One of the most interesting stories in the Bible is the one about Jesus getting upset at the Money Changers in front of the temple. It is significant because it is apparently the only time the Bible speaks of Jesus losing his temper. I just don’t remember hearing about what got Him so pissed off.
I don’t know if my experience in India has anything to do with the answer to this question, but let me tell you what I saw.
Years ago I was in southern India in the city of Madurai. It was a “Temple Day” and hundreds of beggars lined the walkways that led to the temple complex. Some people had set up tables that had neat stacks of coins piled on them. Temple goers would hand paper money to these people and they would receive several stacks of coins in return. These people were Money Changers. After getting change, the temple goers could “spread their wealth” around to many beggars instead of just a few.
What I didn’t see is what the “rate” was. (Speaking in Dollars) Were the temple goers getting 98 cents in exchange for their one Dollar bill or only 95 cents or less? Obviously, the Money Changers had to make some money for themselves, but did they also have to share the profits with the temple?
Anyway, back to Jesus. When I heard this story in Sunday School, I always though the Money Changers were exchanging foreign currency. But when I think of it today, I doubt the temple goers in the Bible has to change their “Syrian Dollars” into “Judean Dollars” before the temple would accept their offering. I think they where getting change to give to beggars just like I saw the temple goers do in India. And what pissed Jesus off was his feeling that the rate the money changers were charging was exorbitant. This is why he turned their tables over.
Does anyone know for a fact what Jesus was so mad about?
The Temple in Jerusalem was the center of sacrifice in Judaism, and in fact, the only place that animal sacrifices could be performed. Most people, obviously, didn’t bring their own animals to sacrifice…they bought animals in the courtyard outside the temple.
There was a problem, though, in that most coins had profiles on them, and Jewish law prohibits images, because it assumes you’re going to worship them. For day to day life, people obviously didn’t have a choice, but in the temple, the temple authorities did. So, to buy goods in the temple, including the animals for sacrifices, people first had to convert their currency into coins that the temple accepted, and so there were moneychangers willing to do so for a fee.
They weren’t in front of the Temple, they were in the Temple. Matthew
*21:12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves*
My understanding is there was considerable profit made in the “Caesar for temple coin” exchange.
For Jesus to have chased all moneychangers out of the temple, incidentally, would have required at least a loyal mob. The temple was one of the largest complexes in the eastern Roman empire- freaking huge and a masterpiece of engineering at that. There were literally thousands of merchants there some days as well as many guards (some Roman, some Herodian, some Temple, depending on exactly where they were stationed). It was not a matter of knocking over a few trays and tossing some scared old Shylocks out like it’s usually depicted in art and movies but a very bad thing indeed to the powers that be, and could well have been (assuming there’s any truth in the tale) the real reason that the Romans took notice of him when he was arrested by the priests. (Claim you’re the son of a desert god, whatever, I couldn’t care less… but attack the area’s largest place of trade and commerce- we have a problem.)
Are you kidding? Jesus yells at his disciples every 5 minutes for being too stupid to understand what he’s saying. I never understood the whole “prince of peace” thing–he seems so angry all the time at the incompetents around him. Not very peaceful.
Don’t know if it meets the definition of “anger” but a few verses later, in Matthew 21:19, Jesus is hungry, encounters a fig tree, and when he finds himself figless, a verbal smackdown causes the tree to wither.
Didn’t Andrew Lloyd Weber answer the OPs question? Essentially, the temple is for prayer, not for profit. Jesus, from a literal standpoint, was exaggerating a bit with the “theives” part though.
“In the Temple” means in the courtyards. Only the priests were allowed inside the Temple building itself. The money changers hung out in the courtyards. They covered a lot of area. Clearing them wiould have been roughly equivalent to clearing the concourse of a football stadium during the Superbowl.
The money changers weren’t doing anything wrong under Jewish law, by the way. Why Jesus attacked them is a mystery. Some have argued that it was a symbolic attack on the Temple itself as the only venue for forgiveness (at that time, the only way Jews believed they could be forgiven for their sins was by sacrificing at the temple). The argument is that Jesus opposed the idea that people had to essentially “pay” to be forgiven.
The more traditional arguments are that the money changers must have been collecting exorbitant fees for their services but I’m not aware of any historical evidence to support this.
It should also be pointed out that it wasn’t just money changers that Jesus went after. The synoptics say he went after those selling animals as well, and those selling animals for sacrifice were doing absolutely nothing wrong. Sacrificing animals was the whole point of the Temple. The Gospel of John even says that Jesus drove the animals out of the courtyards as well. What did he have against the animals?
It’s more likely to be tht he thought it was unnecessary to sacrifice animals in order to be forgiven, and that he thought the Temple had become a barrier between people and God.
A question in my mind is how he did all this…overturning the monychangers’ tables, loosed the animals, and, IIRC started cracking a bullwhip…and not get arrested by the guards.
The Temple was set up as a series of concentric “courts” with the big deal, The “Holy of Holies”(debir), at the center. Surrounding this was the “Holy Place” where the sacrifices were offered, then the Court of (Jewish) Men, the Court of Women, and finally the Court of the Gentiles. A God-fearing Gentile was permitted to pray only in the latter.
The money offerings had to be made in “Temple shekels” rather than the everyday coinage, which as noted would depict either pagan deities or deified monarchs. (There’s a technicality about whether monarchs were in fact themselves deified, but not such as to make any difference to the Sanhedrin’s interpretation of the “graven images” commandment.
The sale of sacrificial animals and the tables of the money changers were set up in the Court of the Gentiles. This turned it into something halfway between a county fair and Dollar Day at Wal-Mart’s.
There appears to be some evidence that while there were honest money-changers, the majority were out for all the traffic would bear, getting two-for-one or greater rates. Apparently the chief priests got a cut on this in exchange to turning a blind eye to the usury.
So Jesus is saying, the one place where a Gentile can worship “face to face,” as it were, with God, has been turned into a market place, and worse, one with a built-in cheating factor.
“My Temple shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves” is His angry comment.
The modern day equivalent would be Jesus vs. the Bingo Players: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of little white haired ladies
[as I heard it explained]
Peasant: “I am here to sacrifice this lamb to God.”
Priest: “Allow me inspect it to make sure it’s perfect, as prescribed by law. A-ha! This lamb is blemished, and is therefore unacceptable before God! However, I will sell you this other lamb, which is perfect, and you may sacrifice it.”
Peasant: “Very well.”
Priest: “I will accept your blemished lamb and 40 shekels in exchange for this perfect lamb.”
Then, when the peasant had gone on his way with his new, “perfect” lamb, the “blemished” lamb would go into the holding pen and become suddenly “perfect”, to be sold to the next peasant to show up with a “blemished” lamb.