John 2:13-17
2:13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2:14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.
2:15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
2:16 He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
2:17 His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."
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This scene in the Gospels is the cleansing of the Temple. Jesus found a marketplace in the church yard, where all the vendors were authorized to sell just everything that was needed by the people for their offerings to have made.
Even the money changers were authorized to have been there, because hundreds of thousands of pilgrims used to come to Jerusalem at least three times a year, and their money offerings or the church tax could not have been paid, but in Shekel, the holy currency. Thus, people arriving from Alexandria, from Antioch, from Rome, from Babylon, all had to change their foreign currencies to the Shekel. All these selling and buying activities were declared necessary by the Priesthood and to be allowed in the outer courtyard of the Temple.
However, albeit usually the phrase we use for this Bible story is the “Cleansing of the Temple, but technically it was not exactly the Temple, and not even exactly a real courtyard of the Temple.
This market place was established outside of the actual walls of the Temple compound.
Inside the walls the actual Temple was located, and from West to East the compound contained the court of the Priests, the Court of the Men or the Israelites, the Court of the Women and a lot of chambers of different purposes. All around the external walls was this marketplace organized, surrounded by an enormous systems of a huge colonnade, which provided shade from the sun. This outer court was called the Court of the Gentiles. This outer part of the Temple compound was not considered sacred and was open to Gentiles. It was also a common gathering place for regular people as well and a sightseeing attraction to the visitors of the city.
This was the only area of the temple compound where non-Jews were allowed. They were forbidden by secular and religious law to go any further than that. At the entrances of the inner courts strict notices were posted in both Greek and Latin, with the warning that crossing into the inner courtyards is a high offense, punishable by death.
In the outer courtyard the worshipers could exchange money, buy animals for sacrifices or just gather for chatting. It was from this Court of the Gentiles that Jesus drove out the vendors, and this was the place where he turned upside down the table of the money changers, shouting that “Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!” (John 2:16).
The description of the event in the Gospel of John is just as quite short, as short it is the event description in all the other three Gospels. However all the other three mentions that in his shouting Jesus quoted the book of Jeremiah, saying that “"It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of robbers!"
It is indeed written in the Book of Jeremiah, chapter seven when Jeremiah, the prophet was asked by the Lord, that “Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, says the Lord.”
However, it is quite interesting that it looks like that the declaration of Jesus comes from two places in the Scriptures. The den of robbers were definitely mentioned by Jeremiah, however the House of Prayer term comes from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 56, that “for My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
The official title of the first “Solomonic” Temple was the Beyt HaMikdash, which means the Holy House. Otherwise it was called the House of the Lord, that is why Jeremiah says that the Lord says that this house is called by my name.
The term, the House of Prayer is used only but only once in the whole Jewish Scriptures, by Isaiah, and from whence we can know that it is a prophetic term, especially, when the prophet used it in a future tense, like “it will be called”.
The prophetic anger of Jesus against the corruption was expressed by quoting Jeremiah, saying that it is an outrage to see this den of robbers. On the other hand he also quoted the book of Isaiah using his prophesy about the House of Prayer, to indicate that the burnt and other sacrifices will eventually cease in the Temple, as it is really happened, when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans, and the sages indeed declared after a while, that out of necessity the prayers offered by people of Israel will substitute the sacrifices of the Temple.
Also the quote of Isaiah by Jesus may have marked it too that the time has potentially arrived already, when the message of the Kingdom of God should reach all the nations of the Earth.
Nonetheless, the Gospel of John has a significant addition to the other three Gospels, called the Synoptic ones, that Jesus said additionally that this is my Father's house.
For sure, the first Temple was built by King Solomon. The Second Temple was built by the grandson of Jeconiah, the last King of Judah, called Zerubbabel, by the permission of the Persian Empire, after the return of the Jews from Babylon. The Book of Ezra also gives a date for the beginning of the construction of the Temple: "In the second month of the second year, after they came to the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua son of Jozadak began the work".
And "the house was completed on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius." This latter definition means the 3rd of the 12th month in the 6th year of king Darius I (516–515). The month Adar is about equivalent to our March. There was a couple of interruptions during the very construction. The foundations had been laid twenty years previously, in 536 BCE.
The building was not even nearly as pompous as the first Temple, built by all the wealth and world connections of King Solomon.
At least the Persian King Darius I ordered that "the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar carried away from the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, are to be returned; they are all to be taken back to the temple in Jerusalem, and restored each to its place in the House of God".
This second Temple was also reconstructed and enlarged by king Herod around 500 years later, and was finally destroyed by the Roman legions in 70 CE, led by general Titus, later Emperor of Rome.
However, the Temple of God was declared by Jesus the House of His Father, and by prophet Isaiah it was declared also the future House of Prayer of all nations.
In both senses these are wonderful Biblical messages to all nations on Earth, that in the Messianic Era, which is marked for the Christians by the visible Return of Jesus in glory and power, a New Temple of God will be built, the House of Prayer of All Nations.
The Book of Ezekiel exactly, measure by measure, describes in details what would be the structure and the look of the Third Temple, noting it as an eternal house of prayer. The term does not mean that all the nations of the Earth will necessarily physically own the building, but that the God of Israel, the Creator of the Universe wants all the nations to repent and pray and call upon the name of the Lord, whose house will be rebuilt at the end as a sign to the whole World, that the Lord is the only King of the Universe.
As the Messianic Era Temple is called by Jesus the Father’s House of all nations, according to the Word of God in the Scriptures we believe, that we, who have a covenant and a pledge through Jesus, we also belong to the House of Prayer, as it is written in the book of Isaiah that "The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says, Yet will I gather [others] to him, besides his own who are gathered." Be praise given to the Lord in our hearts, by the Spirit, now and always, Amen.
