Back to blogging Stein, after a week or two off. Chapter 14: The Cleansing of the Temple: God's House--A Den of Thieves. Before giving the excerpt, let me give you Mark's account of this event. Notice how Mark, unlike Matthew and Luke, gives us the story of the cursing of the fig tree in two parts, placing the cleansing of the temple in between them.
"On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
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. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying 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.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they went out of the city.
As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
(Mark 11:12-25 ESV)
Stein explains:
"The cleansing of the temple is best understood as a symbolic act of Jesus in which he sought to purify the temple and at the same time proclaim divine judgment on it. It was a purifying act in that he rebuked the commercialization of God's house. The temple was not meant to be a stock market or a bank exchange. It was not mean to be a profit-making enterprise for the high priests. Jesus' action, consequently, must be understood, in part at least, as a cleansing. His reference to the temple as a 'den of robbers' (Mk.11:17) and his prohibition of using the temple as a shortcut (Mk. 11:16) demonstrate that.
Yet the cleansing involved more. It was a prophetic act as well...
...It may be that Mark intentionally placed the cleansing of the temple in its present position to help the reader understand how to interpret the event...As we shall see, Mark 'sandwiched' the cleansing of the temple (Mk. 11:15-19) between the cursing of the fig tree (vv.12-14 and 20-25) so that his readers would understand that the 'cleansing' was not simply an act of purification or reformation, but one of judgment...
Jesus did not simply predict the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. As in the cursing of the fig tree, so here also Jesus brought about that cursing/judgment. He himself would see that it happened. He had passed judgment on the situation and would bring it about. Unlike the Old Testament prophets, however, Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple without hinting that a new temple would be built to take its place. Through his ministry such a temple would be unnecessary (John 4:21-23)."
--Robert Stein, Jesus the Messiah
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