#23
The First Passover; Cleansing of the Temple
Please
first read: John 2:13-25
Apostle Bruce R. McConkie:
“Passover: To commemorate Israel’s deliverance from
Egyptian bondage, the Lord commanded his people to keep the feast of the
Passover, a celebration pointing particularly to the fact that the angel of
destruction passed over the homes of the faithful sons of Jacob, when the
first-born in all the families of Egypt were slain.
“It was during the week of this feast, some 1500 years
after the exodus, that our Lord was crucified. Just before his betrayal he had
partaken of the feast with his disciples, using it as the occasion to introduce
the ordinance of the sacrament to the church. (Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22.)
“Keeping of the Passover with its sacrifices and
unleavened bread, ended (except among apostate peoples) with the sacrifice of
“Christ our Passover.” The saints were to keep the feast only in a spiritual
sense.”
Apostle Bruce R. McConkie:
“As Jesus
entered the outer courts of the temple, during the first Passover of his
ministry. He beheld what he was to call three years later on a similar
occasion, “a den of thieves.” (John 2:13-17; see also Mark 11:15-19 and Matthew
21:13.) Before him were stalls of oxen, pens of sheep, cages of doves and
pigeons, with greedy hucksters offering them at exorbitant prices for
sacrificial purposes. Crowded on every hand were the tables of the
money-changers who, for a profit, changed the Roman and other coins into temple
coins so that sacrificial animals could be purchased, and the half shekel poll
tax required at this season of the year might be paid. In righteous anger and
with physical force he drove the apostate priesthood from their unhallowed
merchandising enterprises.”
This dramatic episode in the life of our Lord has been
preserved to bear record:
1. That
our Lord was a man of action, dynamic, of courage and physical strength,
zealous in the cause of righteousness
2. That
God was his Father
3. That
the temple was still his Father’s house, although filled with apostate people
“Destroy
this temple and in three days I will raise it up …” (John 2:18-22.) On this and other occasions
Jesus taught his own resurrection, and though disbelieving, the Jews knew what
he was teaching and understood the meaning of the figurative expressions he
used.” “Only after the resurrection did
the full and complete meaning of Jesus’ announcement of his coming resurrection
dawn upon his disciples.
“He
knew all things,” (I.V. John 2:23-24) During
his mortal life our Lord progressed from grace to grace and from truth to truth
until after a glorious resurrection he gained all knowledge and all truth.
However, in the course of his mortal probation he knew all things in the sense that
having the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost and revelation all
knowledge was constantly available to him.
Apostle
James E. Talmage:
Thirty
Years of Age: The law provided that at the age of thirty years the Levites were
required to enter upon their special service. Jesus was not of Levitical
descent but to have taught in public at an earlier age would have been to
arouse criticism and objection, which might have resulted in serious handicap
or hindrance at the outset.
Attendance:
At Passover was undoubtedly enormous. Estimates range from one to three million. The number of lambs slain was counted for
Nero to estimate the strength of the Jewish people … that number one time was
256,000 which would be a lot of meals.
Cunningham
Geike:
“The
streets were blocked by the crowds from all parts who had to make their way to
the Temple, past flocks of sheep, and droves of cattle, pressing on in the
sunken middle part of each street reserved for them, to prevent contact and
defilement. It was, in fact, the great yearly fair at Jerusalem, and the crowds
added to the din and tumult, till the services in the neighboring courts were
sadly disturbed. Persons going across the city with all kinds of burdens, shortened
their journey by crossing the Temple grounds.”
The
Jews professed high regard for the temple. We might ask the question, why did
no one intervene … public, worshipers, temple officials, Roman authorities when
Jesus became a one-man wrecking crew, overthrowing the money changers tables
and booths, freeing and chasing the sacrificial animals from their pens? When
he castigated all there for desecrating the temple? Elder Talmage explained, “Because sin is a
weakness; because there is nothing so abject as a guilty conscience, nothing so
invincible as the sweeping tide of a Godlike indignation against all that is
base and wrong.”
Richard
Holzapfel and Thomas Wayment:
Jesus
began his teaching ministry at Passover time in Jerusalem. It would have been a
very public and audacious start as he physically drove the animal vendors and
money changers from the temple courts, exclaiming “Take these things hence; make
not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.”
The
Sadducees controlled the activities at the temple, not the Pharisees … They
would have been the ones challenging Jesus, not the Pharisees. Interesting, in
that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, and the Pharisees did! When
Jesus tells them, he will raise “this temple” in three days the Sadducees did
not understand to what he was referring.
The
BYU Course Manual entitled “The Life and Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles,”
(1978) teaches the following about the Feast of the Passover; a feast that designed
to bring two things to their remembrance:
1. That
the angel of death passed over the houses and flocks of Israel, while slaying
the firstborn among the men and beast of the Egyptians.
2. That
Jehovah was their Deliverer, the same holy being who would come into the world
as King-Messiah to work out the infinite and eternal atonement.
Raymond
E. Brown:
“Since
the Jewish Passover was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple
precincts he came upon people engaged in selling oxen, sheep, and doves, and
others seated, changing coins. So he
made a kind of whip out of cords and drove the whole pack of them out of the
temple area with their sheep and oxen, and he knocked over the money-changers’
tables, spilling their coins. He told
those who were selling doves, ‘Get them out of here! Stop turning my Father’s
house into a market place!’ His disciples recalled the words of Scripture:
‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’
At
this the Jews responded, ‘What sign can you show us, authorizing you to do
these things?’ ‘Destroy this Temple,’ was
Jesus’ answer, ‘and in three days I will raise it up.’ Then the Jews retorted,
‘The building of this Temple has taken forty-six years, and you are going to
raise it up in three days?’ Actually, he was talking about the temple of his
body. Now after his resurrection from the dead his disciples recalled that he
had said this, and so they believed the Scripture and the word he had spoken.”
“Whip
out of cords:” no sticks or clubs were allowed on the temple grounds. Jesus may
have used animal bedding or vegetation brought in for the animal’s food, etc.
Money
concessions and marketing activities in and around the temple were tightly
controlled by the Sadducees, the family and office of High Priest, and other
temple authorities. They had a monopoly and it was highly profitable. This was
widely known by the public and was a source of contention for them.
Alfred
Edersheim:
The
money-changers set up booths in many towns and villages a month before Passover
to accommodate the many who had to pay the annual temple tribute of ½ shekel.
Only Jewish money could be used and there were many different nationalities of
money in circulation in Jerusalem, Persian, Syrian, Egyptian, Grecian, Tyrian,
Roman. Many of these coins had heathen inscriptions and symbols on them.
Shortly before the start of Passover, booths in outlying areas were closed and
all such activity reverted to the temple grounds.
The
time of Passover had become a huge financial activity, a time of buying and
selling, of haggling over prices, worthiness of animals, costs of purification,
charging of fees, price gouging, etc.
Frederic
W. Farrar:
The
Jewish Feast of Passover had become the capstone of all celebrations in Israel.
Vast crowds came from many lands and nations. Many merchants, family members
visiting, much buying and selling and negotiating of contracts, etc. The number
of people and the atmosphere for many was that of a huge haggling bazaar. Over
time this encroached more and more toward the temple until it had now invaded
the grounds and the temple proper. Herds
of sheep and oxen, and tables of money changers now occupied the Court of the
Gentiles, through which was the entrance to the Temple of the Most High, and to
the House of Prayer.
Glenn
R. McGettigan
January
2014; Revised March 2014
References:
“Mormon
Doctrine.” McConkie
“Doctrinal
New Testament Commentary.” Volume 1. McConkie
“Jesus
The Christ.” Talmage
“Life
and Words of Christ.” Geike
“The
Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ.” Volume 1. Holzapfel and Wayment
“The
Gospel According to John I-XII; A New Translation From Ancient Texts.” Brown
“The
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.” Edersheim
“The
Life of Christ.” Farrar
