"The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His Temple."MAL. iii. 1.

THE stay of Jesus at Capernaum on this occasion was very short, and it is not improbable that He simply awaited there the starting of the great caravan of pilgrims who, at this time, were about to wend their way to the great feast at Jerusalem.

The Synoptists are silent respecting any visit of Christ to the Passover between His twelfth year till His death; and it is St. John alone who, true to the purpose and characteristics of his Gospel, mentions this earliest Passover of Christ's ministry, or gives us any particulars that took place during its progress.3

1 John ii. 12: "Not many days.”

2 But just as St. John distinctly implies the Galilæan ministry (vii. 3, 4), so the Synoptists distinctly imply that there must have been a Judæan ministry; e.g., Judas is a Jew, and Joseph of Arimathæa; and our Lord was well known to people at and near Jerusalem (see Matt. iv. 25; xxiii. 37; Mark iii. 7, 8, 22; xi. 2, 3; xiv. 14; xv. 43—46; and compare Matt. xiii. 57). In Luke iv. 44 there is good MS. authority (x, B, C, L, &c.) for the reading, He preached in the synagogues of Judæa." "The vague and shifting outlines of the Synoptists," says Mr. Sanday, "allow ample room for all the insertions that are made in them with so much precision by St. John" (Fourth Gospel, p. 166). See too the important testimony of St. Peter (Acts x. 37, 39).

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3 Other Passovers mentioned are John vi. 4; xi. 55. The feast of v. 1

The main event which distinguished it was the purification of the Temple-an act so ineffectual to conquer the besetting vice of the Jews, that He was obliged to repeat it, with expressions still more stern, at the close of His ministry, and only four days before His death.1

We have already seen what vast crowds flocked to the Holy City at the great annual feast. Then, as now, that immense multitude, composed of pilgrims from every land, and proselytes of every nation, brought with them many needs. The traveller who now visits Jerusalem at Easter time will make his way to the gates of the Church of the Sepulchre through a crowd of vendors of relics, souvenirs, and all kinds of objects, who, squatting on the ground, fill all the vacant space before the church and overflow into the adjoining street. Far more numerous and far more noisome must have been the buyers and sellers who choked the avenues leading to the Temple, in the Passover to which Jesus now went among the other pilgrims; for what they had to sell were not only trinkets and knick-knacks, such

would make four Passovers, if it were certain that a Passover were intended; and in any case we shall in the course of the narrative find much to confirm the opinion of Eusebius and Theodoret, that the ministry lasted three years and a few months. The τὸ πάσχα τῶν Ἰουδαίων of St. John may perhaps be regarded as an indication that he wrote when the Passover had ceased to be possible.

1 Matt. xxi. 12, 13; Mark xi. 15-17; Luke xix. 45. It seems impossible to believe that the two narratives refer to the same event. The consequences of that act, and the answer which He then gives to the priests who asked for some proof of His commission to exercise this authority, are quite different. To give all the arguments which in each case have led me to a particular conclusion on disputed points, would require five times the space at my disposal, and would wholly alter the character of the book. I can only ask the reader to believe that I have always tried to weigh with impartiality the evidence on both sides.

2 The date of this Passover was perhaps April, A.D. 28.

TRAFFIC IN THE TEMPLE.

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as now are sold to Easter pilgrims, but oxen, and sheep, and doves. On both sides of the eastern gatethe gate Shusan-as far as Solomon's porch, there had long been established the shops of merchants and the banks of money-changers. The latter were almost a necessity; for, twenty days before the Passover, the priests began to collect the old sacred tribute of half a shekel paid yearly by every Israelite, whether rich or poor, as atonement money for his soul, and applied to the expenses of the Tabernacle service. Now it would not be lawful to pay this in the coinage brought from all kinds of governments, sometimes represented by wretched counters of brass and copper, and always defiled with heathen symbols and heathen inscriptions. It was lawful to send this money to the priests from a distance, but every Jew who presented himself in the Temple preferred to pay it in person. He was therefore obliged to procure the little silver coin in return for his own. currency, and the money-changers charged him five per cent. as the usual kolbon or agio.2

Had this trafficking been confined to the streets immediately adjacent to the holy building, it would have been excusable, though not altogether seemly. Such are described by heathen writers as occurring round the Temple of Venus at Mount Eryx, and of the Syrian goddess at Hierapolis-nay even, to come nearer home, such scenes once occurred in our own St. Paul's. But the mischief had not stopped here. The vicinity of the Court of the Gentiles, with its broad

1 Exod. xxx. 11-16.

2 Kóλλußos. For full information on this subject, with the Rabbinic authorities, see Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr., in Matt. xxi. 12.

3 Ælian, Hist. Animal. x. 50; Lucian, De Deâ Syr., 41 (Sepp); Dixon's Holy Land, ii. 61.

spaces and long arcades, had been too tempting to Jewish greed. We learn from the Talmud that a

certain Babha Ben Buta had been the first to introduce "3,000 sheep of the flocks of Kedar into the Mountain of the House❞—i.e., into the Court of the Gentiles, and therefore within the consecrated precincts.1 The profane example was eagerly followed. The chanujóth of the shopkeepers, the exchange booths of the usurers, gradually crept into the sacred enclosure. There, in the actual Court of the Gentiles, steaming with heat in the burning April day, and filling the Temple with stench and filth, were penned whole flocks of sheep and oxen, while the drovers and pilgrims stood bartering and bargaining around them. There were the men with their great wicker cages filled with doves, and under the shadow of the arcades, formed by quadruple rows of Corinthian columns, sat the money-changers with their tables covered with piles of various small coins, while, as they reckoned and wrangled in the most dishonest of trades, their greedy eyes twinkled with the lust of gain. And this was the entrance-court to the Temple of the Most High! The court which was a witness that that house should be a House of Prayer for all nations had been degraded into a place which, for foulness, was more like shambles, and for bustling commerce more like a densely-crowded bazaar; while the lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the Babel of many languages, the

1 Jer. Jôm Tobh., f. 61, 3, quoted by Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr., ubi supr. 2 Their number may be conjectured from the fact that Herod alone sacrificed 300 oxen at the consecration of the new Temple (Jos. Antt. xv. 11, §6). Josephus adds that Herod's example was followed by each according to his ability, so that it was impossible to set down correctly the vast number of the sacrifices.

3 Jos. Antt. xv. 11, § 5.

CLEANSING THE TEMPLE.

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huckstering and wrangling, and the clinking of money and of balances (perhaps not always just), might be heard in the adjoining courts, disturbing the chant of the Levites and the prayers of priests!

Filled with a righteous scorn at all this mean irreverence, burning with irresistible and noble indignation, Jesus, on entering the Temple, made a scourge of the rushes that lay on the floor; and in order to cleanse the sacred court of its worst pollutions, first drove out, indiscriminately, the sheep and oxen and the low crowd. who tended them.1 Then going to the tables of the money-changers He overthrew them where they stood, upsetting the carefully-arranged heaps of heterogeneous coinage, and leaving the owners to grope and hunt for their scattered money on the polluted floor. Even to those who sold doves He issued the mandate to depart, less sternly indeed, because the dove was the offering of the poor, and there was less desecration and foulness in the presence there of those lovely emblems of innocence and purity; nor could He overturn the tables of the dove-sellers lest the birds should be hurt in their cages; but still, even to those who sold doves, He authoritatively exclaimed, "Take these things hence," justifying His action to the whole terrified, injured, muttering, ignoble crowd in no other words

1 John ii. 15, payéλλiov (the Roman flagellum), id. ¿éßaλev. That the scourge was for the men as well as the cattle, is clear from the TáνTAS (ver. 15). On this occasion, however, our Lord used the expression “a house of merchandise,” not, as afterwards, the sterner censure, "a den of robbers." (Cf. Jer. vii. 10, 11.) Luther's comment on this action is somewhat too free. "Ist das nicht aufrührisch?" he asks. "Diese That Christi ist nicht zum Exempel zu ziehen; er hat sie nicht als Diener des Neuen, sondern des Alten Testament und Mosis Schüler gethan" (Hase, p. 76). I quote this unbecoming and mistaken remark only to show how even the best and greatest fail to rise to the height of that universal morality of which the life of Jesus is the sole human example.