The task starts to get challenging. We will need to refer to a harmony of the Gospels before we go any farther. I’ve yet to find that I agree with totally, but in order to keep this simple, I’ll link to this one. Keep in mind that while Matthew, Mark and Luke seem to put most events in a chronological order, sometimes they group together events under a single theme, so that none of them is strictly chronological. John’s Gospel clearly isn’t, except in some parts.
The point here is to note that there is a very good reason from the Hebrew perspective not to worry too much about it. So much of what Jesus did requires contextual understanding in terms of the message, not in terms of events. I promised that this series would connect the teachings of Jesus to the Covenant of Moses, to show how the New Covenant grew from the same roots as the Old. For that reason, we will put things in a rough chronology, but there’s no point in being pedantic about it.
Thus, I note that we backtrack the chronology just a bit here because of what I see as a thread of importance in what Jesus taught early in His ministry. Last week, we left Him in Capernaum just as He is ready to begin full-time ministry, and had gathered half of His team of disciples under some unknown sponsorship. But a short time before He called them as such, He had gone back to Jerusalem for the Passover.
Keep in mind that, after the Exile, when Judeans returned to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem, they never actually had a Judean king over them. The royal family was still around, but served as administrative clients of first the Persian, then Greek Empire. At some point during that warfare between the successors of Alexander the Great, the High Priest became the de facto political leader of Judea. The Maccabean Revolt was lead by priests. Thus, when Rome begins showing an interest in Palestine, Herod established himself by marrying into the High Priestly Hasmonean “royal” family. It split the politics once again between kings and priests, but Rome controlled both offices.
Herod had wiped out the Hasmoneans, so it fell to other priestly clans to take up the High Priesthood. We don’t know when it got started, but since the Temple was a priestly concession, and those who wore that “crown” were chosen by Rome for political reasons, including bribery, it’s no surprise that the Court of Gentiles was repurposed as a bazaar. All those Diaspora Jews coming back needed their Passover Lamb or whatever they could afford. Getting animals you carried all that way through the inspection process might require a bribe in the first place, so it was easier to just buy one of the pre-approved animals in the Bazaar of the Sons of Annas (Annas was one of the High Priests Rome had appointed during Jesus’ lifetime).
So Jesus comes into this bazaar in the Court of Gentiles, which was a cacophony of animals for sale along with the currency exchange booths, since pagan coins were not permitted for buying these animals, nor for offerings in the Temple. The whole thing was highly overpriced, and very unpopular with the vast majority of Jews, who were middle class at best. Indeed, Jesus was hardly the first prophet to disrupt the bazaar. It had been done before several times, and we have good reason to believe His complaints were hardly new.
John quotes from Psalm 69, wherein David mourns the persecution he received for putting God first above human concerns. David’s penitent acts served only to infuriate those who would prefer to ignore the Covenant when its demands were inconvenient. The bazaar filled the Court of Gentiles, preventing Gentile worshipers from getting anywhere near the Temple services. A fundamental element in the Covenant of Moses was the singular purpose of having Israel reveal Jehovah to the nations, but the Jewish leadership hated Gentiles, and despised their own peasantry almost as much.
So when Jesus started busting up the booths, the Temple Guard with the priests overseeing the bazaar asked where He got the authority to upset their money-making machinery. That was the point of their question — “Show us a miracle or we won’t listen to your complaints.” So Jesus gave them a cryptic answer. Now, being they were all either part of the Sanhedrin, or leaders in some synagogue somewhere (so they could keep an eye on things), they should have been acquainted with Hebrew symbolism. His reference to His body as “this temple” should have been obvious. They pretended to be obtuse about it, because their closet Hellenism (intellectual influences without the cultural trappings) taught them to be legalistic about words.
They pedantically cited how Herod’s renovation of the Temple took 46 years, so how could He raise it back up in three days? This was the kind of thing that caught in His disciple’s hearts, even if their minds weren’t yet up to the task. The “three days” came back to haunt them at His resurrection. John doesn’t record the rest of the encounter and it doesn’t matter. Jesus had gotten the Jewish leadership’s attention.
Then He proceeded to do some of those miracles they demanded from Him. John makes the rather odd comment that Jesus was careful not to let the enthusiasm of the crowds capture Him. We get the feeling He did His best to avoid having crowds follow Him around. No one had to tell Him how quickly this could turn into an ad hoc revolt that would only get people killed. He was teaching and proclaiming about repentance and the Day of the Lord in connection with these miracles, and everybody was pretty sure He was the Messiah. Having their heads filled with False Messianic Expectations, the masses were ready to see the current Jewish leadership thrown down, and Rome, too.
But Jesus had already firmly committed Himself to not being that kind of Messiah.
