Jesus at Jerusalem

125:1.1Ev­ery­where Je­sus went through­out the tem­ple courts, he was shocked and sick­ened by the spirit of ir­rev­er­ence which he ob­served. He deemed the con­duct of the tem­ple throngs to be in­con­sis­tent with their pres­ence in “his Fa­ther’s house.” But he re­ceived the shock of his young life when his fa­ther es­corted him into the court of the gen­tiles with its noisy jar­gon, loud talk­ing and curs­ing, min­gled in­dis­crim­i­nately with the bleat­ing of sheep and the bab­ble of noises which be­trayed the pres­ence of the money-chang­ers and the ven­dors of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry other com­mer­cial com­modi­ties.

125:1.2But most of all was his sense of pro­pri­ety out­raged by the sight of the frivolous cour­te­sans parad­ing about within this precinct of the tem­ple, just such painted women as he had so re­cently seen when on a visit to Sep­pho­ris. This pro­fa­na­tion of the tem­ple fully aroused all his youth­ful in­dig­na­tion, and he did not hes­i­tate to ex­press him­self freely to Joseph.

125:1.3Je­sus ad­mired the sen­ti­ment and ser­vice of the tem­ple, but he was shocked by the spir­i­tual ug­li­ness which he be­held on the faces of so many of the un­think­ing wor­shipers.

125:1.4They now passed down to the priests’ court be­neath the rock ledge in front of the tem­ple, where the al­tar stood, to ob­serve the killing of the droves of an­i­mals and the wash­ing away of the blood from the hands of the of­fi­ci­at­ing slaugh­ter priests at the bronze foun­tain. The blood­stained pave­ment, the gory hands of the priests, and the sounds of the dy­ing an­i­mals were more than this na­ture-lov­ing lad could stand. The ter­ri­ble sight sick­ened this boy of Naz­a­reth; he clutched his fa­ther’s arm and begged to be taken away. They walked back through the court of the gen­tiles, and even the coarse laugh­ter and pro­fane jest­ing which he there heard were a re­lief from the sights he had just be­held.

125:1.5Joseph saw how his son had sick­ened at the sight of the tem­ple rites and wisely led him around to view the “Gate Beau­ti­ful,” the artis­tic gate made of Corinthian bronze. But Je­sus had had enough for his first visit at the tem­ple. They re­turned to the up­per court for Mary and walked about in the open air and away from the crowds for an hour, view­ing the As­monean palace, the stately home of Herod, and the tower of the Ro­man guards. Dur­ing this stroll Joseph ex­plained to Je­sus that only the in­hab­i­tants of Je­ru­sa­lem were per­mit­ted to wit­ness the daily sac­ri­fices in the tem­ple, and that the dwellers in Gal­i­lee came up only three times a year to par­tic­i­pate in the tem­ple wor­ship: at the Pass­over, at the feast of Pen­te­cost (seven weeks af­ter Pass­over), and at the feast of taber­na­cles in Oc­to­ber. These feasts were es­tab­lished by Moses. They then dis­cussed the two later es­tab­lished feasts of the ded­i­ca­tion and of Purim. Af­ter­ward they went to their lodg­ings and made ready for the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over.