Three years prior to this event, Jesus had cleansed the Temple during the first Passover season of his public ministry, and cast out the men who bought and sold and exchanged foreign currency inside the Temple compound. As he was driving them from the Temple area, he shouted to the authorities to stop making his Father’s house a house of merchandise (John 2:13-16). Now, three years later, during the Passover season, Jesus once again cast out men who exchanged foreign currency within the Temple compound, together with those who sold animals intended to be sacrificed during the festive season. It was during the Passover the Jews were commanded to cast out all the leaven from their houses (Exodus 12:15), leavening agents and food made with leaven. Leaven became recognized, spiritually, as things that are sinful (1Corinthians 5:6-8). It is in this light that we need to see Jesus casting out the men who used the Temple as a place of business. Jesus was casting out the leaven in his Father’s house.
Therefore, after he arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus went into the Temple and found men carrying out their business in the House of God. The Temple was meant to be a house for prayer and worship, but these men made the holy place that was intended for covenantal worship into a common place of business. The place smelled like a stable and animal waste, and their business made it look like a marketplace, hardly an environment, where men could devote themselves to prayer and worship of God. Therefore, Jesus cast all the profiteers out of the Temple, overturning their tables, which cast their coins across the Temple floor, telling them they had made his Father’s house into a den of thieves (Matthew 21:12-13).
Afterward, the blind and the lame came to Jesus in the Temple, and he healed them (Matthew 21:14). The House of God was intended to be a house of prayer, of answered prayer, a place where men were made whole, once again. Yet, all the offensive things were done with the approval of the Jewish authorities, which is understood in their confrontation with Jesus later in the week (Matthew 22:20). They had no trouble offering the Roman coin for Jesus’ inspection, because they were paid with the foreign exchange money by the moneychangers for being allowed to set up their tables inside the Temple compound.
Presently, however the authorities were more concerned over what the people were doing. When the chief priests and scribes heard what the people were chanting, as Jesus cast out the profiteers, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were very displeased, and they demanded that he rebuke his disciples (Matthew 21:16-16; cp. Luke 19:39). Their argument was that his disciples were chanting that Jesus was the Messiah (Son of David), and the Romans, whose presence in the Antonia, which was attached to the Temple might hear what was done and consider it a challenge to Caesar, and they would rise up and destroy the Temple (cp. John 11:48).
Nevertheless, Jesus recalled to their minds the scripture, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise!” (Matthew 21:16; cp. Psalm 8:2). Luke’s narrative has Jesus telling the Pharisees that if they stopped praising, the stones would cry out (Luke 19:40). The point isn’t to be taken literally, but what Jesus means is that the prophet Zechariah had prophesied about this very momentous event (Luke 119:39-40), declaring: “Rejoice greatly, Oh daughter of Zion; shout, Oh daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your King comes to you; he is just and has salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass, upon a colt, the foal of an ass” (Zechariah 9:9). This prophesy must be fulfilled one way or another. If Jesus’ disciples were made to stop praising, others would rise up and do the same.
As evening approached, Jesus left the city, because he needed to get to Bethany before the approaching weekly Sabbath, because Bethany was further from Jerusalem than a Sabbath’s walk would allow. Additionally, a supper was being prepared there for him, and, there, in Bethany he would lodge for that evening and the Sabbath day that followed (Matthew 21:17; Mark 11:11; cp. John 12:1-2).
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