Coming back to the actual record of John 2: 13-23;  we read: "And the Jews'

Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the Temple those that

sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting" (John 2: 13, 14).

While these particular verses speak of those that sold the various animals being found in

the Temple, verse 15 clearly shows that the animals themselves were there. It also seems

fairly clear from other records that the animals were actually brought into the court. The

Talmud, for example, records the zeal of Baba Ben Bota, who, finding the court empty,

sent and fetched three thousand sheep and brought into the court of the Temple. It was

also necessary that every Jew should pay his half shekel. Maimonides speaks of its being

"an affirmative precept of the law, that every Israelite should pay, yearly, half a shekel".

A proclamation was made on the first day of the month Adar, in order that the

people should get ready. On the fifteenth day, collectors sat in every street; and the

twenty-fifth day they began to sit in the Temple--"and then forced men to pay; and if

they refused, they distrained".

The Saviour's indignation was not roused by either the selling of the oxen or the

changing of the money, for both operations were necessary, but rather by the greed that

actuated the dealers, and the profits exacted by the money-changers. Taking up a few

"rush-ropes" (schoinion, from schoinos "a rush") that had been used for tying the cattle,

the Lord drives the sheep and oxen out of the Temple, pours out the changers' money,

and overthrows the tables, saying unto them that sold doves, "Take these things hence:

make not My Father's house an house of merchandise" (John 2: 16). At the beginning of

His public ministry, the Lord calls the Temple "My Father's house", and refers to their

"merchandise"; at the close, He speaks of the Temple as having been made a "den of

thieves" and calls it "your house" that is "left unto you desolate".

In John 2: 18 the Jews ask the Lord for a sign to justify His action in the Temple.

Just as on another occasion He gave them "the sign of the prophet Jonah", so here He

speaks of the Temple as a symbol of His resurrection.  The Jews, however,

misunderstand the Lord's answer and say: "Forty-and-six years was this temple in

building, and wilt Thou rear it up in three days?" Josephus tells us in his Antiquities that

the Temple was begun by Herod the Great in the eighteenth year of his reign. He also

states that Herod lived thirty-seven years from that time and that in his thirty-fifth year

Christ was born. If the Lord was 30 years old at the time of the cleansing of the Temple,

then we have a period of 48 years, which if reckoned exclusively (i.e., not counting the

opening or closing years which were incomplete) would become a period of 46 years, as

the Jews are reported to have said. The Temple was not actually completed until A.D.64

under Herod Agrippa II, so that the Jews must have been referring to the part of it that

had been finished up to that time. The disciples remembered the Lord's prophecy after

His resurrection, and the Jews remembered it against Him, when they sought some

evidence upon which to put Him to death. "He spake of the temple of His body"

(John 2: 21). We have already drawn the reader's attention to the fact that when

the Word was made flesh, He "tabernacled" among us, and that this is connected with

"the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father" and the "real grace" that was found in

Him. So here, Herod's temple, though a magnificent structure and lavishly decorated, is

contrasted with the living temple of the Lord's body. In the Jerusalem Talmud we read: