Trevor Laurence
Jesus’ triumphal entry, with all of its redemptive-historical resonances, sets the stage for what ensues in the temple. Christ’s temple-oriented action follows quite naturally as the climax of the allusively orchestrated choreography that begins with his initial movement into the holy city.
From Olive Mount to Temple Mount
As Jehu rode over garments on his way to judge Israel’s wicked leaders and demolish the house of Baal (2 Kgs 9:13), Jesus journeys on a cloak-covered road to symbolically announce the destruction of the temple and to judge the leaders that have led Israel astray (Matt 21:8).
As Solomon entered Jerusalem on a mule to take his throne and construct a holy house for the Lord (1 Kgs 1:38–40), Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey and directs his attention to a rogue temple whose only hope is to be razed and rebuilt (Matt 21:7, 12).
As David fled Jerusalem up the Mount of Olives and was met with a pair of donkeys (2 Sam 15:30; 16:1), Jesus returns to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives with two donkeys (Matt 21:1–2),1 the Son of David “who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matt 21:9; Ps 118:26)2 to end Israel’s exile and establish “the coming kingdom of our father David” (Mark 11:10)—a kingdom ruled over by a Davidic heir in which God “will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore” (Ezek 37:26). That this kingdom-restoring Son of David goes to God’s sanctuary to assess its fitness is only fitting.
As the glory of the Lord departed the temple and stood on the Mount of Olives (Ezek 11:23), Jesus traverses from the Mount of Olives into the temple, the presence of God returned to his house.3 But the presence of God that is life and light and healing for the faithful is a cleansing, expulsive storm for the wicked (cf. Ps 1). The Lord’s house is a threshing floor, and God’s holy presence divides the wheat from the chaff (2 Chron 3:1; Matt 3:12).
Cleansing the Temple
The events that subsequently transpire in the temple are simultaneously straightforward and pregnant with biblical theological significance.
Within the temple precincts—specifically, in the Court of the Gentiles— Jesus “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” (Matt 21:12). While the service of changing money and selling sacrificial animals was a legitimate and necessary practice, especially for those pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem from far away, the movement of this practice from outside the temple grounds into the Court of the Gentiles turned the place where God-fearing Gentiles could gather for prayer and worship into a center for commerce.4 By driving them out, Jesus indicts not only the individuals participating in the activity but also the priestly regime that permitted the practice and failed to steward God’s holy house appropriately.
Jesus explains his action with a citation that combines Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers” (Matt 21:13). Isa 56 envisions a restoration from exile in which foreigners are brought to God’s holy mountain to serve him in his house and offer sacrifice:
“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,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
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.” (vv. 6–7)5
The beautiful vision of Isa 56, however, gives way in the second half of the chapter to a denunciation of Israel’s leaders, blind watchmen and selfish shepherds who by their infidelity have invited the judgment of God, a judgment that will take the form of invading nations (vv. 9–12). Jesus’ reference to Isa 56 has the effect of introducing both the aspiration of what ought to be and the condemnation of what presently is.
In Jer 7, the prophet denounces Israel’s corruption: idolatry, shedding innocent blood, injustice, and oppression of the weak—including the sojourner (vv. 5–6). Seeing the temple as a sign of nationalistic privilege that rendered Israel immune from God’s judgment (v. 4), the Israelites treated the Lord’s house as if it were a “den of robbers” (v. 11), a hideout that offered cover and safety for their violence and unfaithfulness. But God declares that, just as he judged his house at Shiloh by giving it over to the Philistines,6 he will judge his house at Jerusalem, “the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust” (v. 14), and cast unfaithful Israel out of his sight and out of the land where he dwells.
By invoking the vision and condemnation of Isa 56 and by alluding to the promised judgment on a temple-turned-den of robbers in Jer 7, Jesus announces that the same fate will befall the corrupted house in Jerusalem: it too will be destroyed as the nations descend with the judgment of God. Jesus’ cleansing of Israel’s temple, illuminated by his reference to Israel’s Scriptures, comes into focus as a “dramatic symbol of its imminent destruction,”7 a theatrical embodiment of the cleansing to come when God will drive a faithless people and their faithless house out of the place of his presence.
Additional biblical resonances in Christ’s cleansing of the temple signal hope and not merely judgment, which coheres with the prior presentation of Jesus as not only Jehu the temple-destroyer but also Solomon the temple-builder, David the kingdom-restorer, the very God who is committed to making his holy dwelling among his people.
Malachi 3:1–5 anticipates the day when God sends his messenger to prepare the way before him, and “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (v. 1), purifying the sons of Levi like fire so that “the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord” (v. 4). Yet even as God refines his temple and its leadership, he will judge the wicked—not least “those who thrust aside the sojourner” (v. 5)—who pollute the land of his presence with unholiness. Preceded by John the messenger (Matt 3:3), Jesus turns backward the departure of God’s glory, coming suddenly as the living Lord into his temple. And though this temple will be judged, Jesus will consecrate a purified priesthood and erect a sanctified house where God’s glory will reside.
In the vision of Zech 14, Zechariah looks to the day when God will deliver Jerusalem from the enemy nations. “On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east” (v. 4), and from there he will come to reign over all the earth (v. 9) and make Jerusalem a temple from which living waters flow (v. 8), to which the nations flock in worship (v. 16), in which even the most mundane cooking pot is holy (vv. 20–21). The final sentence of the book is significant: “And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day” (v. 21).
Jesus’ movement from the Mount of Olives to the temple to drive out those trading in the house of the Lord plays out the script of Zech 14, embodying the advent of God to establish his holy temple-city upon the earth. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, a verdict of judgment, is also a sign of promise. Jerusalem and its compromised temple must fall, but Jesus will yet build God’s sanctuary upon the earth, incorruptible sacred space for the Spirit’s abiding, a holy house of Jew and Gentile from whose hearts flow rivers of living water (John 7:38).
But there is still another intrabiblical correspondence that sheds light on Jesus’ action in the temple and the messianic identity the action reveals.
Adam in the Temple-Garden
Jesus is the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45), and in his cleansing of the temple, he manifests himself as the true Son of God sent to perform the royal-priestly task that Adam failed to accomplish.
Adam was created in God’s image and likeness as a son of God (cf. Gen 5:1–3; Luke 3:38), planted in the holy garden-sanctuary where God’s presence dwelt with man, and commissioned to labor as a priestly king: Adam was to extend the garden’s sacred space across the face of the earth, subduing it as a holy and habitable house for the Lord (Gen 1:28), and he was to exercise dominion by serving and guarding God’s Edenic dwelling place (Gen 2:15).8 Kings subdue and exercise dominion. Priests service and guard sacred space. In Adam, these callings were united.
When the unclean serpent slithered into God’s garden, Adam should have done the work that royal priests do—he should have guarded the Lord’s sanctuary by driving the serpent out, cleansing God’s temple-garden of the serpent’s corruption and maintaining its holy purity as the residence of God’s holy presence. Instead, a horrific reversal ensued, and the son of God charged with driving out serpentine uncleanness was himself driven out (ἐκβάλλω, LXX Gen 3:24), cast eastward from the garden.
Israel inherited the Adamic calling as God’s firstborn son (Exod 4:22), a royal priesthood (Exod 19:6). Unwinding unfaithful Adam’s eastward expulsion from Eden, Adamic Israel entered the new Edenic land of Canaan from the east, and as a kingdom of priests, they were charged with driving out (ἐκβάλλω, LXX Exod 23:31)9 the serpentine nations from the place God had chosen to make his holy home.
Israel’s kings were, like Adam and Israel, called by God to be his royal-priestly sons (Ps 2:7; 2 Sam 7:14), subduers of the land and stewards of God’s temple-kingdom. And Israel’s sanctuaries were deliberately structured and ornamented to recall the original sanctuary in Eden: the temple, like the tabernacle before it, was a renewed Eden, the arboreally adorned holy place of God’s presence with his kingdom of priests,10 sacred space in which the righteous are planted and flourish like a fruitful garden.11 Solomon’s driving out (ἐκβάλλω, LXX 3 Kgdms 2:27 [1 Kgs 2:27]) of wicked Abiathar from being a priest in God’s house was thus an Adamic expulsion of a serpent in the garden, a cleansing of corruption from the place of God’s presence.12
With this biblical theological milieu in view, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple emerges as a symbolic enactment of Adam’s royal-priestly calling to guard God’s sacred dwelling by expelling unholy intruders. Just as Jesus recapitulated the conquest by crossing the Jordan (Matt 3:13), receiving the Father’s declaration that he is the Son of God (Matt 3:17), and driving out (ἐκβάλλω) unclean spirits from God’s people and land (e.g., Matt 8:16; 9:33; 12:28), so in the temple precincts God’s true priest-king reverses the events of Eden: entering the architectural Eden of the temple from the Mount of Olives to the east, the Adamic Son of God drives out (ἐκβάλλω, Matt 21:12) the serpents who have crept into God’s garden-sanctuary. What is more, throughout the Gospels, Israel’s leaders are depicted as serpents—the offspring seed of the original serpent—at enmity with the Son of God (e.g., Matt 3:7; 12:34; 23:33; John 8:44). In driving out the sellers and buyers from the temple, Jesus not only cleanses God’s temple-garden of unfit transgressors but in so doing exercises judgment against the serpentine shepherds who have infiltrated God’s house, permitted corruption to flourish, and led Israel astray.
The temple cleansing which portends judgment and signals hope is, therefore, also an announcement in action of Jesus’ identity and a revelation of the work he has come to accomplish. He is the royal-priestly Son of God answering the Adamic call to purify and protect the place of God’s dwelling by driving out every serpentine threat to the holiness of God’s house and the blessedness of the community with whom God resides.
Not only will Jesus judge the wicked leaders by removing them from their place of authority over God’s vineyard kingdom (Matt 21:33–46), but by his death and resurrection he will triumph over the ancient serpent (Gen 3:15; Col 2:15; Rev 12:9), cleanse his people of every impurity, and build a new and holy Spirit-filled temple where the glory of God abides with humanity (Acts 2). This last Adam will subdue the rebellious nations with the means of grace and extend his ecclesial temple throughout the earth (Matt 28:18–20) until the day when he definitively drives out the serpent and his seed, cleansing the whole world, consummating creation as the temple it was always intended to be (Rev 21–22). This Son of God will see to it that “the dwelling place of God is with man” (Rev 21:3) and that nothing in heaven or on earth ever impedes their holy communion again.
Trevor Laurence is the Executive Director of the Cateclesia Institute
Image: Cecco del Caravaggio, Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple
- R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 775).[
] - Interestingly, the victory procession of the deliverer in Ps 118 takes him into the temple to give thanks to God, and Jesus’ Ps 118-esque procession takes him into the temple to enact judgment upon an unfit house.[]
- Peter J. Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew Through New Eyes, Volume Two: Jesus as Israel (West Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2018), 145[]
- See Craig L Blomberg, “Matthew,” in CNTUOT, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 67.[]
- Mark 11:17 records Jesus as citing the fuller phrase from Isa 56:7: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?”[]
- Cf. 1 Sam 4:1–11; Ps 78:60–64.[]
- N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 424.[]
- The terms עבד and שׁמר, frequently translated “work” and “keep” in Gen 2:15, occur together to describe the cultic responsibilities of Levites and priests elsewhere in the Pentateuch.[]
- Cf. LXX Deut 11:23.[]
- Cf. esp. 1 Kgs 6–7 and my The Temple of Creation: Part One and Part Two.[]
- Ps 92:12–15 is representative of this recurring motif in the Psalter[]
- Cf. LXX 2 Chron 29:5, 16 for Hezekiah’s command to carry out (ἐκβάλλω) the filth from God’s Holy Place.[]