cleansing the temple

173:1.1A huge com­mer­cial traf­fic had grown up in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ser­vices and cer­e­monies of the tem­ple wor­ship. There was the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing suit­able an­i­mals for the var­i­ous sac­ri­fices. Though it was per­mis­si­ble for a wor­shiper to pro­vide his own sac­ri­fice, the fact re­mained that this an­i­mal must be free from all “blem­ish” in the mean­ing of the Levit­i­cal law and as in­ter­preted by of­fi­cial in­spec­tors of the tem­ple. Many a wor­shiper had ex­pe­ri­enced the hu­mil­i­a­tion of hav­ing his sup­pos­edly per­fect an­i­mal re­jected by the tem­ple ex­am­in­ers. It there­fore be­came the more gen­eral prac­tice to pur­chase sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals at the tem­ple, and al­though there were sev­eral sta­tions on near-by Oli­vet where they could be bought, it had be­come the vogue to buy these an­i­mals di­rectly from the tem­ple pens. Grad­u­ally there had grown up this cus­tom of sell­ing all kinds of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals in the tem­ple courts. An ex­ten­sive busi­ness, in which enor­mous prof­its were made, had thus been brought into ex­is­tence. Part of these gains was re­served for the tem­ple trea­sury, but the larger part went in­di­rectly into the hands of the rul­ing high-priestly fam­i­lies.

173:1.2This sale of an­i­mals in the tem­ple pros­pered be­cause, when the wor­shiper pur­chased such an an­i­mal, al­though the price might be some­what high, no more fees had to be paid, and he could be sure the in­tended sac­ri­fice would not be re­jected on the ground of pos­sess­ing real or tech­ni­cal blem­ishes. At one time or an­other sys­tems of ex­or­bi­tant over­charge were prac­ticed upon the com­mon peo­ple, es­pe­cially dur­ing the great na­tional feasts. At one time the greedy priests went so far as to de­mand the equiv­a­lent of the value of a week’s la­bor for a pair of doves which should have been sold to the poor for a few pen­nies. The “sons of An­nas” had al­ready be­gun to es­tab­lish their bazaars in the tem­ple precincts, those very mer­chan­dise marts which per­sisted to the time of their fi­nal over­throw by a mob three years be­fore the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple it­self.

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

173:1.4These tem­ple money-chang­ers not only con­ducted a reg­u­lar bank­ing busi­ness for profit in the ex­change of more than twenty sorts of money which the vis­it­ing pil­grims would pe­ri­od­i­cally bring to Je­ru­sa­lem, but they also en­gaged in all other kinds of trans­ac­tions per­tain­ing to the bank­ing busi­ness. Both the tem­ple trea­sury and the tem­ple rulers prof­ited tremen­dously from these com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. It was not un­com­mon for the tem­ple trea­sury to hold up­wards of ten mil­lion dol­lars while the com­mon peo­ple lan­guished in pov­erty and con­tin­ued to pay these un­just levies.

173:1.5In the midst of this noisy ag­gre­ga­tion of money-chang­ers, mer­chan­dis­ers, and cat­tle sell­ers, Je­sus, on this Mon­day morn­ing, at­tempted to teach the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. He was not alone in re­sent­ing this pro­fa­na­tion of the tem­ple; the com­mon peo­ple, es­pe­cially the Jew­ish vis­i­tors from for­eign prov­inces, also heart­ily re­sented this prof­i­teer­ing des­e­cra­tion of their na­tional house of wor­ship. At this time the San­hedrin it­self held its reg­u­lar meet­ings in a cham­ber sur­rounded by all this bab­ble and con­fu­sion of trade and barter.

173:1.6As Je­sus was about to be­gin his ad­dress, two things hap­pened to ar­rest his at­ten­tion. At the money ta­ble of a near-by ex­changer a vi­o­lent and heated ar­gu­ment had arisen over the al­leged over­charg­ing of a Jew from Alexan­dria, while at the same mo­ment the air was rent by the bel­low­ing of a drove of some one hun­dred bul­locks which was be­ing driven from one sec­tion of the an­i­mal pens to an­other. As Je­sus paused, silently but thought­fully con­tem­plat­ing this scene of com­merce and con­fu­sion, close by he be­held a sim­ple-minded Galilean, a man he had once talked with in Iron, be­ing ridiculed and jos­tled about by su­per­cil­ious and would-be su­pe­rior Judeans; and all of this com­bined to pro­duce one of those strange and pe­ri­odic up­ris­ings of in­dig­nant emo­tion in the soul of Je­sus.

173:1.7To the amaze­ment of his apos­tles, stand­ing near at hand, who re­frained from par­tic­i­pa­tion in what so soon fol­lowed, Je­sus stepped down from the teach­ing plat­form and, go­ing over to the lad who was driv­ing the cat­tle through the court, took from him his whip of cords and swiftly drove the an­i­mals from the tem­ple. But that was not all; he strode ma­jes­ti­cally be­fore the won­der­ing gaze of the thou­sands as­sem­bled in the tem­ple court to the far­thest cat­tle pen and pro­ceeded to open the gates of ev­ery stall and to drive out the im­pris­oned an­i­mals. By this time the as­sem­bled pil­grims were elec­tri­fied, and with up­roar­i­ous shout­ing they moved to­ward the bazaars and be­gan to over­turn the ta­bles of the money-chang­ers. In less than five min­utes all com­merce had been swept from the tem­ple. By the time the near-by Ro­man guards had ap­peared on the scene, all was quiet, and the crowds had be­come or­derly; Je­sus, re­turn­ing to the speaker’s stand, spoke to the mul­ti­tude: “You have this day wit­nessed that which is writ­ten in the Scrip­tures: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all na­tions, but you have made it a den of rob­bers.’”

173:1.8But be­fore he could ut­ter other words, the great as­sem­bly broke out in hosan­nas of praise, and pres­ently a throng of youths stepped out from the crowd to sing grate­ful hymns of ap­pre­ci­a­tion that the pro­fane and prof­i­teer­ing mer­chan­dis­ers had been ejected from the sa­cred tem­ple. By this time cer­tain of the priests had ar­rived on the scene, and one of them said to Je­sus, “Do you not hear what the chil­dren of the Levites say?” And the Mas­ter replied, “Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of babes and suck­lings has praise been per­fected’?” And all the rest of that day while Je­sus taught, guards set by the peo­ple stood watch at ev­ery arch­way, and they would not per­mit any­one to carry even an empty ves­sel across the tem­ple courts.

173:1.9When the chief priests and the scribes heard about these hap­pen­ings, they were dum­founded. All the more they feared the Mas­ter, and all the more they de­ter­mined to de­stroy him. But they were non­plused. They did not know how to ac­com­plish his death, for they greatly feared the mul­ti­tudes, who were now so out­spo­ken in their ap­proval of his over­throw of the pro­fane prof­i­teers. And all this day, a day of quiet and peace in the tem­ple courts, the peo­ple heard Je­sus’ teach­ing and lit­er­ally hung on his words.

173:1.10This sur­pris­ing act of Je­sus was be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion of his apos­tles. They were so taken aback by this sud­den and un­ex­pected move of their Mas­ter that they re­mained through­out the whole episode hud­dled to­gether near the speaker’s stand; they never lifted a hand to fur­ther this cleans­ing of the tem­ple. If this spec­tac­u­lar event had oc­curred the day be­fore, at the time of Je­sus’ tri­umphal ar­rival at the tem­ple at the ter­mi­na­tion of his tu­mul­tuous pro­ces­sion through the gates of the city, all the while loudly ac­claimed by the mul­ti­tude, they would have been ready for it, but com­ing as it did, they were wholly un­pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate.

173:1.11This cleans­ing of the tem­ple dis­closes the Mas­ter’s at­ti­tude to­ward com­mer­cial­iz­ing the prac­tices of re­li­gion as well as his de­tes­ta­tion of all forms of un­fair­ness and prof­i­teer­ing at the ex­pense of the poor and the un­learned. This episode also demon­strates that Je­sus did not look with ap­proval upon the re­fusal to em­ploy force to pro­tect the ma­jor­ity of any given hu­man group against the un­fair and en­slav­ing prac­tices of un­just mi­nori­ties who may be able to en­trench them­selves be­hind po­lit­i­cal, fi­nan­cial, or ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal power. Shrewd, wicked, and de­sign­ing men are not to be per­mit­ted to or­ga­nize them­selves for the ex­ploita­tion and op­pres­sion of those who, be­cause of their ide­al­ism, are not dis­posed to re­sort to force for self-pro­tec­tion or for the fur­ther­ance of their laud­able life projects.