Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of
robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the
Lord.--Jeremiah vii. 11.
An attentive reader of the New Testament, will easily discover
the correspondence between these words, and the circumstance of
Jesus driving the buyers and sellers from the temple; which action
deserves to be carefully considered. It may appear extraordinary,
that persons should have dared to make the temple of God the seat
of commerce, for it was still used as the high place for offering
the daily sacrifice. But it is probable that, at the first, persons
were allowed to bring for sale, into some of the outer courts or
inclosures of the temple, doves, and those animals the Jews used for
sacrifices; that persons who resided at a distance, and could not,
without considerable inconvenience, bring their sacrifices with them
to Jerusalem, might always be able to purchase such animals as they
wished to offer.[50] In after years, this privilege was abused, and
instead of a sale of animals exclusively for sacrifice, it became
the busy scene of commerce; and buyers and sellers, merchants and
money-changers, used it as the great mart for business. Thus a place
set apart for the worship of the Most High God, was made the general
rendezvous of men, whose only aim, was to get money, even though
it were at the expense of their religion. Such was the disgraceful
scene exhibited at the temple in the days of Jesus, who, indignant
at the sight, would not suffer it to pass unreproved. Having made a
scourge of small cords, he went into the temple, and drove before
him, not only, the herds of cattle, but the buyers and sellers
themselves; and even overthrew the tables of the money-changers,
and poured out their money. One would imagine the Man who was able
to drive so numerous an assemblage of persons from their long
accustomed (and to many of them lucrative) seat of trade, must have
been supported by the weight of the civil and military authorities
of the state; but it was quite the contrary: yea, even the Priests
who ought to have been most anxious to preserve the sanctity of
the place, were the first to oppose this cleansing of the temple.
Surely it must be matter of wonder, how this Man of Nazareth could,
unaided by human power, so easily accomplish a change fraught with
danger and difficulty: but such was the fact, and there appears
but one way to account for the prompt submission of those buyers
and sellers; which is, that, Jesus being both God and Man in one
person, his Deity was not on this occasion so much concealed beneath
the manhood, but shone forth with such majestic dignity, that none
dared to resist or dispute his authority. All were awed into quiet
submission to the command of the God-man Christ Jesus; when he said,
"take these things hence, and make not my Father's house, an house
of merchandise;" it is written, "my house, shall be called the house
of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." Not only his acts,
but his words, proclaim his Deity. Jesus can with propriety call
God, Father, for he is his first begotten, well beloved Son, and,
as such, he has rule over his Father's house.[51] The disciples who
were observers of the event, struck at the display of his Godhead,
applied to him the words of the psalmist; "The zeal of thine house
hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproached thee,
are fallen upon me." If we except the miracle recorded by John, of
the armed men falling to the ground on the reply of Jesus, this
certainly is one of the greatest miracles he performed in the days
of his flesh.
[50] Deut. xiv. 23-26.
[51] John v. 22, 23.