• This is Issue of the Week #3 Jesus Cleanses the Temple.
• Main Article: Did Jesus fulfill the Law?
• aka jesus and the money changers

If Jesus broke the laws of tithing

• By not doing them as prescribed
• By preventing other people from doing them (either by force or by placing a stumbling block)
• By speaking out against them (diminishing the torah)
• Or in various other severe ways

…then he would surely be guilty of breaking those laws. In such a case he could not have “fulfilled the law” and would be disqualified from being the Messiah.

Let us now examine the case of “Jesus Cleanses the Temple”. We submit that during this event Jesus broke the Torah law. Not the law of the scribes – or the law of the Rabbis, but God's law in the Torah itself.

First, let us read the Christian account in all four gospels:

Jesus Cleanses the Temple
12 And Jesus entered the temple of God and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you make it a den of robbers.”

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant; 16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
thou hast brought perfect praise’?”

17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.Matthew 21:12-17 (RSV)

Jesus Cleanses the Temple
15 And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons; 16 and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he taught, and said to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching. 19 And when evening came they went out of the city.Mark 11:15-19

Jesus Cleanses the Temple
45 And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, 46 saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.”

47 And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people sought to destroy him; 48 but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people hung upon his words.Luke 19:45-48

Jesus Cleanses the Temple
13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for thy house will consume me.”

18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he spoke of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.John 2:13-22

As it turns out, the Israelites had been commanded to do this. It was a commandment of God to buy and sell in the temple area at that time:

Regulations concerning Tithes

22 “You shall tithe all the yield of your seed, which comes forth from the field year by year. 23 And before the Lord your God, in the place which he will choose, to make his name dwell there, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, of your wine, and of your oil, and the firstlings of your herd and flock; that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. 24 And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to bring the tithe, when the Lord your God blesses you, because the place is too far from you, which the Lord your God chooses, to set his name there, 25 then you shall turn it into money, and bind up the money in your hand, and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses, 26 and spend the money for whatever you desire, oxen, or sheep, or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves; and you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.Deuteronomy 14:22-26 (RSV)

Deuteronomy 14 states that if a Jew lived outside of Jerusalem, he would have to sell his tithe (turn it into money), take that money from his own local currency, go to Jerusalem (the location of the temple) and change it into the local currency (because people would be coming from many different places) and buy a sacrifice or tithe according to the law in that place (“go to the place… and spend the money…”).

The problem is, that was what Jesus was angry about; the pigeon sellers and money changers! This practice had been commanded by God and was in place for centuries. No other prophet spoke out against it.

When we question why Jesus was so upset, we make the mistake of looking at this practice through pagan eyes. It certainly would have seemed to be much like a meat and wine market, to a Roman at the time. But Weren't the Jews just keeping the Law as commanded in Deuteronomy 14? In Modern days we think of 'money changers' and 'pidgeon sellers' as if it belongs outside of a temple – perhaps in a dusty old bank, far removed from a solemn and holy Church. Not part of a religious setting. But this is our mistake – the reality is these booths were set up in order to comply with the Law. As such, Jesus should not have overturned those tables. How could Jesus have made such a mistake, as if he was completely unfamiliar with the Law as written in the Torah?

This was to happen at the feast of tabernacles, but when Jesus observed the money-changers at that time it was not at the feast of tabernacles (incidentally, many wedding ceremonies also took place at this time in the fall). This is why the feast of tabernacles is a week.

So then why did Jesus also prohibit people from carrying goods and animals in the temples? It was a feast day (a sabbath – but not tabernacles).

fixme

see: three feasts of pilgrimage; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkot etc

It is written above “you shall turn it into money, and bind up the money in your hand, and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses, 26 and spend the money for whatever you desire, oxen, or sheep, or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves; and you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.” However in Mark 11:17 (for example) Jesus responds “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ den.” in this Jesus is referring to the following passages:

Even those I will bring to My holy mountain
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar;
For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.”Isaiah 56:7 (NASB)

11 Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” declares the Lord.Jeremiah 7:11 (NASB)

The issue here is, again, the people are in fact commanded in Deuteronomy to be Joyful; to buy meat and wine and celebrate in the temple. So given the way Jesus is taking the passage, we are still not sure what precisely the issue is. However, interestingly enough Isaiah 56:7 has nothing to do with what Jesus is saying. Look again:

6 “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, every one who keeps the sabbath, and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant— 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.Isaiah 56:6-7

First, the actual verse in Isaiah is about Foreigners converting to Judaism. If they keep the commandments, then God will make them joyful in his temple – presumably via the celebrations described in Deuteronomy 14. God himself chose that place for the pidgeon sellers and money changers and the drinkers and revelers! (“25 then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the Lord your God will choose.” Deu. 14).

Second, Jeremiah 7 has absolutely nothing to do with money-changers or any kind of businessmen at all, even if one makes the case that they are dishonest businessmen. It's about idolatry – baal worship. Read it for yourself:

8 “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Ba′al, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, says the Lord. 12 Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, 14 therefore I will do to the house which is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. 15 And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of E′phraim.Jeremiah 7:8-15 (RSV)

Jesus compounds his sin by lying to the Jews/Pharisees who questioned him; In John 2:18 Jesus gives “The Jews” the Sign of Jonah.

18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he spoke of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.John 2:18-22

However, despite telling them he would give them a sign, he did not do this; he would have had to appear to those Jews whom he said he was giving a sign in order to have kept his word in saying he would give them a sign. He did not; further, they did not understand what Jesus meant; only later, did Jesus' apostles understand what he meant. This means Jesus didn't really tell the truth to the Jews who asked him for a sign at that time.

A minor issue, but noted.

In contrast to what we read in John, in Matthew Jesus says something that seems to amount to non-sense:

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant; 16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
thou hast brought perfect praise’?”

17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.Matthew 21:14-17 (RSV)

Here, Jesus is quoting Psalm 8, but it doesn't make sense.

8 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted 2 by the mouth of babes and infants, thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.Psalm 8:1-2

We have to look hard and find the following wording in the Darby Bible: “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established praise because of thine adversaries, to still the enemy and the avenger.” and in the Douay-Rheims Bible, “Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thy enemies, that thou mayst destroy the enemy and the avenger.”

However, none of the above three readings makes any sense at all, it seems a non-sequitur, completely out of phase with the rest of the story.

In their shock, at hearing Jesus' words, Jesus must have appeared like someone who was out of his gourd to the High Priests and Pharisees in the temple.

Further to the above is the quote from Psalm 69, which also does not really make sense other than when totally ripped out of context:

6 Lord, the Lord Almighty, may those who hope in you not be disgraced because of me; God of Israel, may those who seek you not be put to shame because of me.
7 For I endure scorn for your sake, and shame covers my face.
8 I am a foreigner to my own family, a stranger to my own mother’s children;
9 for zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
10 When I weep and fast, I must endure scorn;
11 when I put on sackcloth, people make sport of me.
12 Those who sit at the gate mock me, and I am the song of the drunkards.Psalm 69:6-12 (NIV)

This is a prayer regarding patience and endurance; but despite the apostles remembering this verse, none of what was said to Justify Jesus' actions really applies to what happened. Also, even if someone had memorized or remembered this verse given it's meaning in context it is difficult to think that someone would have thought this was about Jesus. This sounds more like someone was scouring Psalms for something that sounded like Jesus and picked the middle section of a sentence out of context. I mean, isn't that exactly what happened in the story?

The second part of this story is that Jesus got into a lot of trouble when he did this. As stated above, the reason why seemed to be obvious, but to phrase it in terms of the verses Jesus is said to have quoted, he would have appeared to be a heretic; the verses he was quoting did not mean what they appeared to mean at all.

Essentially, Jesus was twisting the scriptures and accusing people who were keeping the Law (Deu. 14, Isa. 56) of Baal-worship-class Idolatry (Jer. 7). This is why the Priests and scribes in the temple were astonished at Jesus's teaching and wanted to stone him. It's because he was claiming the scriptures meant something they did not mean in order to support his violence in the temple.

What if Jesus was correct?

If Jesus was correct in his actions here given everything we have read from scripture, we must ask the honest question of why God commanded them in Deuteronomy 14, why no prophet ever spoke against these practices, and why they are mentioned in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Psalms, etc.

But the real issue is, he wasn't correct. This practice came directly out of the Torah and by refusing to let people carry anything in the temple or go on with their celebration and making Joy, Jesus was diminishing from God's commandment, and by using a hodgepodge of verses out of context to support his actions he was adding meaning to the Torah where none existed. These are all serious concerns; and yet, here we read Jesus' own words and actions in the Bible, in black and white before our eyes.

Finally, even if we take the prophet's words Jesus was quoting at face value, no prophet may abrogate Torah commands in that fashion. Thus we are left with the unenviable conclusion that Jesus must have broken the torah at several times during this story.

I found these articles interesting:

• http://washingtonsblog.com/2014/04/jesus-money-changers-modern-banks.html

One Christian I spoke to pointed out that Ezekiel 8:7 mentions that the priests of the temple were committing idolatry, and therefore Jesus was right to speak out against them in general – i.e. that this might have had nothing to do with money changers and pidgeon sellers per-se but rather was a general indictment of the priests and the idolatry in the temple itself. This kind of makes sense given Jesus' accusation of idol worship by proxy of Jeremiah 7:11.

Several problems with this theory arise such as it being about Northern Israel, not Judah (v.17) and of course the destruction of the temple Ezekiel prophesied was regarding the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the subsequent Babylonian exile. The fact is, Ezekiel simply wasn't talking about the temple in the times of Jesus; he was talking about the well-known idolatry in Northern Israel more than 500 years earlier. “The types are there,” responds this Christian – but I am going to have to disagree. Here's the timeline (source)

• 592 BC Ezekiel's First Temple Vision Ezekiel 8 - 19
• 588 BC Siege of Jerusalem Begins 2 Kings 25
• 586 BC The Fall of Jerusalem 2 Kings 25, Jeremiah 52
• 585 BC Ezekiel Explains Jerusalem's Fall Ezekiel 33:21
• 585 BC Ezekiel Foresees Reproof and Restoration Ezekiel 34 - 36
• 537 BC The Proclamation of Cyrus Ezra 1
• 537 BC The Exiles Return Ezra 2
• 520 BC Temple Work Resumed by Darius' Decree Ezra 6
• 515 BC Completion and Dedication of the (Second!) Temple Ezra 6:16
• 457 BC Ezra's reforms Ezra 9
• 444 BC Nehemiah Abolishes Debt and Bondage Nehemiah 5
• 444 BC Israelites Fast and Repent Nehemiah 9
• 444 BC Israelites Seal the Covenant Nehemiah 10
• 444 BC People Settle in Jerusalem Nehemiah 11, 12
• 432 BC Nehemiah Restores Laws Nehemiah 13
• 430 BC The Word of the LORD by Malachi Malachi 1 - 4

As you can see, what Ezekiel spoke of regarding Northern Israel in Ezekiel 8 has nothing to do with the temple in Jesus' time. (And of course, since the NT specifically mentions money-changers, this argument would have been invalid anyways.)

The response seems to be to press the issue of disonesty and corruption of the priest-hood and money changers. Either the priests were somehow corrupt, or the money-changers were somehow being dishonest and cheating the people. I think this is unlikely for several reasons. First, Jesus himself said that the Pharisees were at the seat of Moses and you must do all that they tell you. But beyond this, the priests had very little to do with God's commandment to the citizens in Deuteronomy 14. Again, Jesus actively prevented them from completing their end of the Law not just by upturning the tables but by preventing people from carrying their purchases through that area of the temple.

Second is the issue of the money changers. Being a temple money changer would be excellent business as people were coming to that one place from all over – it would have been like having a booth in an airport. There would have been no need for them to cheat anyone as they already would have had the best location in Jerusalem. Secondly, there are harsh prohibitions under the law against using false weights and measures. It would have been more than an outrage if someone was caught doing something so brazen in open court in the temple; they would have at the minimum lost their license to operate as a money changer anywhere nearby. The risk would have been far to great for the reward. But even beyond this, Jesus does not condemn them for dishonesty; only that they are trading.

“Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” – John 2:16

With this, Jesus indicts them for being there in the first place; not for being dishonest.

A conversation with a long-time (50+ year) Christian Pastor:

• t: The other issue is I don't think that really matters.
• t: The commandment in Deuteronomy 14 is to all Jews
• t: If priests are being dishonest or if money changers are being dishonest they can go to another money changer or just not talk to the priests
• t: They are to pay respects and tithes to their local priests.
• r: what about deu 14 is not for all ppl
• t: jesus was indicting them for being there in the first place and prevented people from completing their business there
• t: I mean it is for all people; the regulation of tithing
• t: For when you are to give a tithe
• r: i havent heard of ppl eating owls, bats, eagles, hawks
• t: Well me neither, I think it was mainly sheep and oxen, maybe pidgeons for sacrifices
• r: the plan of salvation the levitical law reveals is for all ppl
• r: !kjv isa 56:6
• r: Isa56:6 Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant; (KJV)
• r: there has only been and still only one way
• t: Sure so how was Jesus keeping the law by preventing people from changing money to buy sheep and pidgeons in the court of the gentiles?
• t: It seems as if he was breaking it. What am I missing?
• t: Was his reaction just a general indictment of the priesthood, and if so, what did that have to do with people who were commanded to go there and do that?
• r: the logic of the bible book of hebrews teaches the faith of Jesus that the Chrisitan is to have in Him …. it also explains the roll of the high priest in the levitcal law, and how the sacrifice point to Jesus
• r: i think if Jesus call the ppl thieves, they be thieves

This is not an answer, it is a capitulation.