Luke 19:45-48
Chapter 19
45
Then Jesus entered the temple and began driving out the merchants.
46
And he said to them, “God says in the Scriptures, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of robbers!”
47
Jesus was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and teachers of the law wanted to kill him and the elders of the Jews too,
48
but they couldn’t do anything because all the people were listening to him and hanging on his words.
Commentaries
The Cleansing of the Temple.
Luke highlights several key points in this act of Jesus. 1. Jesus is not against the Temple; he acknowledges its importance to the Jews and reaffirms it as a “house of prayer” (Is 56:7). 2. By cleansing the Temple, Jesus shows how it had become corrupt, transforming from a religious symbol and place of encounter with God to a symbol of oppression and a den of thieves. 3. The authorities’ decision to eliminate Jesus becomes more evident, but they cannot do so because “all the people were hanging on his words” (48).