Jews would have derided Him, and treated Him still worse.”
22. When therefore he was risen again from the dead, his disciples remembered, that he had said this, and they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had said.. They believed the Scripture, which foretold that Christ would rise from the dead. This, which they did not previously understand, they understood when they saw it actually fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ. Such a Scripture is that verse of the Psalms (xv.10), “Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption.”
23. Now when he was at Jerusalem, at the pasch, upon the festival day, many believed in his name, seeing his signs which he did.. They believed in His name, that is, that He bore truly the name of Messiah, or Christ, as He Himself named Himself, and was so publicly named and celebrated by the faithful.
24. But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, He did not trust, i.e., He did not confide. For although He knew that they believed in Him, yet He also knew that they were fickle, and would easily fall back from this faith, and be perverted by His numerous enemies, the Scribes and Pharisees. For the authority and power of those men was great. For this reason Christ neither securely, nor for long, conversed with them, but went away into other parts of Judea, for He knew not only what they were then doing and thinking, but what they were hereafter about to think and do against Him, to persecute Him even unto the death of the cross.
25. And because he needed not that any should give testimony of man: for he knew what was in man. For He was searching the heart of each, whether it were constant, or fickle and inconstant. Wherefore, as S. Chrysostom says, “He did not regard outward words who enters into the mind itself, who penetrates human thoughts, who knew how soon their fervour would grow cold. Jesus had no need of testimony to know the minds which He had formed.” Augustine adds, “That the Maker knew better what was in His work than the work what was in itself. Man’s Creator knew what was in man.”
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SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.
The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
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