Those selling in the Temple must have sensed that they were in deep trouble as they saw the awe-inspiring sight of our Lord with a whip moving and acting with hot, righteous anger. What moved Jesus to this white-hot anger in the Temple Courts?

12 After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His brothers and His disciples; and they stayed there a few days.
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; 16 and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” John 2:12-16 (NASB)

Some today have made a caricature of our Lord Jesus Christ. This man-made image is far from the truth we see in Sacred Scripture. There have been some who have even portrayed the Bible as revealing two separate “Gods,” the mean, angry God of the Old Testament, and the kind, gentle Jesus of the New Testament. The former is an image contrived by those who resent God’s commands for holiness and righteousness while the latter is vastly incomplete and derived by those who are either ignorant of what the New Testament teaches about our Lord or they are deliberately ignoring what it says.

In the passage above, we see the phrase, “After this…” This is referring to what happened after the wedding feast in Cana where our Lord turned water into wine. After the wedding, He went to Capernaum with his family and disciples for a few days. Then He went to Jerusalem for Passover. What did He find in the Temple? He found there those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.”

Our Lord’s anger is a terrifying thing. Those selling in the Temple must have sensed that they were in deep trouble as they saw the awe-inspiring sight of our Lord with a whip moving and acting with hot, righteous anger. What moved Jesus to this white-hot anger in the Temple Courts? The city of Jerusalem was full of Jews from all over the known world. Some have estimated that there were over two and a quarter million Jews sometimes assembled in Jerusalem to keep the Passover. There was a Temple Tax that every Jew over 19 years of age must pay. This Tax was necessary that all should pay it so that the Temple sacrifices and the Temple ritual might be carried out day by day. It consisted of one half-shekel. This was equivalent to two days’ wages for the average workingman at that time. Even though all sorts of currency was valid throughout the country and Jerusalem, only the Galilean shekel or a Temple shekel could be used to pay this tax. Why? The other currencies were foreign and so were unclean.

As the Pilgrims arrived from all over the known world for Passover, they carried money from wherever they lived, not valid shekels for paying the Temple tax. So in the Temple courts there sat the money-changers. While there would be nothing wrong with exchanging foreign money for shekels valid for paying the tax, that is not what was going on. No, they charged a fee to make the exchange. This fee could be exorbitant. In some cases it could be equivalent to one day’s wage. In other words, these men were becoming wealthy through cheating people who had no choice if they wanted to pay the Temple tax.

It was not illegal for these money-changers to charge a fee to make the exchange, however, it was unethical in that they charged an exorbitant fee to do so. This is what enraged our Lord. Pilgrims came to pay the Temple tax, to pay God, to worship Him through this and the moneychangers were fleecing them. It was a rampant and shameless social injustice-and what was worse, it was being done as part of Temple worship.

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