Matthew Chapter 21 verse 13 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 13. - It is written. Jesus confirms his action by the word of Scripture. He combines in one severe sentence a passage from Isaiah 56:7 ("Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all peoples"), and one from Jeremiah 7:11 ("Is this house, which is called by my Name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?"). He brings out in strong contrast the high design and use of the house of God (an allusion specially appropriate at the coming festival), and the vile and profane purposes to which the greed and impiety of men had subjected it. Ye have made it; Revised Version, ye make it; and so many modern editors on good manuscript authority. These base traffickers had turned the hallowed courts into a cavern where robbers stored their ill-gotten plunder. It may also be said that to make the place of prayer for all the nations a market for boasts was a robbery of the rights of the Gentiles (Lange). And Christ here vindicated the sanctity of the house of God: the Lord, according to the prophecy of Malachi (Malachi 3:1-3), had suddenly come to his temple to refine and purify, to show that none can profane what is dedicated to the service of God without most certain loss and punishment.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(13) It is written.--The words which our Lord quotes are a free combination of two prophetic utterances: one from Isaiah's vision of the future glory of the Temple, as visited both by Jew and Gentile (Isaiah 56:7); one from Jeremiah's condemnation of evils like in nature, if not in form, to those against which our Lord protested (Jeremiah 7:11).A den of thieves.--The pictorial vividness of the words must not be passed over. Palestine was then swarming with bands of outlaw brigands, who, as David of old in Adullam (1Samuel 22:1), haunted the lime-stone caverns of Judaea. The wranglings of such a company over the booty they had carried off were reproduced in the Temple, and mingled with the Hallelujahs of the Levites and the Hosannas of the crowds. We ask, as we read the narrative, how it was that the work of expulsion was done so effectively, and with so little resistance. The answer is found (1) in the personal greatness and intensity of will that showed itself in our Lord's look and word and tone; (2) in the presence of the crowd that had followed Him from the Mount of Olives, and had probably filled the courts of the Temple; and (3) in the secret consciousness of the offenders that they were desecrating the Temple, and that the Prophet of Nazareth, in His zeal for His Father's house, was the witness of a divine truth.