Jesus Drives Out the Money Changers: Cleansing of His Father’s Temple

Jesus Clears the Temple

Matthew 21:12-17

¹²Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. ¹³He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves!”^[f]

¹⁴The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple, and he healed them. ¹⁵The leading priests and the teachers of religious law saw these wonderful miracles and heard even the children in the Temple shouting, “Praise God for the Son of David.”

But the leaders were indignant. ¹⁶They asked Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”

16 “Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.’^[g]”
Matthew 20:16

¹⁷Then he returned to Bethany, where he stayed overnight.

In Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47 Jesus accused the Temple authorities of thieving and this time he names poor widows as their victims, going on to provide evidence of this in Mark 12:42 and Luke 21:2. Dove sellers were selling doves that were sacrificed by the poor who could not afford grander sacrifices and specifically by women. According to Mark 11:16, Jesus then put an embargo on people carrying any merchandise through the Temple—a sanction that would have disrupted all commerce.^[3][6] This occurred in the outermost court of the gentiles.
Article from Wikipedia, Cleansing of the Temple