Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 2:12
After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days.
12. “Now follows a section of which we can only say with M. Renan, that it constitutes a decisive triumph for our Gospel. If it is at all an artificial composition, with a dogmatic object, why should the author carry his readers thus to Capernaum for nothing?” S. p. 52. If S. John wrote it, all is simple and natural. He records this visit to Capernaum because it actually took place, and because he well remembers those ‘not many days.’
went down ] Capernaum (the modern Tell-Hm) being on the shore of the lake. It was situated in one of the most busy and populous districts of Palestine, and was therefore a good centre.
his mother, and his brethren ] Natural ties still hold Him; in the next verse they disappear. On the vexed question of the ‘brethren of the Lord’ see the Introduction to the Epistle of S. James. It is impossible to determine with certainty whether they are (1) the children of Joseph and Mary, born after the birth of Jesus; (2) the children of Joseph by a former marriage, whether levirate or not; or (3) adopted children. There is nothing in Scripture to warn us against (1), the most natural view antecedently; but it has against it the general consensus of the Fathers, and the prevailing tradition of the perpetual virginity of S. Mary. Jerome’s theory, that they were our Lord’s cousins, sons of Alphaeus, is the one most commonly adopted, but Joh 7:5 (see note there) is fatal to it, and it labours under other difficulties as well. (2) is on the whole the most probable.
continued there ] Better, abode there. See on Joh 1:33.
not many days ] Because the Passover was at hand, and He must be about His Father’s business.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
To Capernaum – See the notes at Mat 4:13.
Not many days – The reason why he remained there no longer was that the Passover was near, and they went up to Jerusalem to attend it.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Joh 2:12
After this, He went down into Capernaum
Christ at Capernaum
It is not needful to inquire what His errand was there, and upon what occasion His mother and brethren went with Him; whether because Joseph was new dead, and so He took care of His mother, or because they would convey Him on His way, or because His brethren were to go up to Jerusalem with Him; only this voyage was before that Mat 4:13), when He came to dwell in Capernaum, for then John was cast in prison (Mat 4:12), but now he was not (Joh 3:24).
I. Christ was content to submit Himself to the wanting of a certain abode and settled dwelling in the world, that He might sanctify our pilgrimage and tossed condition to us, and to invite His followers willingly to be removed from place to place, as He hath service for them. So much are we taught by this His removal.
II. Christ hath errands in eminent places as well as obscure, and will not despise them for their eminency more than the base for their baseness; and He can make the work of His kingdom in a land advance from obscure beginnings and places, to be more eminent and conspicuous. So much may we gather from Christs going out of obscure Cana to Capernaum, a chief city in Galilee.
III. As it is wisdom in Christs own to go still in His company, so others also may be with Him so long as His way and theirs lieth together, or when He is working gloriously and His gospel hath credit; for, after this miracle, we find not only His mother and disciples, but His brethren or kinsfolk with Him, who yet believed not in Him (Joh 7:5).
IV. Christ may stay longer or shorter while, and do little or much in a place, as He pleaseth; and particularly He stayeth or removeth according as may contribute to advance the great work of His glory and of sinners salvation; for He continued there not many days, as having more to do at this time in Jerusalem. (D. Dyke.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Capernaum was a city lifted up to heaven, for mercies of all sorts, which Christ foretold, Mat 11:28, should be brought down to hell, for their contempt of his doctrine and miracles. It was in the tribe of Naphtali, whose lot was contiguous to Zebulun, and lay on the north east of it; a place where Christ afterwards preached much, and wrought many miracles, Mat 8:13,14; 9:18; Mar 2:1; 5:22; a place brought so low in Hieroms time, that it scarce consisted of seven poor cottages of fishermen. Thither at this time went Christ,
and his mother, and his brethren, ( by which term the Scripture often expresses any near kinsmen),
and his disciples; whether only the five mentioned in the former chapter, or others also, is not said. But they did not at that time stay long there, probably because the passover time (when they were to be at Jerusalem) was so nigh, as would not admit any long stay before they began their journey; and it is likely that the company mentioned here to be with Christ at Capernaum, did also design to go along with him to the passover, of which we next read.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
12. Capernaumon the Sea ofGalilee. (See on Mt 9:1).
his mother and hisbrethren(See on Lu 2:51, andMt 13:54-56).
Joh2:13-25. CHRIST’SFIRST PASSOVERFIRSTCLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
After this he went down to Capernaum,…. After he had been at Cana, and at the wedding there: after he had wrought the miracle of turning water into wine; and after he had manifested forth the glory of his deity thereby, and had confirmed the faith of his disciples, he departed from thence, and went lower into the country of Galilee, to Capernaum, a city near the sea of Tiberias; and which, from henceforward, he made the more usual place of his residence, and whither he frequently resorted, and therefore it is called his city, Mt 9:1. This refers not to the same journey recorded in Mt 4:12, for that was after John was cast into prison, whereas this was before; see Joh 3:24; the company that went with him, are as follow,
he, and his mother; who had been with him at Cana, and was a principal person at the wedding: and she now returning home, he accompanies her, to see her to her own habitation; or to settle her in Capernaum, whilst he went about discharging his public ministry.
And his brethren; or near kinsmen, according to the flesh, the sons of Alphaeus, or Cleophas, and Mary, sister to the mother of our Lord; whose names were James, Joses, Simon, and Judas, three of which afterwards became his apostles:
and his disciples: as many as he had yet called, which were Andrew, and the disciple that followed Jesus with him, and Simon Peter, and Philip, and Nathanael,
and they continued there not many days; not because of the impenitence, unbelief, and wickedness of the place, but for the reason following.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| Temple-Merchandise Punished; Christ’s Death and Resurrection Foretold. |
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12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days. 13 And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, 14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: 15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; 16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise. 17 And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. 18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21 But he spake of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
Here we have,
I. The short visit Christ made to Capernaum, v. 12. It was a large and populous city, about a day’s journey from Cana; it is called his own city (Matt. ix. 1), because he made it his head-quarters in Galilee, and what little rest he had was there. It was a place of concourse, and therefore Christ chose it, that the fame of his doctrine and miracles might thence spread the further. Observe,
1. The company that attended him thither: his mother, his brethren, and his disciples. Wherever Christ went, (1.) He would not go alone, but would take those with him who had put themselves under his guidance, that he might instruct them, and that they might attest his miracles. (2.) He could not go alone, but they would follow him, because they liked the sweetness either of his doctrine or of his wine, ch. vi. 26. His mother, though he had lately given her to understand that in the works of his ministry he should pay no more respect to her than to any other person, yet followed him; not to intercede with him, but to learn of him. His brethren also and relations, who were at the marriage and were wrought upon by the miracle there, and his disciples, who attended him wherever he went. It should seem, people were more affected with Christ’s miracles at first than they were afterwards, when custom made them seem less strange.
2. His continuance there, which was at this time not many days, designing now only to begin the acquaintance he would afterwards improve there. Christ was still upon the remove, would not confine his usefulness to one place, because many needed him. And he would teach his followers to look upon themselves but as sojourners in this world, and his ministers to follow their opportunities, and go where their work led them. We do not now find Christ in the synagogues, but he privately instructed his friends, and thus entered upon his work by degrees. It is good for young ministers to accustom themselves to pious and edifying discourse in private, that they may with the better preparation, and greater awe, approach their public work. He did not stay long at Capernaum, because the passover was at hand, and he must attend it at Jerusalem; for every thing is beautiful in its season. The less good must give way to the greater, and all the dwellings of Jacob must give place to the gates of Zion.
II. The passover he kept at Jerusalem; it is the first after his baptism, and the evangelist takes notice of all the passovers he kept henceforward, which were four in all, the fourth that at which he suffered (three years after this), and half a year was now past since his baptism. Christ, being made under the law, observed the passover at Jerusalem; see Exod. xxiii. 17. Thus he taught us by his example a strict observance of divine institutions, and a diligent attendance on religious assemblies. He went up to Jerusalem when the passover was at hand, that he might be there with the first. It is called the Jews’ passover, because it was peculiar to them (Christ is our Passover); now shortly God will no longer own it for his. Christ kept the passover at Jerusalem yearly, ever since he was twelve years old, in obedience to the law; but now that he has entered upon his public ministry we may expect something more from him than before; and two things we are here told he did there:–
1. He purged the temple, v. 14-17. Observe here,
(1.) The first place we find him in at Jerusalem was the temple, and, it should seem, he did not make any public appearance till he came thither; for his presence and preaching there were that glory of the latter house which was to exceed the glory of the former, Hag. ii. 9. It was foretold (Mal. iii. 1): I will send my messenger, John Baptist; he never preached in the temple, but the Lord, whom ye seek, he shall suddenly come to his temple, suddenly after the appearing of John Baptist; so that this was the time, and the temple the place, when, and where, the Messiah was to be expected.
(2.) The first work we find him at in the temple was the purging of it; for so it was foretold there (Mal 3:2; Mal 3:3): He shall sit as a refiner and purify the sons of Levi. Now was come the time of reformation. Christ came to be the great reformer; and, according to the method of the reforming kings of Judah, he first purged out what was amiss (and that used to be passover-work too, as in Hezekiah’s time, 2Ch 30:14; 2Ch 30:15, and Josiah’s, 2 Kings xxiii. 4, c.), and then taught them to do well. First purge out the old leaven, and then keep the feast. Christ’s design in coming into the world was to reform the world and he expects that all who come to him should reform their hearts and lives, Gen. xxxv. 2. And this he has taught us by purging the temple. See here,
[1.] What were the corruptions that were to be purged out. He found a market in one of the courts of the temple, that which was called the court of the Gentiles, within the mountain of that house. There, First, They sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, for sacrifice; we will suppose, not for common use, but for the convenience of those who came out of the country, and could not bring their sacrifices in kind along with them; see Deut. xiv. 24-26. This market perhaps had been kept by the pool of Bethesda (ch. v. 2), but was admitted into the temple by the chief priests, for filthy lucre; for, no doubt, the rents for standing there, and fees for searching the beasts sold there, and certifying that they were without blemish, would be a considerable revenue to them. Great corruptions in the church owe their rise to the love of money, 1Ti 6:5; 1Ti 6:10 Secondly, They changed money, for the convenience of those that were to pay a half-shekel in specie every year, by way of poll, for the service of the tabernacle (Exod. xxx. 12), and no doubt they got by it.
[2.] What course our Lord took to purge out those corruptions. He had seen these in the temple formerly, when he was in a private station; but never went about to drive them out till now, when he had taken upon him the public character of a prophet. He did not complain to the chief priests, for he knew they countenanced those corruptions. But he himself,
First, Drove out the sheep and oxen, and those that sold them, out of the temple. He never used force to drive any into the temple, but only to drive those out that profaned it. He did not seize the sheep and oxen for himself, did not distrain and impound them, though he found them damage faissant-actual trespassers upon his Father’s ground; he only drove them out, and their owners with them. He made a scourge of small cords, which probably they had led their sheep and oxen with, and thrown them away upon the ground, whence Christ gathered them. Sinners prepare the scourges with which they themselves will be driven out from the temple of the Lord. He did not make a scourge to chastise the offenders (his punishments are of another nature), but only to drive out the cattle; he aimed no further than at reformation. See Rom 13:3; Rom 13:4; 2Co 10:8.
Secondly, He poured out the changers’ money, to kerma—the small money–the Nummorum Famulus. In pouring out the money, he showed his contempt of it; he threw it to the ground, to the earth as it was. In overthrowing the tables, he showed his displeasure against those that make religion a matter of worldly gain. Money-changers in the temple are the scandal of it. Note, In reformation, it is good to make thorough work; he drove them all out; and not only threw out the money, but, in overturning the tables, threw out the trade too.
Thirdly, He said to them that sold doves (sacrifices for the poor), Take these things hence. The doves, though they took up less room, and were a less nuisance than the oxen and sheep, yet must not be allowed there. The sparrows and swallows were welcome, that were left to God’s providence (Ps. lxxxiv. 3), but not the doves, that were appropriated to man’s profit. God’s temple must not be made a pigeon-house. But see Christ’s prudence in his zeal. When he drove out the sheep and oxen, the owners might follow them; when he poured out the money, they might gather it up again; but, if he had turned the doves flying, perhaps they could not have been retrieved; therefore to them that sold doves he said, Take these things hence. Note, Discretion must always guide and govern our zeal, that we do nothing unbecoming ourselves, or mischievous to others.
Fourthly, He gave them a good reason for what he did: Make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise. Reason for conviction should accompany force for correction.
a. Here is a reason why they should not profane the temple, because it was the house of God, and not to be made a house of merchandise. Merchandise is a good thing in the exchange, but not in the temple. This was, (a.) to alienate that which was dedicated to the honour of God; it was sacrilege; it was robbing God. (b.) It was to debase that which was solemn and awful, and to make it mean. (c.) It was to disturb and distract those services in which men ought to be most solemn, serious, and intent. It was particularly an affront to the sons of the stranger in their worship to be forced to herd themselves with the sheep and oxen, and to be distracted in their worship by the noise of a market, for this market was kept in the court of the Gentiles. (d.) It was to make the business of religion subservient to a secular interest; for the holiness of the place must advance the market, and promote the sale of their commodities. Those make God’s house a house of merchandise, [a.] Whose minds are filled with cares about worldly business when they are attending on religious exercises, as those, Amo 8:5; Eze 33:31. [b.] Who perform divine offices for filthy lucre, and sell the gifts of the Holy Ghost, Acts viii. 18.
b. Here is a reason why he was concerned to purge it, because it was his Father’s house. And, (a.) Therefore he had authority to purge it, for he was faithful, as a Son over his own house.Heb 3:5; Heb 3:6. In calling God his Father, he intimates that he was the Messiah, of whom it was said, He shall build a house for my name, and I will be his Father,2Sa 7:13; 2Sa 7:14. (b.) Therefore he had a zeal for the purging of it: “It is my Father’s house, and therefore I cannot bear to see it profaned, and him dishonoured.” Note, If God be our Father in heaven, and it be therefore our desire that his name may be sanctified, it cannot but be our grief to see it polluted. Christ’s purging the temple thus may justly be reckoned among his wonderful works. Inter omnia signa qu fecit Dominus, hoc mihi videtur esse mirabilius–Of all Christ’s wonderful works this appears to me the most wonderful.–Hieron. Considering, [a.] That he did it without the assistance of any of his friends; probably it had been no hard matter to have raised the mob, who had a great veneration for the temple, against these profaners of it; but Christ never countenanced any thing that was tumultuous or disorderly. There was one to uphold, but his own arm did it. [b.] That he did it without the resistance of any of his enemies, either the market-people themselves, or the chief priests that gave them their licences, and had the posse templi–temple force, at their command. But the corruption was too plain to be justified; sinners’ own consciences are reformers’ best friends; yet that was not all, there was a divine power put forth herein, a power over the spirits of men; and in this non-resistance of theirs that scripture was fulfilled (Mal 3:2; Mal 3:3), Who shall stand when he appeareth?
Fifthly, Here is the remark which his disciples made upon it (v. 17): They remembered that it was written, The Zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. They were somewhat surprised at first to see him to whom they were directed as the Lamb of God in such a heat, and him whom they believed to be the King of Israel take so little state upon him as to do this himself; but one scripture came to their thoughts, which taught them to reconcile this action both with the meekness of the Lamb of God and with the majesty of the King of Israel; for David, speaking of the Messiah, takes notice of his zeal for God’s house, as so great that it even ate him up, it made him forget himself, Ps. lxix. 9. Observe, 1. The disciples came to understand the meaning of what Christ did, by remembering the scriptures: They remembered now that it was written. Note, The word of God and the works of God do mutually explain and illustrate each other. Dark scriptures are expounded by their accomplishment in providence, and difficult providences are made easy by comparing them with the scriptures. See of what great use it is to the disciples of Christ to be ready and mighty in the scriptures, and to have their memories well stored with scripture truths, by which they will be furnished for every good work, 2. The scripture they remembered was very apposite: The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. David was in this a type of Christ that he was zealous for God’s house,Psa 132:2; Psa 132:3. What he did for it was with all his might; see 1 Chron. xxix. 2. The latter part of that verse (Ps. lxix. 9) is applied to Christ (Rom. xv. 3), as the former part of it here. All the graces that were to be found among the Old-Testament saints were eminently in Christ, and particularly this of zeal for the house of God, and in them, as they were patterns to us, so they were types of him. Observe, (1.) Jesus Christ was zealously affected to the house of God, his church: he loved it, and was always jealous for its honour and welfare. (2.) This zeal did even eat him up; it made him humble himself, and spend himself, and expose himself. My zeal has consumed me, Ps. cxix. 139. Zeal for the house of God forbids us to consult our own credit, ease, and safety, when they come in competition with our duty and Christ’s service, and sometimes carries on our souls in our duty so far and so fast that our bodies cannot keep pace with them, and makes us as deaf as our Master was to those who suggested, Spare thyself. The grievances here redressed might seem but small, and such as should have been connived at; but such was Christ’s zeal that he could not bear even those that sold and bought in the temple. Si ibi ebrios inveniret quid faceret Dominus! (saith St. Austin.) If he had found drunkards in the temple, how much more would he have been displeased!
2. Christ, having thus purged the temple, gave a sign to those who demanded it to prove his authority for so doing. Observe here,
(1.) Their demand of a sign: Then answered the Jews, that is the multitude of the people, with their leaders. Being Jews, they should rather have stood by him, and assisted him to vindicate the honour of their temple; but, instead of this, they objected against it. Note, Those who apply themselves in good earnest to the work of reformation must expect to meet with opposition. When they could object nothing against the thing itself, they questioned his authority to do it: “What sign showest thou unto us, to prove thyself authorized and commissioned to do these things?” It was indeed a good work to purge the temple; but what had he to do to undertake it, who was in no office there? They looked upon it as an act of jurisdiction, and that he must prove himself a prophet, yea, more than a prophet. But was not the thing itself sign enough? His ability to drive so many from their posts, without opposition, was a proof of his authority; he that was armed with such a divine power was surely armed with a divine commission. What ailed these buyers and sellers, that they fled, that they were driven back? Surely it was at the presence of the Lord (Psa 114:5; Psa 114:7), no less a presence.
(2.) Christ’s answer to this demand, v. 19. He did not immediately work a miracle to convince them, but gave them a sign in something to come, the truth of which must appear by the event, according to Deu 18:21; Deu 18:22.
Now, [1.] The sign that he gives them is his own death and resurrection. He refers them to that which would be, First, His last sign. If they would not be convinced by what they saw and heard, let them wait. Secondly, The great sign to prove him to be the Messiah; for concerning him it was foretold that he should be bruised (Isa. liii. 5), cut off (Dan. ix. 26), and yet that he should not see corruption, Ps. xvi. 10. These things were fulfilled in the blessed Jesus, and therefore truly he was the Son of God, and had authority in the temple, his Father’s house.
[2.] He foretels his death and resurrection, not in plain terms, as he often did to his disciples, but in figurative expressions; as afterwards, when he gave this for a sign, he called it the sign of the prophet Jonas, so here, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Thus he spoke in parables to those who were willingly ignorant, that they might not perceive,Mat 13:13; Mat 13:14. Those that will not see shall not see. Nay, this figurative speech used here proved such a stumbling-block to them that it was produced in evidence against him at his trial to prove him a blasphemer. Mat 26:60; Mat 26:61. Had they humbly asked him the meaning of what he said, he would have told them, and it had been a savour of life unto life to them, but they were resolved to cavil, and it proved a savour of death unto death. They that would not be convinced were hardened, and the manner of expressing this prediction occasioned the accomplishment of the prediction itself. First, He foretels his death by the Jews’ malice, in these words, Destroy you this temple; that is, “You will destroy it, I know you will. I will permit you to destroy it.” Note, Christ, even at the beginning of his ministry, had a clear foresight of all his sufferings at the end of it, and yet went on cheerfully in it. It is good, at setting out, to expect the worst. Secondly, He foretels his resurrection by his own power: In three days I will raise it up. There were others that were raised, but Christ raised himself, resumed his own life.
[3.] He chose to express this by destroying and re-edifying the temple, First, Because he was now to justify himself in purging the temple, which they had profaned; as if he had said, “You that defile one temple will destroy another; and I will prove my authority to purge what you have defiled by raising what you will destroy.” The profaning of the temple is the destroying of it, and its reformation its resurrection. Secondly, Because the death of Christ was indeed the destruction of the Jewish temple, the procuring cause of it; and his resurrection was the raising up of another temple, the gospel church, Zech. vi. 12. The ruins of their place and nation (ch. xi. 48) were the riches of the world. See Amo 9:11; Act 15:16.
(3.) Their cavil at this answer: “Forty and six years was this temple in building, v. 20. Temple work was always slow work, and canst thou make such quick work of it?” Now here, [1.] They show some knowledge; they could tell how long the temple was in building. Dr. Lightfoot computes that it was just forty-six years from the founding of Zerubbabel’s temple, in the second year of Cyrus, to the complete settlement of the temple service, in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes; and the same from Herod’s beginning to build this temple, in the 18th year of his reign, to this very time, when the Jews said that this as just forty-six years: okodomethe—hath this temple been built. [2.] They show more ignorance, First, Of the meaning of Christ’s words. Note, Men often run into gross mistakes by understanding that literally which the scripture speaks figuratively. What abundance of mischief has been done by interpreting, This is my body, after a corporal and carnal manner! Secondly, Of the almighty power of Christ, as if he could do no more than another man. Had they known that this was he who built all things in six days they would not have made it such an absurdity that he should build a temple in three days.
(4.) A vindication of Christ’s answer from their cavil. The difficulty is soon solved by explaining the terms: He spoke of the temple of his body, v. 21. Though Christ had discovered a great respect for the temple, in purging it, yet he will have us know that the holiness of it, which he was so jealous for, was but typical, and leads us to the consideration of another temple of which that was but a shadow, the substance being Christ, Heb 9:9; Col 2:17. Some think that when he said, Destroy this temple, he pointed to his own body, or laid his hand upon it; however, it is certain that he spoke of the temple of his body. Note, The body of Christ is the true temple, of which that at Jerusalem was a type. [1.] Like the temple, it was built by immediate divine direction: “A body hast thou prepared me,” 1 Chron. xxviii. 19. [2.] Like the temple, it was a holy house; it is called that holy thing. [3.] It was, like the temple, the habitation of God’s glory; there the eternal Word dwelt, the true shechinah. He is Emmanuel–God with us. [4.] The temple was the place and medium of intercourse between God and Israel: there God revealed himself to them; there they presented themselves and their services to him. Thus by Christ God speaks to us, and we speak to him. Worshippers looked towards that house, 1Ki 8:30; 1Ki 8:35. So we must worship God with an eye to Christ.
(5.) A reflection which the disciples made upon this, long after, inserted here, to illustrate the story (v. 22): When he was risen from the dead, some years after, his disciples remembered that he had said this. We found them, v. 17, remembering what had been written before of him, and here we find them remembering what they had heard from him. Note, The memories of Christ’s disciples should be like the treasure of the good house-holder, furnished with things both new and old, Matt. xiii. 52. Now observe,
[1.] When they remembered that saying: When he was risen from the dead. It seems, they did not at this time fully understand Christ’s meaning, for they were as yet but babes in knowledge; but they laid up the saying in their hearts, and afterwards it became both intelligible and useful. Note, It is good to hear for the time to come, Isa. xlii. 23. The juniors in years and profession should treasure up those truths of which at present they do not well understand either the meaning or the use, for they will be serviceable to them hereafter, when they come to greater proficiency. It was said of the scholars of Pythagoras that his precepts seemed to freeze in them till they were forty years old, and then they began to thaw; so this saying of Christ revived in the memories of his disciples when he was risen from the dead; and why the? First, Because then the Spirit was poured out to bring things to their remembrance which Christ had said to them, and to make them both easy and ready to them, ch. xiv. 26. That very day that Christ rose form the dead he opened their understandings, Luke xxiv. 45. Secondly, Because then this saying of Christ was fulfilled. When the temple of his body had been destroyed and was raised again, and that upon the third day, then they remembered this among other words which Christ had said to this purport. Note, It contributes much to the understanding of the scripture to observe the fulfilling of the scripture. The event will expound the prophecy.
[2.] What use they made of it: They believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had said; their belief of these was confirmed and received fresh support and vigour. They were slow of heart to believe (Luke xxiv. 25), but they were sure. The scripture and the word of Christ are here put together, not because they concur and exactly agree together, but because they mutually illustrate and strengthen each other. When the disciples saw both what they had read in the Old Testament, and what they had heard from Christ’s own mouth, fulfilled in his death and resurrection, they were the more confirmed in their belief of both.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
He went down to Capernaum ( ). Second aorist active indicative of . Cana was on higher ground. This brief stay ( not many days , ) in this important city (Tell Hum) on the north shore of Galilee was with Christ’s mother, brothers (apparently friendly at first) and the six disciples, all in the fresh glow of the glory manifested at Cana. Surely Mary’s heart was full.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
He went down [] . Capernaum being on the lake shore, and Nazareth and Cana on the higher ground.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “After this he went down to Capernaum,” (meta touto katebe eis Kapharnaoum) “After this wedding occasion he went down into Capernaum,” from the Western hills to the Northwest of the Sea of Galilee, down some 680 feet of elevation from Nazareth to the sea of Capernaum.
2) “He and his mother,” (autos kai he meter autou) “He as well as his mother,” Mary who perhaps visited the place of His residence in Capernaum, Mat 4:13. This begins a new section of John’s writings that continue through chapter four, recounting manifestations of Jesus as the Son of God: 1) In Jerusalem; 2) Judea; 3) Samaria and 4) Galilee.
3) “And his brethren, and his disciples:- (kai hoi adelphoi kai hoi mathetai autou) “And his fraternal brothers and his disciples;- His fraternal brethren were the children of Joseph and Mary, after the birth of Jesus, Mat 13:55-56. They accompanied Jesus and the disciples, from the wedding, back to the area where most of the disciples resided.
4) “And they continued there not many days.” (kai ekei emeinon ou pollas hemeras) “And they remained there (at Capernaum) not many days,” or for but a few days, the reason for which is recounted as follows:
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
12. He went down to Capernaum. The Evangelist passes to an additional narrative; for having resolved to collect a few things worthy of remembrance which the other three had left out, he states the time when the occurrence which he is about to relate took place; for the other three also relate what we here read that Christ did, but the diversity of the time shows that it was a similar event, but not the same. On two occasions, then, did Christ cleanse the temple from base and profane merchandise; once, when he was beginning to discharge his commission, and another time, (Mat 21:12; Mar 11:15; Luk 19:45,) when he was about to leave the world and go to the Father, (Joh 16:28.)
To obtain a general view of the passage, it will be necessary briefly to examine the details in their order. That oxen, and sheep, and doves, were exposed to sale in the temple, and that money-changers were sitting there, was not without a plausible excuse. For they might allege that the merchandise transacted there was not irreligious, but, on the contrary, related to the sacred worship of God, that every person might obtain, without difficulty, what he might offer to the Lord; and, certainly, it was exceedingly convenient for godly persons to find oblations of any sort laid ready to their hand, and in this way to be freed from the trouble of running about in various directions to obtain them. We are apt to wonder, therefore, why Christ was so highly displeased with it. But there are two reasons which deserve our attention. First, as the Priests abused this merchandise for their own gain and avarice, such a mockery of God could not be endured. Secondly, whatever excuse men may plead, as soon as they depart, however slightly, from the command of God, they deserve reproof and need correction. And this is the chief reason why Christ undertook to purify the temple; for he distinctly states that the temple of God is not a place of merchandise
But it may be asked, Why did he not rather begin with doctrine? For it seems to be a disorderly and improper method to apply the hand for correcting faults, before the remedy of doctrine has been applied. But Christ had a different object in view: for the time being now at hand when he would publicly discharge the office assigned to him by the Father, he wished in some way to take possession of the temple, and to give a proof of his divine authority. And that all might be attentive to his doctrine, it was necessary that something new and strange should be done to awaken their sluggish and drowsy minds. Now, the temple was a sanctuary of heavenly doctrine and of true religion. Since he wished to restore purity of doctrine, it was of great importance that he should prove himself to be the Lord of the temple. Besides, there was no other way in which he could bring back sacrifices and the other exercises of religion to their spiritual design than by removing the abuse of them. What he did at that time was, therefore, a sort of preface to that reformation which the Father had sent him to accomplish. In a word, it was proper that the Jews should be aroused by this example to expect from Christ something that was unusual and out of the ordinary course; and it was also necessary to remind them that the worship of God had been corrupted and perverted, that they might not object to the reformation of those abuses
And his brethren. Why the brethren of Christ accompanied him, cannot be determined with certainty, unless, perhaps, they intended to go along with him to Jerusalem. The word brethren, it is well known, is employed, in the Hebrew language, to denote cousins and other relatives.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
JESUS MOVES HIS HEADQUARTERS TO CAPERNAUM
Text 2:12
12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples; and they abode there not many days.
Queries
a.
Where is Capernaum?
b.
Why did He go there and what did He do?
c.
Who are his brethren?
Paraphrase
After the wedding feast at Cana was over, Jesus went down from the hills of Galilee unto the city of Capernaum on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And He remained there a few days, He, and His mother, and His brothers and His disciples.
Summary
Jesus moves to Capernaum, abiding there a few days with His entourage as He awaits the time of the Passover.
Comment
We have entitled this part of the outline, Jesus Moves His Headquarters to Capernaum because He ever after makes this city a pivotal point for the larger portion of His ministry. One must, of course, study the Synoptics to realize this, since nearly all of His Galilean ministry is recorded in those accounts. One thing seems evidentHe never returns to Nazareth to live, only to preach and be rejected. After John the Baptist was delivered up to prison, Jesus withdrew into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea . . . (Mat. 4:12-13). The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus did not own a residence (Luk. 9:58). He probably made Peters home His headquarters here in Capernaum (cf. Mar. 1:31), Whatever the case, Capernaum seems to be the headquarters for all His activities until He finally ends His public ministry in Galilee and comes to the Feast of Tabernacles (Joh. 7:2-3; Joh. 7:10). Once He arrives in Judea at this feast, He never again returns to Galilee except for a few days preaching in the borders of Galilee (cf. Luk. 17:11 and Map 6, p. , Vol. 2).
There is a great deal of controversy among commentators as to the most probable location of Capernaum. The two most likely places are the ruins of modern Tell Hum or Khan Minyeh. Most scholars prefer Tell Hum. For extended discussion on this subject consult any good Bible dictionary (cf. also Andrews, Life of Our Lord, pp. 224230). Capernaum was located on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, west of the Jordan River entrance into the sea. The ruins of Tell Hum are very interesting. Most of its buildings were built of black basalt with the exception of a white synagogue. This synagogue probably dates back to about 200 A.D. but it was built on still more ancient ruins which date back to the very time of Christ. These ancient ruins may be those of the same synagogue that the centurion erected for the Jews (cf. Luk. 7:5) and the one in which Jesus healed the withered hand (Mar. 3:1-6). Capernaum was the home of the four fishermen; it was a customs station (Mat. 9:9), and a residence of a high officer of the king (Joh. 4:46). A Roman garrison was probably stationed there under the command of the centurion mentioned above. So completely has this city perished, as was prophesied by the Lord (Mat. 11:23), that the very site is a matter of much dispute today.
This verse (Joh. 2:12) affords an opportunity to discuss the question of the Lords brethren. The question would probably never have been raised had not the Roman church made the perpetual virginity of Mary a dogma. First consideration must be given to what the New Testament reveals on the subject of the Lords brothers and sisters. They are mentioned in Mat. 12:46-50; Mat. 13:55-56; Mar. 3:31; Mar. 6:3; Luk. 8:19; Joh. 2:12; Joh. 7:3; Act. 1:14; 1Co. 9:5; Gal. 1:9. There were four brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas. None of the accounts tell us how many sisters He had or what their names were. The Greek is very precise concerning this matter. His brothers and sisters are always called adelphoi (brothers and sisters)not anepsioi (cousins) or sungeneis (kinsmen). Notice also they are always called His brothers and sisters, not sons and daughters of Mary. Further, they are always connected with Mary in the particular relationship of being her very own children; members of her household and under her directionnot merely her nieces and nephews.
Amazingly enough, the theory of the perpetual virginity is even held by many Protestant writers. There is strong inference against this theory in the Scriptures. First is the inference that there were later sons born to Mary because Jesus is called the firstborn son in Luk. 2:7. Secondly, there is the inference that Joseph later knew Mary in the husband-wife sexual relationship after the virgin birth of Jesushe knew her not until she brought forth a son (Mat. 1:25).
The number of days Jesus stayed in Capernaum is not certain. We are told that it was not many days. The couple in Cana had a spring wedding, probably sometime in April. Jesus attended this wedding, spent a few days in Capernaum then joined the thousands of pilgrims going to Jerusalem for the Passover, which was also in April.
And so we come to the end of the period of preparation. When Jesus arrives at the Passover He will declare Himself to the rulers in no uncertain terms. There He will begin His public ministryHis open manifestation to the multitudes and the Jewish rulers.
Quiz
1.
Describe Capernaum.
2.
Why does John mention that Jesus went to Capernaum?
3.
Tell all that the Scriptures say about Jesus brethren.
4.
What does the New Testament say about the perpetual virginity of Mary?
In our outline we are still under the second main division of the Fourth Gospel. We come now to the next point under that main division, namely, The Public MinistryFirst Year, A primary purpose of John in writing his account was to supplement the other three gospel accounts. Therefore, many of the incidents of His public ministry will have to be obtained from the Synoptics. We shall endeavor to mention these omitted incidents from time to time as we connect the events of the Fourth Gospel. It is suggested that the reader frequently consult the maps in this commentary to get a comprehensive view of Jesus public ministry as the text is being studied.
II
The Word Manifested to the Jews and their Rejection of Him. Joh. 1:19 to Joh. 12:50 (cont.)
B.
The Public MinistryFirst Year Joh. 2:13 to Joh. 4:54
1.
Early Judean Ministry Joh. 2:13-25
a.
Cleansing of the Temple Joh. 2:13-17
b.
Results of the Cleansing Joh. 2:18-22
c.
General Judean Ministry Joh. 2:23-25
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(12) After this he went down to Capernaum.For the position of Capernaum comp. Note on Mat. 4:13. It was on the shore of the lake of Tiberias, and He must have gone down to it from any locality among the hills of Galilee. The words do not imply that they went to Capernaum direct from Cana. The after this allows of a return to Nazareth, and the mention of the brethren makes such a return probable. The place of this sojourn in the order of events belongs to the narrative of the earlier Gospels, and here, as elsewhere, questions which recur are treated when they are first mentioned. To deal with them on each occurrence would be to save the trouble of reference at the cost of much space; and this would be ill-saved; the spiritual profit arising from constant reference is one which no earnest student of the Gospels could desire to lose. He will wish to study every event in that life in every word which records it. (Comp. Mat. 4:13 et seq., and Mat. 9:1; Mar. 3:21-31; Mar. 6:3; Luk. 4:16-30). For the brethren of the Lord, see Note on Mat. 13:55.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
12. Down to Capernaum Down, because Cana was on the high table land and Capernaum on the low sea coast. For a full account of Capernaum see note on Mat 4:13, and map.
Brethren See note on Mat 13:55. It seems a truly family party; Jesus’s natural relatives and his spiritual. The natural family may have accompanied him to Capernaum with the desire to be with him until his departure to his public life at the approaching Passover. The Passover caravans passed through that then most populous maritime town.
There were three well known routes by which the caravans could go from Lake Gennesaret to Jerusalem. The FIRST was the great thoroughfare from Damascus to Egypt, which, passing near the lake, and leaving it two or three miles W.S.W. of Nain, proceeded south through Samaria by the Shechem valley. See note on Joh 4:2. The SECOND proceeded along the lake and the river Jordan, southwardly, to Scythopolis, or Beisan, and thence, by the ancient Egypt route, to Ginea; and so onward by the Jerusalem and Galilee road, through to Shechem. THIRD, the most usual route, though now but little explored, from the south end of the lake, on the east side of Jordan, to avoid Samaria, through Peraea, and across the Jordan at Bethabara, through Jericho to Jerusalem. Leaving his relatives, and taking his disciples, (see Joh 2:17,) we may suppose our Lord to have taken this last route.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they remained there not many days.’
The writer now remembers vividly how, after this incident, they went to Capernaum for a few days, along with Jesus’ mother and brothers, where they all stayed together, another evidence of an eyewitness. Note that John never mentions Mary by name. She is Jesus’ mother, not someone important in her own right. So while respected she is made to fit into the scheme of things.
It will be noted that this comment has no significance for the story, and that elsewhere John has no difficulty in moving abruptly from one incident to another. Why then does he include it here? The only sensible reason is that he remembers clearly what they did after they had been at the wedding and so included it.
There are some who express surprise that Jesus should perform such a miracle when it seemed to have little purpose, but the fact is that it was an act typical of Jesus. When He wanted to impress on His disciples the bankruptcy and coming devastation of Jerusalem he cursed the fig tree, so that from it the disciples might learn a vivid message and recognise His power (Mar 11:12-25), and when He wanted to show them that their eyes were still only half open He healed the blind man in two stages (Mar 8:22-25). So here He turns water into wine in order to demonstrate that the days of spiritual prosperity and plenty are now here.
In Joh 4:46 He will come again to Cana. In between He will reveal:
The true condition of the Temple and of those who seek after signs (Joh 2:14-22), who are like the old water of ritualism with nothing to warm men’s hearts.
The true condition of the hearts of men who seek after signs (Joh 2:23-25) as exemplified in a teacher of Israel, who was satisfied with the old waters of Judaism and was missing the water of the Spirit (Joh 3:1-21).
A discussion about the old waters of purifying, in contrast with the new waters of John’s baptism which pointed to the Spirit (Joh 3:25), which will be followed by the offer of living water to the Samaritans in place of the old water of Jacob (Joh 4:4-43 especiallyJoh 2:13).
Then He returns to Cana to perform His second sign and find a genuine faith that does not seek after signs (Joh 4:46-54). The miracle of the water turned into wine is to be seen in its full perspective.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jesus Cleanses the Temple and Testifies of His Divine Calling (compare Mat 21:12-13 , Mar 11:15-17 , Luk 19:45-46 ) The first Passover that Jesus Christ attended was accompanied by the event of Him cleansing the Temple. We read in the Synoptic Gospels about this event taking place at the end of His ministry (Mat 21:12-13, Mar 11:15-17, Luk 19:45-46). Thus, it is easy to suggest that Jesus cleanses the Temple on two separate occasions. The purpose of John’s record of this event according to Joh 2:22 is to serve as a “sign,” or a “testimony,” of the deity of Jesus Christ in that He prophesied of His own death and resurrection. Note that the author states in Joh 2:22 that the disciples believed in Him after they remembered the words of Old Testament prophecy in Psa 69:9 that Jesus quoted during this event about rebuilding the Temple in three days. Thus, this event served as a testimony of His deity in which His disciples believed. Jesus was crucified and resurrected during the Passover feast. As Jesus predicted His atonement during the wedding of Cana (Joh 2:1-11), a passage that places emphasis upon the predestination of the atonement of Jesus Christ, Joh 2:12-22 offers the readers a little more insight into this predestined event as a transition into the next major section of John that reveals the divine calling of Jesus Christ, who was sent from Heaven to be the Saviour of the World (Joh 2:12 to Joh 4:54).
Joh 2:22, “When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.”
The Condition of the Temple Reflected the Spiritual Condition of the Nation – The corrupted condition of the Temple in Jesus’ day represented the condition of the nation of Israel in their relationship to God. Yet a remnant of faithful continued. As Jesus cleansed the temple, Hezekiah also had the Temple cleaned in 2Ch 29:1-36. During this Old Testament time, the priest and the people sanctified themselves (verses 2Ch 29:15; 2Ch 29:31 and 2Ch 30:3).
Jesus is Questioned by the Jews – Jesus spoke in parables when answering the Jews so that in the hardness of their hearts they would not understand what He was saying. His reference to His death and resurrection in Joh 2:19 was described in a way that fit within the immediate context of what He was doing, which was cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem. Within the context of Joh 2:12 to Joh 4:54, which emphasizes Jesus’ divine calling, He will testify both to the Jews, the Samaritans, and the Galileans of His call to redeem mankind through His sacrificial death and resurrection.
Jesus would not clearly reveal His pending death and resurrection to His own disciples until Peter confessed Him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God at Caesarea Philippi. Jesus answered this question from the Jews correctly by telling them which particular miracle would be used to reveal why He was cleansing the Temple, which would be the miracle of His resurrection. Thus, He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” For the condition of the Temple in Jerusalem represented the condition of the heart of the nation. The miracle of Resurrection was needed to cleanse the hearts of the people. Just as Jesus referred to His resurrection in the previous passage in Joh 2:1-11 about the Wedding of Cana by saying, “Mine hour is not yet come” (Joh 2:4), so does Jesus now make another reference here in Joh 2:19 to His death and resurrection.
The Chronological Placement of Jesus Cleansing the Temple Scholars have noted for centuries that the four Evangelists did not record all of the events of Jesus’ public ministry in the same order. While the Synoptic Gospels place the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus at the end of His ministry, John puts this event at the beginning of his Gospel. Although scholars today debate as to the original order of this event, it is not a new concern. For example, Isho’dad of Merv (c. A.D. 850), the Syriac bishop of Hadatha, comments on the efforts of the apostle John to set in order the events of Jesus’ public ministry because the Synoptic Gospels had recorded some events out of chronological order.
“On account of this reason therefore, he [John the apostle] took special care also about the orders and sequences of the things that were done. This none of these Evangelists took care to do; but they wrote many things that were done first after those that were done last; and many things last, that were spoken and done before the former things; so therefore John did not [do this], but took care to put first the things that were at the first, and after them those that were afterwards; and yet in the middle he left many things out, those that had been related by those others.” [139]
[139] Margaret Dunlop Gibson, ed. and trans., The Commentaries of Isho’dad of Merv Bishop of Hadatha (c. 850 A.D.) in Syriac and English, vol. 1, in Horae Semiticae, no. 5 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1911), 211-212.
In support of this testimony, Eusebius cites Papias (A.D. 60-130), bishop of Hierapolis, who stated that Mark did not always put the events of his Gospel in chronological order.
“It is in the following words: ‘This also the presbyter said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.’ These things are related by Papias concerning Mark.” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15)
Joh 2:12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days.
Joh 2:12
Mat 4:13-15, “And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles;”
Jesus is described as “going down” from Cana to Capernaum because Cana was located in the hill country west of the Sea of Galilee, while Capernaum was situated along the lake’s shore.
“and they continued there not many days” – Comments – The point that Jesus did not stay long in Capernaum sets the pace for the plot of John’s narrative, suggesting that Jesus’ public ministry was to be orchestrated by a divine time clock. The next verse reveals that His public ministry will be centered around the Jewish feasts. Significantly, His teachings that reveal His divinity will take place during these Jewish feast days. Thus, the seven key miracles recorded in John’s Gospel revealing His divinity will all take place during these feast days.
Joh 2:12 Comments The six feast sections of John’s Gospel (Joh 2:1 to Joh 11:54) have distinct transitional statements regarding Jesus journeying to a Jewish feast and retreating after manifesting Himself as the Son of God (Joh 2:2; Joh 2:12; Joh 5:1; Joh 6:1; Joh 7:1-9; Joh 10:23). The seventh miracle of the Resurrection also begins with a similar statement of Jesus arriving at a feast (Joh 11:55 to Joh 12:1).
Joh 2:13 And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,
Joh 2:13
1. Exo 12:1-20
2. Num 28:16-25
3. Deu 16:1-8
4. Lev 23:4-8
Joh 2:14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
Joh 2:14
Joh 2:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;
Joh 2:15
Joh 2:16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.
Joh 2:16
Joh 2:17 And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
Joh 2:17
Joh 2:17 Comments Joh 2:17 is a quote from Psa 69:9. Psa 119:139 is also similar in content. This quote is the second of only two Old Testament references found outside the passage in John’s Gospel that emphasizes the Old Testament Scriptures as a testimony of Jesus’ deity (Joh 11:55 to Joh 20:31), the first reference being in Joh 1:23 regarding John the Baptist.
Psa 69:9, “For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.”
Psa 119:139, “My zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have forgotten thy words.”
When Joh 2:17 says that Jesus’ disciples remembered a verse in the Old Testament from Psa 69:9, it was not saying that they remembered this Scripture standing in the Temple while He was cleansing it. Rather, it was referring to a time after His resurrection when Jesus had fully manifested His glory and the Holy Spirit had been poured into the hearts of the believes to guide them into a deeper understanding of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah. The importance of this Old Testament quote in Joh 2:17 is because it was one of the sources of the disciple’s faith in Him, which faith is repeatedly mentioned in John’s Gospel, even though this Scripture was not understood until after His resurrection. We find this same type of statement in Joh 2:21-22, since it also takes us ahead to the events after the Resurrection when the apostles were reconciling the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies to Jesus’ life and ministry.
Joh 2:18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?
Joh 2:19 Joh 2:20 Joh 2:20
[140] Henry E. Dosker, “Herod,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., c1915, 1939), in The Sword Project, v. 1.5.11 [CD-ROM] (Temple, AZ: CrossWire Bible Society, 1990-2008); “Herod,” in Smith’s Bible Dictionary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, c 1863, 1997), in The Sword Project, v. 1.5.11 [CD-ROM] (Temple, AZ: CrossWire Bible Society, 1990-2008).
Joh 2:21 But he spake of the temple of his body.
Joh 2:22 Joh 2:22
The importance of this statement in Joh 2:22 is because it was one of the sources of the disciple’s faith in Him, which faith is repeatedly mentioned in John’s Gospel, even though His statement was not understood until after His resurrection. We find this same type of statement in Joh 2:17, since it also takes us ahead to the events after the Resurrection when the apostles were reconciling the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies to Jesus’ life and ministry.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Jesus’ Testimony to the Jews of His Divine Calling – In Joh 2:12-22 Jesus testifies of His divine calling by referring to the resurrection of His body, which He calls His temple. His disciples would not understand this testimony until after His resurrection (Joh 2:22). Jesus performed many signs to support this testimony and many believed in Him; but Jesus knew man’s weaknesses (Joh 2:23-25). He tells a particular Jew named Nicodemus that He has been sent from Heaven, only to be rejected by the Jews and accepted by the Gentiles, revealing Jesus’ calling to come to earth for mankind to believe in Him (Joh 2:12 to Joh 4:54). Nicodemus serves as an example of one Jew who believed that Jesus was sent by God (Joh 3:1-21).
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. Jesus Cleanses the Temple & Testifies Joh 2:12-22
2. The Jews Respond to His Calling Joh 2:23 to Joh 3:21
a) Many Believe in His Miracles Joh 2:23-25
b) The Example of Nicodemus’ Faith Joh 3:1-21
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Second Miracle (Calling) (Jesus Testifies of His Calling by Being Sent from Heaven) The second feast and its affiliated miracle of healing the nobleman’s son in Joh 2:12 to Joh 4:54 emphasizes Jesus’ divine calling as the Saviour of the world, as He testifies to the Jews (Joh 2:13 to Joh 3:21), and to non-Jews, the Samaritans (Joh 4:1-42), and a Gentile nobleman in Galilee (Joh 4:43-54), that He has been send by God as the Saviour, with John the Baptist giving his final testimony of God sending His Son to bring everlasting life to men (Joh 3:22-36). [138]
[138] Andreas Ksterberger says, “The overall intent of 1:19-4:54 seems to be to present the initiation of Jesus’ self-disclosure and its reception among various types of groups and individuals.” See Andreas J. Ksterberger, John, in Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004), 53.
The events surrounding the first of three Passover recorded in Joh 2:12 to Joh 4:54 led to a number of testimonies that revealed the divine calling of Jesus Christ, who was sent by God; for Nicodemus begins his dialogue with Jesus saying, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” (Joh 3:2) This section reveals how God the Father sent His Son from heaven to earth to redeem those would put their faith in Jesus. These testimonies reveal various aspects of Jesus’ divine calling from the Father to make atonement for the sins of the world: He testifies to the Jews in the Temple of His bodily death and resurrection (Joh 2:12-22); He testifies to Nicodemus of man’s need to believe that God sent His only begotten Son into the world (Joh 3:1-21); John the Baptist confirms Jesus’ testimony of man’s need to believe in the Son who has been sent by God (Joh 3:22-36); Jesus testifies to the Samaritan woman that He is the Messiah that is to come and to His disciples that He has come to do the Father’s will (Joh 4:1-42); He heals the nobleman’s son as a testimony of His call to redeem all of mankind (Joh 4:46-54). In other words, this section testifies that Jesus called all three major ethnic groups that lived in Palestine during His ministry. It is through Christ being sent from Heaven that we all have been called to believe in Him as the promised Messiah, both Jews and Gentiles.
Outline – Here is a suggested outline:
1. Jesus’ Testimony to the Jews of His Divine Calling Joh 2:12 to Joh 3:21
2. John the Baptist’s Final Testimony of His Divine Calling Joh 3:22-36
3. Jesus’ Testimony to the Gentiles of His Divine Calling Joh 4:1-54
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The First Purging of the Temple and Its Results. A brief stay at Capernaum:
v. 12. After this He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples; and they continued there not many days. John, in accordance with his purpose of supplementing the account of the first three gospels, has only brief references to the Galilean ministry of Jesus, narrating here only the important point that Jesus made Capernaum His second home. The location of this city on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, on the chief caravan road between Damascus and the Mediterranean Sea, made it a distributing center, a nucleus for all Galilee. The Apostle Paul followed Jesus in this, that he made the chief cities the centers of influence for his missionary work. Jesus was not alone on this trip. His mother Mary accompanied Him, as also the few disciples whom He had gained in Judea, who at this time, or shortly after, returned to their former occupation. His brothers are here mentioned with great definiteness. See Mat 12:46; Mat 1:25. “Here people are concerned how Christ the Lord could have had brothers, since He was the only son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary was not the mother of any more children. Therefore some say that Joseph, before he married Mary, had a wife, of whom he begot children, who were afterwards called brothers of Christ the Lord; or that Joseph had another wife in addition to Mary, which was permitted to the Jews that they had two wives at the same time… Since, then, these were begotten of Joseph and the other woman, they would be half-brothers of Jesus. This some have alleged; but I prefer to take the part of those that say that brothers here means cousins; for the Jews and the Scripture call cousins brothers. But let this be as it may be, not much depends upon it; it gives nothing to faith, nor does it take anything from faith, whether they were cousins or brothers, begotten of Joseph; they went down with Him to Capernaum.”
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Joh 2:12 . , . . .] Direct from Cana? or from Nazareth (Joh 1:46 ), whither Mary, Jesus, and the disciples had returned? The latter must be assumed as the correct view, because the brothers of Jesus (His brothers literally , not His cousins , as Hengstenberg again maintains; see Joh 7:3 ; Joh 7:5 , and on Mat 1:25 ; Mat 12:46 , 1Co 9:5 ) had not been with Him at the wedding. It is quite arbitrary to suggest that they were accidentally omitted to be mentioned in Joh 2:2 (Baumgarten Crusius, following earlier commentators).
] down , for (to be written thus, with Lachmann and Tischendorf, in John likewise) lay on the shore of the lake of Tiberias .
. , . . .] A common (correction). See Fritzsche, Conject . p. 25; ad Matt . p. 420; ad Marc . p. 70; Stallbaum, ad Plat. Crit . p. 50 E. John does not tell us why they went down to Capernaum [139] (Mat 4:13 is in a totally different connection). The settlement of the family at Capernaum is left uncertain by John; the fact had but little interest for the Judaistic standing-point of his history, and is neither recorded here, as Ewald maintains (the . . . which follows is against this), nor even presupposed (Wieseler, De Wette, Tholuck), for the mention of the brothers who were not with Him at the marriage forbids this. Nor is the settlement attested either by Joh 4:3 ; Joh 4:43 , or by Joh 6:17 ; Joh 6:59 .
] because the Passover was at hand, Joh 2:13 , which Jesus (and the disciples, Joh 3:22 ) attended; not, therefore, on account of misconstruction and hostility (Ewald).
[139] Hengstenberg supposes that John mentions this only from a feeling of personal interest; that he himself had belonged to Capernaum, and Jesus had stayed at his father’s house. An utterly groundless conjecture, made for the sake of harmonizing (Joh 1:45 ; comp. Luk 4:38 , Mar 1:29 ), according to which we should have to regard Bethsaida as a suburb of Capernaum; see, on the contrary, Mat 11:21 ; Mat 11:23 .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
IV
Jesus, The Guest In Capernaum, And The Pilgrim To The Passover. The Purification Of The Temple, As A Prelude Of The Redeeming Purification Of The World And Reformation Of The Church. Christ The True Temple. The Sign Of Christ: The Destruction Of The Temple And The Raising It Again. The First Spread Of Faith In Israel, And Christ The Knower Of Hearts.
Joh 2:12-25
12After this he went down to Capernaum [Kapharnaum], he, and his mother, and his39 brethren [brothers],40 and his disciples; and they continued there [and there they abode, ]41 not many days.
13And the Jews passover [the passover of the Jews, I.] was at hand 14[or, near, ], and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, [.] And [he] found in the temple those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money [money-changers] sitting [established]: 15And when he had made [having made, a scourge of small cords, he drove them [omit them] all out of the temple, and [both] the sheep, and the oxen;42 and poured out the changers money43 [the money of the exchangers], and overthrew the tables; 16And said unto them that [to those who] sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Fathers house a house of merchandise 17[a market]. And his disciples remembered that it was [is] written, The zeal of [for] thine house hath eaten me up [will eat me up].44 (Psa 69:9.) 18Then answered the Jews [The Jews therefore answered] and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? 19Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up [again]. 20Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear [raise] it up in three days? 21But he spake of the temple of his body. 22When therefore lie was [had] risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them [omit unto them];45 and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had said [spoken].
23Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover in the feast day [at the feast, , many believed in hi3 name [, trusted in his name], when they saw the miracles [his signs, ] which he did [wrought]. 24But Jesus did not commit himself unto them [ , did not trust himself to them], because he knew all men, 25And needed not [had no need] that any [one] should testify of [concerning] man; for he [himself, ] knew what was in man.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
[The Messianic purification of the temple was the first, and, according to the Synoptists (Mat 21:12-13; Mar 11:15-17; Luk 19:45; Luk 19:40), also the last public act of Christ in Jerusalem.46 It very appropriately opens and closes His labors in the sanctuary of the theocracy. It was foretold by the prophet Mal 3:1 ff., that immediately after the forerunner the Messiah Himself shall suddenly come to His temple, for the purpose of cleansing it: He shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. The gross scandal in the Court of the Gentiles represented the general profanation and corruption of the theocracy (as Tetzels and Samsons sale of indulgences revealed the secularization of the Latin Church in the 16th century). Christ commenced the reformation at the fountain-head, in Jerusalem and the temple where it was most needed. The expulsion was a judicial act of the Lord of the Sabbath and the temple. He acted here not simply as a prophet or Zealot, but as the Messiah, as the Son of God; and hence calls the temple the house of His, not our, Father (Joh 2:16). Some infidels have misrepresented it as an outburst of passion and an argument against the sinless perfection of Christ. But the result conclusively shows that it was an exhibition of superhuman power and majesty, which so overawed the profane traffickers, that, losing sight of their superiority in number and physical strength, they submitted at once, and without a murmur to the well deserved punishment.47 Their bad conscience, which always makes men cowardly, and the conceded right of prophets like Elijah, to rebuke scandulous profanations of religion, would not sufficiently account for this complete victory. A similar instance is recorded, Joh 18:6, where Judas and his band of men and officers shrunk back and fell to the ground before the defenceless Jesus.P. S.]
Joh 2:12. After this he went down [] to Capernaum.No doubt not directly from Cana, but from Nazareth. Not that, as Meyer says, the brethren here mentioned were not with Him at the wedding (this is not necessarily to be inferred from the silence respecting them), but that Nazareth was still the residence of Jesus and of the family of Mary, who no doubt returned home before they all went together to Capernaum, that they might thence join the nearest festival caravan for Jerusalem. He went down from the hill country towards the sea, on the coast of which Capernaum lay. On Capernaum, see the Matth. at Joh 4:13. [Am. ed. pp. 90, 91. The question of the site of Capernaum, or properly Kapharnaum (i.e., the Village of Nahum), is still unsettled between the rival claims of Tell Hm (i.e., the hill of Nahum) and Khn (i.e., lodging-place) Minyeh (with a near fountain called Ain–et–Tin, i.e., the spring of the fig-tree), two heaps of ruins on the Western shore of the sea of Galilee about three miles apart. Robinson (Researches . 403 ff.) and Porter (Handbook of Syria, . 425) decide for Khn Minyeh, but Van de Velde, Ebrard, Thomson, and Dixon, for Tell Hm, at the head of the Lake. For this view speaks the similarity of name. (Hm is a mutilated =), and the far greater importance of the ruins. The English explorers, Captain Wilson and his associates, are reported to have discovered in 1866, among the ruins of Tell Hm, a synagogue of elegant architecture dating from a time before the Christian era. See, besides Robinson, . 403405, the article Capernaum, by Grove, with the additional note of Hackett, in Smiths Dictionary, . p. 382; the Land. Athenum, Feb. 24, and Mar. 31, 1866; and an essay of Prof. Ebrard in the Studien and Kritiken, for 1867, No. IV. pp. 723740.P. S.]
He, and his mother, and his brothers, and his disciples,The singular () is explained by the fact that Jesus was the leader of the train. That the family had already settled in Capernaum (which, according to Ewald, is here stated, according to De Wette presupposed), is contradicted by the distinct indications that this removal did not take place till after the return of Jesus from Judea, and His appearance in Nazareth (Mat 4:13; Luk 4:31; Joh 4:43); though Meyer, maintains that there also the removal is neither intimated nor supposed. But no doubt the removal had already been virtually induced by the connection with the disciples from the sea. The brothers of Jesus are distinguished from the disciples. Even though now His brothers, James, Judas, and Simon, had been called to be disciples, which is not at all probable, a separate category had still to be made, because there were yet Joses and the sisters, Mat 13:55-56. And that they had already attached themselves to the company of Jesus, shows that the usual exaggerated and extreme pressing of the statement in Joh 7:5 is false. See Hengstenberg: Das Evang. John , 1 p. 149 sqq.
[The gradual transition from Christs private to His public life is here indicated. At Cana and at Capernaum His earthly relations are still with Him, but in the next verse He appears alone with His disciples or spiritual relatives. As to the vexed question of the brothers of Jesus, I have given my views in full in my German work on James, the brother of Christ, Berlin, 1842, and in a note on Mat 13:55, pp. 256260. Comp. also the notes on Mat 1:25, and Joh 7:3; Joh 7:5. Meyer, Godet (I. 368 ff.), and Alford take here in the proper sense, as brothers, i.e., sons of Joseph and Mary. Hengstenberg (in loc.) revives the R. Catholic cousin-theory which dates from Jerome in the 4th century, and owes its origin and spread mainly to an ascetic overestimate of the perpetual virginity of Mary, as expressed in the words of Augustine: Maria mater esse potuit, mulier esse non potuit. Dr. Langes hypothesis is an ingenious, but somewhat artificial modification of this view, and assumes that Mary, though in the full sense the wife of Joseph, could bear no children after giving birth to the Messiah, and that the brethren of the Lord were both His cousins (as the sons of Clopas, a brother of Joseph, not as the sons of a supposed sister of Mary), and His foster-brothers (having been adopted, after the death of their father, into the holy family). To my mind the only alternative lies between the Epiphanian or old Greek view, which makes them elder sons of Joseph from a former marriage, and the view held by Tertullian and Helvidius, that they were younger children of Mary and Joseph, and so half-brothers of Jesus. Ancient tradition favors the former, an unprejudiced exegesis the latter view. Prof. J. B. Lightfoot, of Cambridge (in a learned excursus on Galatians, Lond., 1866, pp. 247281, where much use is made of my book on James), elaborately defends the Epiphanian theory, mainly on account of Joh 19:26-27, which he regards as conclusive against the Helvidian hypothesis; but if this passage is allowed to decide the controversy, it overthrows also the Epiphanian theory. It receives its true light from the peculiar intimacy of Christ with John, and the fact that His brothers were still unbelievers when He entrusted His earthly mother to the care of His bosom disciple, who was probably also His cousin according to the flesh.P. S.]
Not many days.Depending solely on the preparation for the approaching passover, which Jesus attended in company with His disciples, v. 23. But that during these few days Jesus wrought miracles in Capernaum, must be inferred from Luk 4:23.
Joh 2:13. And the passover of the Jews was at hand.On the passover see the Matth., p. 459.
And Jesus went up.Besides the attendance of Jesus at the feast when He was twelve years old, mentioned by Luke alone (John 2.), and the last attendance on the passover in the year 783, related by all the Evangelists, John gives the remaining occasions of this kind. Here the first attendance on the passover, in the year 781; then a visit to another feast, not named, most probably the feast of Purim of 782 [ch. 5]; then the feast of tabernacles [ch. 7], and the feast of the dedication [ch. Joh 10:22], in the same year. See the Introduction, 8.
Joh 2:14. And found in the temple.In the fore-court of the temple. On the temple and the fore-court see the Matth. on Joh 21:12 [p. 375], and Winer, sub. v. Also Braune: Das Evangelium von Jesus Christus, p. 45, The first act of the Lord, in the confidential circle of susceptible disciples, was an act of positive glorification, coming into the place of the symbolical purification; His second act, in the bosom of the corrupted religious life of the people, was an act of negative purification, significant at the same time of His glorification. That this deed was looked upon by the better people as a miraculous sign also, and that besides this Jesus wrought other miracles in Jerusalem, may be inferred from Joh 3:2. But John relates the purging of the temple alone as the first characteristic work, the signal-miracle of the Lord on His public appearance. To him the first cleansing of the temple was more important than the second. But the fact that John mentions only this cleansing at the opening of the Lords official life, and the Synoptists mention only the similar act at its close, proves nothing against the truth of either or both the occurrences. See the Matth. on John 21.
[The market in the Court of the Gentiles (the ) was introduced, we know not when, from avaricious motives, in violation of the spirit of the law and to the serious injury of public worship, though it was no doubt justified or excused, as a convenience to foreign Jews for the purchase of sacrificial beasts, incense, oil, and the sacred shekel or double drachma in which the temple-tax had to be paid (Exo 30:13). Similar conveniences and nuisances, markets, lotteries and fairs, are not seldom found in connection with Christian churches. The most striking analogy is the traffic in indulgences, which made the forgiveness of sin an article of merchandise and became the occasion (not the cause) of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland.P. S.]
Joh 2:15. He drove all out.Referring grammatically not to the animals, but to the men. But He drove the men out by raising the whip against their animals; precisely after the analogy of His method with the money-changers, whose tables He overthrew. To drive the men themselves, by themselves, from the temple, was not His design. Grotius: The whip, a symbol of the divine wrath.48 Meyer rejects all typical import. Yet even about the whip of an actual ox-driver there is somewhat typical; and the whip in the hand of Christ is at least a type of the punitive, reformatory office of discipline in the theocracy and the church.
And poured out the money of the exchangers, and overthrew, etc.That is, He first dashed upon the tables hither and thither and then overturned them. The right of free motion in the temple-space, where tables of money-changers did not belong.
Joh 2:16. Unto them that sold doves.Because the doves were in baskets, they must be carried away (Rosenmller, Schweizer). His command now sufficed for this, after the dove-traders had seen His earnestness. Showing, that even the ox-traders also He had not driven out with the lash; and showing likewise that He intended no injury, else He would have let the doves go. De Wette: He dealt more gently with the dove-merchants, because the doves were bought by the poor. Stier: Because He saw in the dove the emblem of the Holy Ghost. Both groundless. The difference in the mode of expulsion arises simply from the nature of the articles: doves in baskets. That the dove-sellers came last, may have been determined by the modesty of their business, which generally makes also modest people. These people were doubtless not so much traders properly speaking, as they were poor farmers or farmers boys. As to the doves being emblems, so were also the sheep and oxen.
My Fathers house.See Luk 2:49.49 The temple was still His Fathers house, because He was still waiting for the repentance of the people. The moment He takes His departure from the temple on account of their obduracy, He calls it: Your house, given over to desolation, Mat 23:38. Our Fathers, even a prophet might perhaps have said; My Fathers, Jesus says in the consciousness of His divine dignity and authority, as it were betraying Himself, without their understanding immediately the full sense of His word. The Pharisees, however, have doubtless already reflected upon the word as very suspicious (see John 10).
A house of merchandize.The term here is not so strong as at the second purification. It denotes the entire secularization of the system of worship. The term den of thieves [ ], in Mat 21:13, on the contrary, denotes the prophet-killing and spirit-killing fanaticism, into which this secularization at last ran out.
Joh 2:17. And his disciples remembered.Olshausen: After the resurrection. Meyer, [Godet, Alford], on the contrary, rightly: At the occurrence itself. The passage is Psa 69:9, (10): For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them, that reproached thee are fallen upon me.50 Whether the Psalm be by David (Tholuck; comp. v. 31; Psalms 51), or by Jeremiah (Hitzig, see Joh 5:14?), or by some other theocratic sufferer, it belongs at all events, like Psalms 22., to that class of typical passages, in which the passion of Christ miraculously reflects and foreshows itself. Hence also Peter, Act 1:20, applies to Judas the words of v. 25 (Let their habitation be desolate), and Paul applies the Psalm several times to the conduct of the Jews towards Jesus, Rom 11:9; Rom 15:3. When Bengel, Olshausen, etc, and Luthardt refer the words: hath eaten me up, to the death of Jesus,51 and Meyer says, on the contrary, that the word is to be understood of the inward attrition of zeal (so that the disciples would mean, His zeal will yet consume Him from within), we may freely march over this difference of schools, and suppose (against Meyer) that the disciples, with anxious forebodings for the future of Christ, were smitten with the remembrance of that passage of the Psalm. For it is not necessary to suppose they had made out a clear idea of the sense of those words; any more than that Mary, with her words, meant: Make wine! or: Go home!, The school always reaches after fully expressed ideas or thoughts; actual life has also vague presentiments, anxious forebodings, dim, confused ideas; that is, life is subject to the fundamental law of gradual development. That the disciples did not connect a distinct expectation of the death of Jesus with their application of the verse of the Psalm to this action of their Lord, is proved by Joh 2:22; after Psa 22:6-8, etc., they could not confine their thoughts to an exclusively internal self-attrition; probably they did not think of it at all in the Old Testament sense, though the metaphorical use of is clear, and consuming passions too (see Meyer, with a reference to Chrysostom, Lampe, Wolf) are not wholly excluded. But here for the first time met and struck them the conflict of the spirit of Christ with the spirit of the people, the terrible life staking earnestness in the appearance of Christ, which threatened to bring incalculable dangers after it. We may no doubt further suppose that this remembrance indicates great apprehensiveness in the disciples respecting the Lord. Though the future may occur in the sense of the present,52 it does not follow that, according to Tholuck, it is to be read as present here. In this case the Evangelist might better have used the of the Septuagint.
Joh 2:18. Then answered the Jews. . Here the Jews already begin to appear in opposition to Jesus; accordingly the Pharisaic and Judaistic Jews are intended, particularly the rulers. They regarded the act of Christ as a reproach to their religious government; therefore their interruption was an answer. And from their spirit it was to be expected; hence .What sign she wrest thou unto us?They did not see that the majestic and successful act itself was a great moral, theocratic sign, which accredited him; they intended therefore a sign after some magical, chiliastic sort. It should be noticed that they did not venture to dispute the theocratic propriety of the act itself. The right of zealotry against theocratic abuses was legalized in the example of Num 25:7; yet the prophets were accustomed to support great acts of zealotry by special miraculous signs, 1Ki 18:23. The idea of such signs, however, particularly of the sign with which the Messiah should attest Himself, had gradually passed into the magical and monstrous. At all events, the challenge of a sign from heaven, Mat 12:38; Mat 16:1, is here already put forth.
Joh 2:19. Destroy this temple.[One of those paradoxical and mysterious sayings which, though not understood at the time, stuck in the memory as seed thoughts for future sprouting.53 Comp. Christs word on the sign of Jonah, Mat 12:39-40, in which He likewise mysteriously and typologically predicts His resurrection.P. S.]This is the sign which He would give them. The imperative is permissive. (Glassius: est Imperat. pro Futuro permissive).54 The Jews took the words of Jesus in an entirely literal sense, as Joh 2:20 proves, yet hardly without design. From this conception gradually arose the malignant perversion, slander, and accusation: This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days, Mat 26:61; Mar 14:58; comp. Act 6:13. This conception John corrects in Joh 2:21 : He spake of the temple of his body [for His humanity]. The fathers universally acknowledge this interpretation. It has been supposed, He pointed to His body as He spoke.55 Of this there is no indication.
Since Herder, Henke, and Paulus, down to Lcke [De Wette], Bleek, Ewald (see Meyer, in loc.), it has been suggested, on the contrary, that John misunderstood the Lord; that Christ spoke of the temple as the symbol of the Jewish system of religion.56 Destroy this edifice of religion, and in three days, i.e., in a short time, proverbially (with reference to Hos 6:2) represented by three days, I will set it up again renewed.
Kuinoel, Tholuck, Meyer, and many others57 have maintained the correctness of Johns interpretation. And with all reason ; for an error of the Apostle and the whole company of disciples in respect to so important a word of the Lord is utterly inadmissible (see the several, not absolutely irrefragable arguments in Meyer).58
A third view adheres to Johns interpretation, but holds likewise an element of truth in the second view, and puts them in connection. The temple on Zion was the symbolical dwelling of God; the body of Christ was the real dwelling of God [and hence more than the temple, comp. Mat 12:6].59 The word of Christ, therefore, underneath its immediate reference to the external temple, has a deeper meaning: Destroy this temple and worship, as ye have already begun to do by your desecration,destroy it entirely, by putting the Messiah to death, and in three days I will build it new, i.e., not only rise from the dead, but also by the resurrection establish a new theocracy (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Olshausen, Lange, Leben Jesu, I., p. 200; simultaneously Ebrard, Kritik, p. 325; later, in similar manner, Luthardt).60
This combination is supported (1) by the actual connection. The crucifixion of Christ was the desecration, the spiritual dissolution of the temple, which must be followed by its outward destruction (see Mat 23:38; Mat 27:51), because the body of Christ was the real temple of God. (2) Christ, on this account, has repeatedly represented His death and resurrection as the one great sign which was to be given to the Jews instead of the required sign from heaven (Joh 3:14; Mat 12:39; Mat 16:4), and this sign too always connected with an antecedent Old Testament type. (3) A word concerning His death, without connection with an intelligible figure, would have assuredly been as yet wholly unintelligible to the Jews. (4) John gave the inmost and ultimate significance of the expression of Christ for the sole reason, that it was the main matter, and that the figurative sense was self-evident. (5) In Mat 26:61 Christ puts in the true explanation, 2:64, immediately upon the false interpretation, besides perversion, of His utterance.
In three days, a round number, 1Sa 30:12; see the Matth. on Joh 12:40, p. 226.
I will raise it up (again).It is only apparently contrary to Johns explanation, that Christ, according to the New Testament doctrine, did not raise Himself, but was raised by the Father. Meyer. And besides, the resurrection of Jesus was in one view as much His own act [Joh 10:18; Rev 5:5], as, in another view, the act of His Father, especially in its results, 1Co 15:57; Eph 4:8. That Jesus was already familiar with the thought of His death, appears from the conversation which soon followed, Joh 3:14. The explanation of Athanasius, quoted by Tholuck, is an ingenious modified form of our third: With the putting to death of the body of Christ the Jewish system of types and shadows also is dissolved, and the real church thereby (by means of the resurrection) established.
Joh 2:20. Then said the Jews.With an ; it was to be expected that they would finish their malicious misunderstanding consistently.Forty and six years.They mean the renovation and enlargement of the temple of Zerubbabel, which begun in the eighteenth year of Herods reign, 20 B. C. (Joseph. Antiq. XV. 11, 1), and was finished under Herod Agrippa II. in A. D. 64 (Joseph. Antiq. XX. 9, 7). According to Wieseler, it. appears, therefore, that in this computation of forty-six years since the work was begun, the passover of the year 781 is the occasion on which it is made (Chronol. Synops. p. 106).
Joh 2:21. The temple of his body.Genitiv. Apposit.
Joh 2:22. His disciples remembered that he had said this.This remembrance does not exclude former remindings; but the right remembrance came now with the right understanding of it. [Remarks like this impress upon the reports of the discourses of Christ the stamp of historical fidelity. A later falsifier would have made the reference to the resurrection much plainer.P. S.]And they believed the Scripture.[Faith in Christ is the key to the understanding of the Scriptures of the O. T.; comp. Joh 7:38; Joh 7:42; Joh 10:35; Joh 13:18. The singular indicates the unity and harmony of the canonical books from Genesis to Malachi, which, considering the great number of authors, the long period of time, and the variety of circumstances in and under which they were composed, is a strong evidence of their divine origin.P. S.] Comp. Luk 24:26 : Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, etc. As they now found the death of Christ foretold in the Old. Testament, so they found also His glorification, which included His resurrection, Psa 16:10; comp. Act 2:27; Act 13:35; 1Pe 3:19; Psa 68:18; comp. Eph 4:8; Isa 53:7; comp. Act 8:35.
[Alford: At first sight it appears difficult to fix on any passage in which the resurrection is directly announced: but with the deeper understanding of the Scriptures which the Holy Spirit gave to the Apostles and still gives to the Christian church, such prophecies as that in Psalms 16. are recognized as belonging to Him in whom alone they are properly fulfilled: see also Hos 6:2. This is not satisfactory. The O. T. indeed does not expressly prophesy the resurrection, as a separate fact, but very often the exaltation and glorification of the Messiah after His humiliation and suffering, and this implies the resurrection, as the intervening link or the beginning of the exaltation itself. Hence we may count here in a wider sense, with Hengstenberg (I. 171), the prophecy of Shilo as a ruler, Gen 49:10; Psalms 110, where the Messiah is represented as sitting at the right of God and ruling over all His enemies; Dan 7:13-14, where He appears at the head of a universal Kingdom; Isaiah 53, where, after His atoning death, He is raised to great glory; Zec 9:9-10, where Zions King appears first lowly and riding upon an ass, yea, as dying (comp. Joh 12:10; Joh 13:7), but afterwards speaking peace to the heathen and having dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth; comp. also Isaiah 9; Isaiah 11; Micah 5; Psalms 16. It is quite in keeping with the character of prophecy to behold the various stages of the exaltation as one continuous panorama. It is under this view that the Scripture of the O. T. is said to have foretold the resurrection; Luk 24:26 (to enter into His glory); Joh 20:9; 1Co 15:4; 1Pe 1:11 (the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow).P. S.]
Joh 2:23. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover.The Evangelist thus distinguishes the stay of Jesus in Jerusalem during the passover from His first appearance there.On the feast.Meyer justly says, this addition is not intended to explain the term pass over for Greek readers; that must have been done by Joh 2:13. The expression signifies participation in the celebration of the feast. We suppose the feast days themselves are set off against the day of His entrance. On the day of the symbolical castigation He wrought other miracles, probably miracles of healing; and the first surprise of the Jews was followed by a demonstration of faith on the part of many attendants of the feast. The signs.Evidently implying a multiplicity of signs, and such as determined those people to believe. He must therefore have done many miracles in Jerusalem.
Joh 2:24. Did not commit himself unto them.The second is evidently connected with the first . He believed not in their believing, to such a degree as to commit or deliver up Himself to them. Various interpretations: (1) He withheld His doctrine (Chrysostom, Kuinoel); (2) He did not yield Himself to personal intercourse with them (Meyer). Without doubt simply: He did not yet entrust Himself to them as the Messiah, did not offer Himself as the Messiah, though they seemed inclined to recognize Him as such. It is the Lords determination, not to appear publicly under the title of Messiah; and He follows it henceforth till the triumphal entry into Jerusalem; in full accordance with Mat 4:1-11.
Because he.He Himself, in distinction from indirect knowledge through others. How He knew them all, is in part shown by what has preceded. He knew in general that the secular spirit predominated in them; but He also saw through each one, as He met him, with a divine physiognomic discernment. In both cases is intended not only the general prophetic illumination, but the penetrating spiritual eye of the God-Man.
Joh 2:25. And needed not.Explanatory of in the previous clause.Of man.Of man as to his sinful nature in general, and of man in particular, as He encountered each individual.For he knew.The positive expression for: He needed not.What was in man.Not only the special, miraculous, physiognomic knowledge (Meyer cites Joh 1:48; Joh 4:18; Joh 6:61; Joh 6:64; Joh 11:4; Joh 11:14; Joh 13:11; Joh 21:17), but also the general knowledge of the constitution of human nature (John 3), of the order of the universe (Joh 19:11), and of the situation of the Jewish people in particular. Result: In the familiar circle of His disciples Jesus manifested His glory; in public He preserved His mysterious anonymousness as to the Messianic office.
[Christ knows us better than we know ourselves. He sees the end from the beginning, we the beginning from the end. He, says Calvin, knows the roots of the tree, we know the tree only by its fruits.P. S.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The different meanings of the two purifications of the temple. According to Meyer, no essential difference should be perceived between the two acts. Vet the difference between the expressions house of merchandize in John, and den of thieves in the Synoptists, the house of My Father ( ) in John, and My house ( ) in the Synoptists, as well as the greater rigor in the second case as described by Mark (cot suffering any man to carry any vessel through the temple), is plain enough. According to Hofmann, Lichtenstein, and Luthardt, Christ in the Synoptists appears as a prophet to protect the place of prayer, in John as the Son to execute His domestic right. But this would lead to an entire reversal of the order of things in the self manifestation of the Lord. The case is just the reverse. Christ performed the first cleansing of the temple, as an anonymous prophet in the right of zealotism and the right of a prophet (see the Matth. on Joh 21:12, p. 376); the second, as the Lord of the temple, publicly introduced by the people to the holy city and temple as the Messiah.
2. The body of Christ, the most real temple of God. The crucifixion, the destruction of the temple in the strictest sense (Rom 2:22); the resurrection, the building of the eternal temple. Meaning of the sign: He who builds the eternal, essential temple, has power also to purge the symbolical. The truth, that Christ is perpetually building greater, more glorious the temple of God, which the sin of man demolishes. The centre of this truth is the death and resurrection of Christ; its first tokens, the fall of Adam and the first promise (the protevangelium), the flood and the rain-bow, etc.; its unfolding, the destruction of the theocracy and temple in Jerusalem, the rise of the church, the ruin of the medival church by the hierarchy, and its rebuilding in the Reformation, the inducing of the judgment of the world by anti-christianity, and the erection of a new heavens and a new earth. The wedding at Cana before the purification of the temple, the token of the transfiguration of the world before the judgment of the world.
3. The first and second purifications of the temple: when once the temple is made a house of merchandize (John 2), it has also become in effect a den of robbers or of murderers, Matthew 21. First the selling of indulgences, then persecution and reformation.
4. Christ entrusts Himself to no one in Jerusalem; i.e., He does not as yet come on the stage in His office as Messiah. Comp. the Com. on Matth. on John 4.
5. The supernatural knowledge of Christ, the source of His miracles of knowledge, and in fact everywhere divine human; i.e., on the one hand not merely divine, nor on the other merely human, but both at once; divinely immediate, humanly exercised through means and organs.
OMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See Comm. on Matthew, on Joh 21:12-22, p., 377; Mark, on Joh 11:12-26; Luke, on Joh 19:41-42.The visit of Jesus the youth to the temple, and the visit of the man matured for the execution of His Messianic office.The first, second, and last solemn appearance of Jesus in the temple (the last, Matthew 21-23).As the crucifixion of Christ completed the desecration of the temple, so the resurrection of Christ completed the restoration of the temple.Out of His word of holiest zeal for the temple, they made a word of blasphemy and deadly sin against the temple.The purification of the temple, the perpetual charter of reformation.What sign shewest thou, etc.? The spiritual blindness which demands a sensible sign for the holiest sign of the Spirit.How Judaism, by overdoing itself, falls back into heathenism, in asking a sign for the sense, when the sign of the Spirit gloriously stands forth.So also the Judaism of legality in Christendom.The scourge in the hand of Jesus, or the anger of personal gentleness itself. (1) The overpowering sign of the highest zeal (against sin); (2) the humbling sign of the highest majesty (against frivolity); (3) the ocular sign of the highest assurance (against doubt).The Old Testament spirit in which the disciples viewed the matter, indicated by their word: The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up; the New Testament watchword of Jesus: My meat is to do the will, etc., Joh 4:34.To the temple of a Herod the hierarchs had even a right; in the temple of Christ they found themselves utterly out of place.The token which Christ gives the Jews for the truth of His divine mission.This token, the token also of reformation: Commit the utmost abominations in the temple, the more gloriously will the ruined temple be restored!The conduct of the Jews on Christs purifying of the temple, in its permanent import.The destroyers of the temple would be its restorers, and the restorers must pass for destroyers.From this first day of the public appearance of Christ, enmity calumniously laid up the word, which was to bring it to naught.The Lords great word concerning His end, at the beginning of His career.The subsequent remembrance of Christs words by His enemies, and the subsequent remembrance of them by His friends.When He was at Jerusalem, many believed on Him; or, (1) festival believers, believers of festival seasons when things go grandly in the church; (2) yet festival times, also true birthdays of faith.But Jesus did not commit Himself to them; or, secret disciples, and a secret Saviour (anonymous believers, and an anonymous Christ).Christ, the knower of hearts.The first sign of Christ in the pious house, and His first sign in the impious church.The transformation of water into wine, and of the drivers whip into a beneficent sceptre (in contrast with those who have turned the sceptre into a whip).Christ and the hierarchs with reference to the temple of God: (1) He purifies and sanctifies it, they would make its desecrated condition its holiness; (2) He gives a moral and religious sign of the Spirit, they demand a magical, sensuous sign to accredit it; (3) He gives them for a sign the prophecy that they will kill Him, and they make of it a mortal charge against Him; (4) He announces to them a new supernatural temple, and they harden themselves in their old system to their judgment.The first public Easter festival of Jesus, a foretokening of His future and eternal Easter.Christs observance of the prescribed feasts the dawn of the free festivity of the gospel.Christ at the feast: (1) As an Israelite, in the spirit of the patriarchs; (2) as a Jew, according to the law of Moses; (3) as a prophet, after the manner of the prophets (my Fathers house not a house of merchandize, the court of the Gentiles not a cattle-market); (4) as the Christ, introducing and indicating the course of His life and work.Holy zeal and unholy zeal in contrast in the purification of the temple.The open, noble indignation of Jesus, and the impure malicious reserve of His opponents.:Jesus, here as in Cana, a man, and a sinless man.The keeping holy the temple; (1) The house of God; (2) the body; (3) the church. The rising of the divine above the corruption and ruin of the human; the eternal divine token thereof, the luminous centre of all divine signs: the resurrection of Christ from the death of the cross.
Starke: Majus: Though the word and works of God are not bound to place, yet it is right, after the example of Christ, to observe proprieties of place and time.Osiander: Christ, the Lord of the law, submitted Himself to it, that He might redeem men from it.Cramer: Christ, not a secular king, but Lord of the temple; therefore He comes into the temple, and there begins His public function, Hag 2:3; Hag 2:18.Hedinger: What has the abomination of usury to do in the temple of God? What the indulgence-monger in the sanctuary?Ah, our churches to this day are sufficiently profaned by sinful garrulity, proud display of dress, etc. (even by unsanctified discourses).Nova Bibl. Tub.: The abuses which have crept into the church must be scourged and banished. How much more must traditional abuses call forth our zeal! Hos 12:8; Zec 14:21.It is incumbent on all Christians, particularly on ministers, to be zealous for the house of God; yet should every one take good heed lest it be not according to knowledge.Osiander: He who diligently pursues his calling, may fear no danger. The protection of God will be with him.Majus: The works of God need no miraculous attestation. They shine so brightly upon the eye, that God and His divine glory may be sufficiently recognized in them.Hedinger: Unbelief demands miracles and signs.Zeisius: Where we have to do with false, malicious men, we are not called upon to make the truth so clear and bright, to their greater condemnation (dark words for dark men).A mind occupied only with the earthly, cannot perceive the mysteries of God.Instruction often serves more for others in the future, than for those to whom it is given at the time.Ibid: Fulfilment yields the best interpretation.Quesnel: Truth brings forth its fruits in their season.Ibid.: Christian prudence requires that we do not lightly judge and condemn any, yet that we do not easily trust ourselves to any who present a good appearance.
Gerlach: As Christs kingdom is not a sword, how is it that He deals so hardly and harshly here with the priests of the temple, and concerns Himself with what properly belongs to the secular power? Because the Lord at that time stood between the Old Testament and the New, between what Moses had established in Israel, and what Christ was to establish after His death through His Holy Spirit and the preaching of the gospel; and He shows thereby that He is a Lord who holds both dispensations in His hand (Luther).Lisco: A picture of the reformation of a temple-desecration which had arisen from an abuse of Deu 14:24-26.Heubner: How much is contained in completely trusting one!We must judge not, yet not hastily open and surrender ourselves to any. The more perfect and noble a man is, the more true and open (and yet the more is he, again, a higher mystery).Schleiermacher: What a zeal for His Fathers house did the Lord Himself sanctify, in doing that!But there afterwards came a time, when even the Christian church was a house of merchandize.Then He again gathered a whip; Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and all the reformers.It was not the whip that effected what the Redeemer did, but the spiritual power, of which that was only a sign and seal.Our failure to act in many cases as the Redeemer acted here, is the cause of many evils in the Christian church and in all human affairs. That one is always putting upon another the performance of works well pleasing to God, and no one maintains a fresh and free consciousness of the power which God the Lord has given him, and does all he can do to promote truth and goodness and prevent wickedness,this is the reason why so many disorders are daily renewed in the smaller and larger relations of men.Besser: The Saviour (because they stifle the voice of conscience) draws back from them, and veils in a holy riddle the sign which they demand, and flame which was intended to be given them as the sign of all signs, the proper sign of Christ.From every defeat a victory unfolds to the church; from every shame a glory.When therefore He was risen, etc. Chemnitz presents the disciples, in their relation to the discourse of Jesus to them, as an example for all Bible-readers: They should not at once despise and reject everything in the Holy Scriptures which they cannot at first glance understand; nor must they despair of understanding, if they cannot at once penetrate the deep mysteries of the word. For the Spirit of knowledge leads us into the truth by degrees.Christs power of trying spirits (Isa 11:3. comp. with 1Sa 16:7 ; 1Ti 5:22).
Footnotes:
[39]Joh 2:12. [ after , is omitted by B. L., Treg., Westcott and Hort, but supported by . A. al and retained by Tischend and Alf. (the latter in brackets). Westcott and Hort bracket . The false view about the of Christ may have had some influence on these variations.P. S.]
[40]Joh 2:12. [As brethren is now almost exclusively used in the spiritual sense, it is better to substitute brothers, where, as here, kinsmen, i. e., either cousins, or more probably half-brothers of Jesus, are intended. In the Scriptures the term denotes either (1) actual brotherhood, or (2) kinsmanship (cousins), or (3) common nationality, or (4) friendship and sympathy. Where there are no obvious objections, the first sense, being the most natural, must always be preferred, especially when the term, as here, occurs in connection with mother. See the Exeg. Notes.P. S.]
[41]Joh 2:12. [The singular (instead of the plural ) in A. F. G. was occasioned by the preceding and the succeeding .P. S.]
[42]Joh 2:15. [The words to , the sheep as well as the oxen, are merely epexegetical of (masc. on account of ), and imply that the was used on the beasts only, although it scared the men away likewise. The them and and of the E. V. convey a false impression.P. S.]
[43]Joh 2:15.B. L. X., etc. [Alford, Tregelles] read: [moneys, small change, instead of the singular, (text rec. Tischend). Greek writers generally use the plural. The singular is here collective.P. S.]
[44]Joh 2:17.The reading of the Recepta [] is conformed to the Septuagint. The most important codd., particularly . A. B. R. besides Origen, etc., read [the future, contracted from , will consume me, in the Sent, and the Apocrypha.P. S.]
[45]Joh 2:22.The addition is very feebly accredited. [Omitted by all the modern critical ed.]
[46][The double purgation of the temple is rightly defended by all the older commentators, and by Schleiermacher, Olshausen, Tholuck, Ebrard, Meyer, Lange, Hengstenberg, Godet, Alford. Among those who admit only one, Strauss, Baur and Schenkel defend the report of the Synoptists, while Lke, De Wette, Ewald decide in favor of John].
[47][Hieronymus: Igneum quiddam et sidereum radiabat ex occulis ejus et divinitatis majestas lucebat in facie. Comp. the remarks of Godet, I. p. 379, who attributes the effect chiefly to the imposing majesty of Christs appearance, and the irresistible force of His consciousness of supernatural power.P. S.]
[48][So also Godet: a sign of authority and judgment. If Christ had intended physical punishment, the instrument would have been disproportionate to the end.P. S.]
[49][Alford: The coincidence with Luk 2:49 is remarkable. By this expression thus publicly used, our Lord openly announces His Mossiahship.P. S.]
[50][Sept.: (Vulg.: comedit me), .P. S.]
[51][The spoken of in that passion Psalm, was the marring and wasting of the Saviours frame by His zeal for God and Gods Church, which resulted in the buffeting, the scourging, the Cross. Alford].
[52][So also Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Godet, but Meyer contends that (=) is only used in the sense of the future.P. S.]
[53][Renan (Vie de Jsus, p. 354) can see in this profound enigma of our Lord only an imprudent word spoken in bad humor (Un jour sa mauvaise humeur contre le temple lui arracha un mot imprudent)! Godet, I. 387, well remarks: La methode de Jesus est de jeter une enigme et de ne rvler la vrit quen la voilunt sous un divin paradoxe, qui ne peut lre compris quen changeant de cur. Cest l un secret de la profonde pdagogiesP. S.]
[54][Meyer, with his usual and at times pedantic philological strictness, takes the imperative as strictly provocative, and explains it from a painful excitement of feeling in view of the opposition already manifesting itself. But the apparent harshness is softened by the prophetic character of the word and the double reference to the temple and the person. Joh 13:27, where Christ calls upon Judas to do quickly what he intended to do, furnishes a parallel. If the fruit is once matured, it must fall.P. S.]
[55][So Bengel (nutu gestuve) and Meyer. But in the fifth ed., p. 144, note, M. gives up this reference. Such pointing would have been the solution of the riddle, contrary to its intention; but neither the Jews nor the disciples understood Him at the time. The Jews on this and the second purgation referred to the temple, Joh 2:20; Mat 26:61; Mat 27:40. Meyer now assumes that Christ pointed to the temple (this temple before you), but meant His body as the antitype of the temple and the true dwelling of God, and thus put the image in the place of the thing typified, so dass diese scharfen lebendigen, ohne Auslegung hingeworfenen Bildzge wie in einem Bilderrthsel eine symbolisch prophretische Vorhersagung seiner Auferstehung enthalten, wie Mat 12:39; Mat 16:4.P. S.]
[56](See Heubner, p. 242. Henke was not the first to take this view, but Zinzendorf has it in his Homil. ber die Wundenlitanei, p. 160.)
[57][Olshausen, Stier, Brckner (versus De Wette), Alford, Godet.P. S.]
[58][Meyer, pp. 145147, raises seven objections against this view. It is plainly irreconcilable with apostolic inspiration. In my Lectures on the Gospel of John, written at Berlin, 1842, I find the remark: It involves an immense presumption on the part of theologians of the nineteenth century, however respectable, if they imagine that they understand Christ better than His favorite disciple and bosom-friend to whom He revealed the future struggles and triumphs of His Kingdom. Alford also justly protests against such liberty of interpretation. For we have here not a chronological statement, but a doctrinal exposition of a most important declaration of Christ.P. S.]
[59][This idea John expresses in , Joh 1:14 (see notes on pp. 71, 73), and Paul when he says that the whole fulness of the Godhead dwelled in Christ bodily. Col 2:9.P. S.]
[60][Comp. also Hengstenberg, I:165. He thinks that no justice can be done to this holy enigma which Christ proposed to the Jews, unless we recognize the essential identity of the temple, the appearance of Christ in the flesh and the church of the N. T. He explains: If ye once destroy the temple of my body, and with it this external temple, the symbol and pledge of the kingdom of God among you, I shall rebuild in three days the temple of My body and with it at the same time the substance of the eternal temple, the kingdom of God. The crucifixion of Christ involved as a necessary consequence the destruction of the temple and the O. T. worship; the re surrection of Christ the creation of the Christian church, and worship, of which the temple was the type and shadow. Godet explains: Destroy this your temple, by killing Me, the Messiah.P. S.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days. (13) And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, (14) And found in the temple those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting: (15) And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; (16) And he said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandize. (17) And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
I pass by every lesser consideration contained in those verses, to attend to that one event here recorded, of our Lord’s making a scourge of small cords, and driving the buyers and sellers out of the Temple. If the Reader coolly and deliberately turns over in his mind the wonderful event here recorded, perhaps when all the circumstances are taken together into one point of view, and duly pondered, he will be inclined to think, with me, that excepting that one miracle mentioned by this same Evangelist, Joh 18:6 , of the armed soldiers falling to the ground at the mere word of Christ, in answer to their question; this is the greatest miracle Christ wrought in the days of his flesh. Let the Reader figure to himself the Lord Jesus, thus going into the Temple, carrying everything before him; driving the herds of cattle; overturning the tables; and pouring out the changer’s money: and not a creature daring to resist him! What invincible power must have shone forth in his countenance! how their minds must have been overawed? Such indeed was the consternation on their part, and such the majesty that shone in Christ, that it brought the passage of the Prophet to the Apostles’ minds; and they then saw the accomplishment of it. Psa 69:9 . And to the same purport where the Lord again speaks: Psa 119:139 . And what I beg yet more particularly the Reader to notice in this miracle, is the words of Jesus, when he was driving all before him: Make not my Father’s house an house of merchandize! No prophet ever used such language. None but Christ ever called God Father! Neither did ever God call any among all his prophets, Sons. It is Jesus only, which useth this name. And Christ only whom God so owns. Let the Reader, while he views, and reviews, this wonderful transaction, turn to the prophecy of Malachi, and read the first five verses of the third Chapter; and then ask himself, whether this was not the Lord of his Temple so accurately described in the Portrait of Prophecy; and so completely answered by the original, when this event of purging the Temple took place? I must not close my observations on this transaction, without first remarking to the Reader, that I conceive our Lord made another visit of the same kind to the Temple, just before his crucifixion. But if he compares the scripture where that second cleansing is related, with this; he will find, that there is between them a difference. Indeed it could hardly be one and the same, because this which John relates, was in the early part of Christ’s ministry; whereas, the other was nearly at the close of it. See Mat 21:12-13 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
XIII
THE SOJOURN OF JESUS AT CAPERNAUM, HIS FIRST PASSOVER DURING HIS MINISTRY AT WHICH HE CLEANSES THE TEMPLE AND INTERVIEWS NICODEMUS
Harmony pages 20-21 and Joh 2:12-3:21
After the events at Cana Jesus went down to Capernaum with his kindred and early disciples and there abode a short time. Nothing further of this brief sojourn at Capernaum is known. From Capernaum he goes to Jerusalem, where two significant events take place, viz: the cleansing of the Temple and the interview with Nicodemus. It is well to note here the scenes of his early ministry: beside the Jordan, at Cana of Galilee, at Capernaum, at Jerusalem, in Judea, and in Samaria.
A remarkable deed characterized both the beginning and end of his ministry in Judea. This was the cleansing of the Temple. At this first passover in his ministry he found the money-changers and those who sold animals for sacrifice in the Temple, making the Temple a house of merchandise. He at once proceeded to drive out the animals and to overturn the tables of the money-changers, an act which the Son of God only could perform without a protest from the offended. But the majesty of our Lord here doubtless beamed forth in such splendor that they were completely overawed and dared not resist, but simply demanded a sign of his authority. To which he replied that if they should destroy the temple of his body, in three days he would raise it up. This is the first reference to his resurrection which he thus made the test of his messiahship early in his ministry and referred to it many times later, making it the test, both to his disciples and to his enemies. This cleansing of the Temple fulfilled two prophecies Psa 69:9 and Isa 56:7 . Then follows a statement of the response of the people to his signs which he did: “Many believed on his name.” But Jesus did not trust himself to any man because his omniscience saw what was in man.
The second great event of this visit to Jerusalem was our Lord’s interview and discourse with Nicodemus, which furnishes us our most profitable lesson on
REGENERATION The occasion of this discussion of our Lord was the coming to him of Nicodemus, by night at some unknown place in Jerusalem, to learn more of this great miracle worker. Our English word “regeneration,” etymologically, is a compound word. Generation means the act of begetting; regeneration, the begetting anew. Theologically it means a radical change in the soul or spirit of a man by the action of the Holy Spirit. But this change does not affect the substance of the soul, or impart any new faculty. It is not limited to the intellect, or to the will or to the affections, but it applies to the soul as a unit, including all its faculties or powers intellect, will and affection. It consists in spiritual quickening or making alive, in illuming the mind, in changing the will, in awakening new affections, and in spiritual cleansing. We say this radical change in the soul or spirit, called regeneration, is by the action of the Holy Spirit. How can the Holy Spirit of God act immediately on any other spirit, i.e., by direct impact of Spirit on spirit, or must he act mediately, i.e, by the use of means? He acts both ways, immediately and mediately. The scriptural proof that the Holy Spirit can act directly, or immediately, is as follows:
(1) On inanimate matter, Gen 1:2 ; Gen 2:7 ; Psa 104:32 .
(2) On beasts, Psa 104:29-30 .
(3) On babes in the womb, Jer 1:5 ; Luk 1:41-44 .
(4) In inspiration, 1Sa 10:10 .
(5) In dreams and visions, Gen 28:11-17 ; 1Ki 3:5 ; Mat 2:12 .
(6) In demoniacal possessions, Act 5:3 ; Joh 13:27 .
(7) In regeneration of infants dying in infancy -implied 2Sa 12:23 .
(8) In the call to the ministry by impressions.
Some theologians hold that in the new birth the subject is passive and the Spirit’s power is immediate, i.e., the direct impact of Spirit on spirit. Others held that in the new birth the subject is active and that the Spirit employs the word of God as a means, but I say that there is an element of truth in both positions. Antecedent to all human effort a direct power of the Holy Spirit quickens the soul or makes it sensitive to impressions by the word. For example, “The Lord opened the heart of Lydia that she should attend to the words spoken by Paul.” Now if this first touch of the Spirit is what we mean by the new birth, the first position is undoubtedly correct. But while insisting on the necessity and reality of this initial and direct power of the Spirit, if one should hold that this is not what the Scriptures call the new birth he would be able to support his view by many scriptures. This appears from the fact that when one is born into the kingdom of God he is fully a child of God. But if the subject of the hew birth is passive only if regeneration is completed without the use of means and before the subject is penitent or believing, then we have a child of God who is yet in his sins, impenitent, without faith, and hence without Christ, which is philosophically impossible. Moreover, it is contrary to Scripture, as witness Jas 1:18 : “Having willed it, he begat us (apekuesen) by the word of truth” (1Pe 1:23 ) : “Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of the living God. But this is the word which was announced to you” (Gal 3:26 ): “For ye are all the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” Rom 10:17 : “So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Moreover, in Joh 3:9-18 , when Nicodemus asks, “How can these things come to be,” that is, what is the instrumental means of the new birth, Jesus explains by telling that Christ must be lifted up as an object of faith, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. Again, Joh 1:12-13 : “But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This teaching may be put into a syllogism, thus: Every one born of God has the right to be called a child of God. But no one has the right until he believes in Jesus. Therefore the new birth is not completed without faith.
The true scriptural position then is this: There is, first of all, a direct influence of the Holy Spirit on the passive spirit of the sinner, quickening him or making him sensitive to the preaching of the Word. In this the sinner is passive. But he is not a subject of the new birth without contrition, repentance and faith. In exercising these he is active. Yet even his contrition is but a response to the Spirit’s conviction, and the exercise of his repentance and faith are but responses to the antecedent spiritual graces of repentance and faith. To illustrate take this diagram:
Conviction Grace of Repentance Grace of Faith = New Birth
Contrition Repentance Faith
The upper or divine side represents the Spirit’s work. Then contrition, repentance, and faith are the constituent elements of the human side of regeneration.
When we say repentance and faith are fruits of regeneration we simply mean that in each case the Spirit grace above originates and works out the respective human exercise below. The following scriptures prove that repentance is a grace as well as a human exercise: Act 5:31 ; Act 11:18 . That faith also is a grace, is seen from 1Co 2:4-5 ; 1Co 3:5 ; 2Pe 1:1 . The Holy Spirit then is the agent in regeneration and the instrumental means of regeneration is the Word of God, or the preaching of Christ crucified, yet the power of the Spirit does not reside in the word as inspired by him, but the agency is positive and active in the use of the word. This is illustrated by the use of the ax and the sword. We say that an ax is adapted to cutting down trees, and not that it has power to cut down a tree apart from its intelligent use by the woodsman; and we say that the sword is adapted to cut or thrust, not that it has in itself the power to kill apart from its intelligent wielding by the swordsman. So, though the Word of God is represented as “quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do,” yet this Word is but the Spirit’s sword, powerful only when wielded by him.
The scriptural proof that dying infants are regenerated is constructive and inferential rather than direct. Infants partake of the fallen nature of the parents, and without a change of that nature would be unfitted for heaven. The Scripture says that we are all by nature the children of wrath, but David says with reference to his dead child, “I shall go to him, but he cannot return to me.” As they cannot enter heaven without a change, and as the Spirit is the author of all the change that makes one meet for heaven, it is justly to be inferred that infants are regenerated.
While out hunting on a Western mountain I turned over a huge rock on the mountainside that seemed to be evenly balanced. Under this rock was a den of rattlesnakes, some of them very small, without rattles, and with the fangs not yet developed nor the poison secreted in the sac. These little snakes had never yet bitten any man, and yet if one of them bad been taken to a home and fed upon the milk which nourishes a child, as the snake grew the rattle would form, the fang would develop, the poison would secrete, and even if in its infancy it had been carried to heaven itself without a change of its nature, there, hard by the throne of God, it would have matured the deadly venom. The necessity for the regeneration of infants if they, when dying, are to enter heaven, is imperious. The nature vitiated through the fall of the first Adam is changed by the Spirit through the virtue of the Second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ. In their case the Spirit’s power is immediate.
The principal passages of Scripture defining, embodying or illustrating the doctrine of regeneration are as follows: Psa 51:2-10 ; Eze 36:25-27 ; Joh 1:12-13 ; Joh 3:3-15 ; Rom 12:2 ; 2Co 5:17 ; Eph 2:1-10 ; Eph 4:22-24 ; Eph 5:25-27 ; Col 2:13 ; Col 3:9-10 ; Tit 3:5 ; Jas 1:18 ; 1Pe 1:23 . All of these passages, and others like them, are to be carefully studied in order to a full understanding of this theme. Greek students will find it very profitable to look carefully at the original terms employed in these passages, but we may say for English students that among these terms are: “Born from above,” “born again,” “to make alive,” “to quicken,” “to raise from the dead,” “to transform,” “to renew,” “to create,” “to illumine,” and “to cleanse.” These terms imply supernatural power.
It has been said that the most important passage on regeneration is the third chapter of John. Returning to that chapter, we find that Jesus and Nicodemus talk of two births, the natural and the spiritual birth. The Spirit birth is first designated as “born from above.” It is next designated 8.3 ‘born of water and spirit.” Theologians usually refer the phrase, “born of water” to baptism, but there are certain evils of this reference, viz: The doctrine of baptismal regeneration the conditioning of salvation upon external ordinances. It is impossible to exaggerate the fearful evils that have followed this wrong interpretation of the phrase, “born of water.”
It led directly to the doctrine of infant baptism. The logic would be this: If infants are lost without regeneration, and regeneration is by baptism, in order to save the infants they must be baptized. The teaching of history is very clear as to the origin of infant baptism, that it arose from the preceding doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Then there followed also historically and quite naturally a change of baptism itself into sprinkling or pouring, to meet the case of infants, though the Greek church yet practices the immersion of infants.
The phrase, “born of water,” cannot be explained by baptism.
The argument is very conclusive. Christ and Nicodemus discuss but two births, the natural birth and the spiritual birth; “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The phrase, “born of water and Spirit,” cannot mean two births, one of water and one of Spirit, because there is no article in the original before the words. Whatever it means, it is one birth. It must be either baptism or Spirit, and both terms express only one birth. Otherwise our chapter talks of three births the natural birth, the baptism birth, and the Spirit birth, which is contrary to the context. Moreover, the context shows that the salvation involved in the third chapter of John is a salvation of grace and not of sacraments. But what is most conclusive is that our Lord rebukes Nicodemus for not understanding what he meant by “born of water and Spirit,” Nicodemus being a teacher of the Old Testament. But as the Old Testament has not a word about baptism, he would not be censurable for failing to understand the meaning of this phrase, if “born of water” referred to baptism. The censure lies in the fact that what is meant by “born of water and Spirit” is clearly set forth in the Old Testament, which is so silent about baptism, and with which Nicodemus, as a master in Israel, ought to have been well acquainted.
The phrase, “born of water and Spirit,” is but an expansion of the previous phrase, “born from above.” It interprets and develops the first phrase, bringing out the two elements in regeneration, namely, cleansing and renewing. It is only when we lose sight of the cleansing element in regeneration that we are liable to go astray in interpreting the phrase “born of water.” The matter is clearly set forth in Eze 36:25-26 , which declares: “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all of your filthiness and from all of your idols, will I cleanse you.” This is the cleansing element of regeneration. The passage adds: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” And this is the renewing element. Clean water in this passage does not mean pure water or just water. It means water of cleansing, or water of purification. There was a special recipe for the compounding of this cleansing water, or water of purification.
This recipe is found in the book of Numbers, where Moses is directed to take a red heifer and burn her with red cedar wood, and to cast scarlet thread into the fire, and then to gather up the ashes and mingle them with running water, in order to put them into a liquid form, and this is the clean water, or water of purification of the Bible. It was administered by taking a bunch of hyssop and dipping it into this liquid and sprinkling it upon the one to be ceremonially cleansed. We can thus easily understand the fifty-first Psalm, in which David says, “Purge me [or cleanse me] with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” He thus brings out in type the cleansing element in regeneration.
Now, this water of purification was a type. It was typical of the blood of Christ. Concerning this the letter to the Hebrews says, “For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” So that the Old Testament idea of clean water was equal to the ashes of the heifer, and that typified the blood of Christ, applied in regeneration by the Holy Spirit. This produces the cleansing element of regeneration, and with this Nicodemus ought to have been familiar.
“Born of water and spirit” simply means “cleansed by the blood of Christ and renewed by the Holy Spirit.”
The New Testament with even greater clearness brings out these two elements of regeneration. Paul writes to Titus (3:5): “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” The same thought is presented in his letter to the Ephesians, when he says, “Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word.” Here is a strange kind of washing a washing through the Word, indicating the instrumentality of the Word in effecting regeneration, and yet showing that the washing is a figurative washing, a washing that accomplishes cleansing, and that cleansing is applied by the Holy Spirit.
So that the phrase, “born of water and Spirit” means the same as “born from above,” and it means the same as the “washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”
Christ says, “Ye must be born from above in order to see the kingdom of God,” and he says, “Except a man be born of water and Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” This language emphasizes the necessity of regeneration in the strongest possible way. Now let us clearly and forcibly state the reason or ground of this necessity. The necessity lies in the fact that man is fallen and depraved, and without the change effected by regeneration could not enjoy heaven, even if he were permitted to enter it. Therefore in any true system of theology the doctrine of human depravity is a vital and fundamental doctrine. It is a touchstone that when applied clearly defines every man’s position and shows his proper alignment. If he does not believe that man is fallen he sees no necessity for the regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit.
The doctrines of depravity and regeneration irreconcilably antagonizes the modern doctrine of evolution, which teaches that man has never fallen; that he is continually ascending; and hence no full-fledged Darwinian evolutionist believes in the historic veracity of the account in Genesis of the fall of man, nor does he believe in the necessity of either regeneration by the Spirit, or sanctification by the Spirit, holding that man can be cultivated and trained into the highest possible development.
Another vital scriptural doctrine is involved in this antagonism, viz., the vicarious expiation of Christ. If spiritual cleansing, secured by the application of the blood of Christ, is an essential and integral part of regeneration, the doctrine of the vicarious expiation of Christ is necessarily involved in this antagonism, and hence, consistently, the full-fledged Darwinian evolutionist like Mr. Haeckel, boldly denies any necessity for an atonement, or any virtue in this direction in the death of Christ.
Justification comes in touch with regeneration at that point where the Spirit of God by the application of the blood of Christ, cleanses the soul. When the man accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as, his Teacher, Sacrifice, Priest, and King, and trusts in him for salvation, then God in heaven justifies the man, or declares an acquittal of him) through his faith in the blood, but the blood is applied in the cleansing part of regeneration, so that we see again from this relation between regeneration and justification how it is that regeneration cannot be complete without faith.
QUESTIONS
1. Trace Jesus in his early ministry from the banks of the Jordan to the beginning of his great ministry in Galilee.
2. What remarkable deed characterized both the beginning and the end of his ministry in Judea?
3. How do you explain this bold act of Jesus?
4. What sign of his authority did he here submit and how did he here afterward make this the test of 1) is messiahship?
5. What prophecies were fulfilled ill these two incidents of cleansing the Temple?
6. What statement here of the omniscience of Jesus?
7. What was the second great event of this visit to Jerusalem and what the great lesson from it?
8. What the occasion, time, and place of this interview with Nicodemus?
9. What the etymological meaning of the English word “regeneration”?
10. Theological meaning?
11. Does it change the substance of the soul, or impart any new faculties?
12. Is its effect limited to the intellect, or to the will, or to the affections?
13. In what then does it consist?
14. Can the Holy Spirit operate immediately on another spirit, i.e., direct impact of Spirit on spirit, or must he operate immediately, i.e., through the use of means?
15. Cite scriptural proof that the Spirit may act immediately in at least eight different cases.
16. According to theologians, does the Holy Spirit in regeneration operate mediately or immediately?
17. But what do you say?
18. While insisting on the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit how do you make it appear that the scriptural new birth is not complete without the use of means?
19. Cite the scriptural proof.
20. Put the scriptural proof of Joh 1:12-13 in the form of a syllogism, its human exercise.
21. What then is the true scriptural teaching?
22. Illustrate this by a diagram.
23. Explain the diagram.
24. How then may we rightly say that repentance and faith are fruits of regeneration?
25. Cite Scripture proof that the divine grace of repentance precedes
26. What is the similar proof concerning faith?
27. Who then always is the efficient agent of regeneration?
28. The instrumental means?
29. What part of the Word of God, the Law or the Gospel?
30. When we say the Spirit is the power and the Word is the means, does the Spirit power reside in the Word because inspired, or is the Spirit agency positive and active in the use of the Word?
31. Illustrate this by the ax and the sword.
32. In the case of infants dying are they saved with or without regeneration?
33. What is the constructive scriptural proof?
34. In their case is the Spirit’s operation mediate or immediate?
35. Cite the principal passages. Old Testament and New Testament, embodying the doctrine of regeneration,
36. What words are here employed to define or illustrate regeneration?
37. What do they imply?
38. Greek students cite the principal Greek words employed to define or illustrate regeneration, citing one passage in which each separate word is used, giving the inflection of the word these used (i.e., the case and number and person of the noun or the voice, mood, tense, number and person of the verb).
39. Of how many births do Nicodemus and Jesus talk?
40. How is the Spirit birth first designated?
41. How the second time?
42. To what do theologians generally refer “born of water”?
43. What the evils of the doctrine?
44. Show why it cannot be so explained.
45. What then does it mean?
46. Christ says, “Ye must be born from above to see the kingdom of God . . . Except a man be born of water and Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” State clearly and forcibly the reason, or ground, of this necessity.
47. What then is the position of the doctrine of depravity?
48. How do the doctrines of depravity and regeneration irreconcilably antagonize the modern doctrine of evolution?
49. What other vital scriptural doctrine is involved in this antagonism?
50. At what point in regeneration does justification come in touch with it?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days.
Ver. 12. To Capernaum ] Where he had hired him a house; for the foxes had holes, &c., but the Son of man had not a house of his own to put his head in, Mat 8:20 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
12. ] , because Capernaum lay on the lake, Cana higher up the country. There is no certainty as to this visit, whether or not it is the same with that hinted at in Luk 4:23 ; so that no chronological inferences can be built on the hypothesis with any security.
On [ ] see Mat 13:55 and note.
Notice the transition from His private to His public life. His mother and brethren are still with Him, attached merely by nature: His disciples, newly attached by faith. In the next verse He has cast off His mere earthly ties for His work. Also in the ., notice less a mere chronological design, than one to shew that He lost no time after His first miracle, in publicly manifesting Himself as the Son of God.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
12 4:54. ] FIRST MANIFESTATION OF HIMSELF AS THE SON OF GOD: and herein, Joh 2:13 to Joh 3:36 , IN JERUSALEM AND JUDA.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Joh 2:12 . From Nazareth to Capernaum and thence to Jerusalem . At Joh 2:12 , as Calvin says, “transit Evangelista ad novam historiam”. This new section runs to the end of the fourth chapter, and gives an account of the first great series of public manifestations on the part of Christ (1) in Jerusalem, (2) in Judaea, (3) in Samaria, (4) in Galilee. These are introduced by the note of time, , commonly used by John when he wishes merely to denote sequence without definitely marking the length of the interval. The interval in the present case was probably long enough at any rate to allow of the Nazareth family returning home, although this is not in the text. The motive for a fresh movement was probably the desire of the fishermen to return home. Accordingly , down from the higher lands about Nazareth to the lake side, 680 feet below sea level. His destination was , the site of which is probably to be found at Khan Minyeh (Minia), at the north end of the plain of Gennesareth, where the great road to Damascus leaves the lake side and strikes north. [The most valuable comparison of the two competing sites, Tell Hum and Khan Minyeh , will be found in the Rob Roy on the Jordan . Mr. Macgregor spent several days sounding along the shore, measuring distances, comparing notes, and making careful examination, and concluded in favour of Khan Minyeh. Tell Hum was thought to represent Kefr Nahum (Nahumston); which, when it ceased to be a town and became a heap of ruins, might have been called Tell Nahum, and hence Tell Hum. Authoritative opinion is, however, decidedly in favour of Khan Minyeh.] With Jesus there went to Capernaum . From the manner in which His brothers are here mentioned along with His mother the natural inference is that they were of the same father and probably of the same mother. At Capernaum no long stay was made, the reason being given in Joh 2:13 , , the Passover was approaching, here called “of the Jews,” either for the sake of Gentile readers or because the Christian Easter was sometimes called , and John wished to distinguish it. , the disciples also went, as appears from Joh 2:17 . “Went up ” because Jerusalem was the capital, and because of its height (2500 feet) above sea level. On these movements Prof. Sanday ( Fourth Gospel , p. 53) makes the remark: “If it is all an artificial composition with a dogmatic object, why should the author carry his readers thus to Capernaum for nothing? The apparent aimlessness of this statement seems to show that it came directly from a fresh and vivid recollection and not from any floating tradition.”
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Joh 2:12
12After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His brothers and His disciples; and they stayed there a few days.
Joh 2:12 “Capernaum” After Nazareth’s unbelief (cf. Luk 4:16-30) this became Jesus’ headquarters in Galilee (cf. Mat 4:13; Mar 1:21; Mar 2:1; Luk 4:23; Luk 4:31; Joh 2:12; Joh 4:46-47).
This is a unique glimpse into the ministry of Jesus toward His family, in light of this miracle at Cana.
CONTEXTUAL INSIGHTS TO Joh 2:13-25
A. There has been much discussion among NT scholars as to how many times Jesus cleansed the Temple. John records the cleansing quite early in Jesus’ ministry, while the Synoptic Gospels (Mat 21:12; Mar 11:15 and Luk 19:45) describe a cleansing during the last week of Jesus’ life.
However, it is surely possible that John structures Jesus’ actions for theological purposes (i.e., John asserts Jesus’ full Deity from chapter 1). Each of the Gospel writers had the freedom under inspiration to select, adapt, arrange, and summarize Jesus’ actions and teachings. I do not believe they had the freedom to put words in Jesus’ mouth or make up events. It must be remembered that the Gospels are not modern biographies, but evangelistic tracts targeted at select readers. The Gospels are not chronological, nor do they record the very words of Jesus (rather summaries). This does not imply that they are inaccurate. Eastern literature was based on different cultural expectations than western literature. See Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth, pp. 127-148.
B. The cleansing of the Temple fits into John’s overall theological purpose of Jesus’ dealing with the Jewish nation first. This can be seen in his discussion with Nicodemus in chapter 3 (orthodox Judaism). However, in chapter 4 Jesus begins to deal with a wider group (even a heretical group of sectarian Judaism), starting with a Samaritan woman.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
After. Greek. meta. App-104.
down. True geographically. Compare “up”, Joh 2:13.
Capernaum. Now Tell Hum.
and. Note the Figure of speech Polysyndeton. App-6.
continued. Greek. meno. See note on Joh 1:32, and p. 1511.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
12-4:54.] FIRST MANIFESTATION OF HIMSELF AS THE SON OF GOD:-and herein, Joh 2:13 to Joh 3:36, IN JERUSALEM AND JUDA.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Joh 2:12. ) He went down from Cana.-, and) A holy family. His Brethren are put before His disciples. The privileges of His brethren had been great, if they had used them. [These are here mentioned in the first place: and Joseph is not now added. It is not without good reason one may suspect, that Joseph died during the interval between the twelfth and thirtieth year of Jesus age, and that His brethren were not Josephs own children (for Jesus, as He was reputed the Son, so was He reputed to be absolutely the first-begotten of Joseph), but Marys sisters sons.-Harm., p. 160.]- , not many days) He accustomed them to travelling from place to place; and His journey to Jerusalem was at hand. See the following ver. [Manifestly by this phrase (comp. Act 1:5, ; Joh 13:31, ) this continuing [, they continued there] is distinguished from His dwelling at Capernaum. That went before,-this followed the imprisonment of John.-Harm., l. c.]
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Joh 2:12
Joh 2:12
After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples; and there they abode not many days.-Capernaum was situated on the Sea of Galilee. Although it is said they did not remain many days, he made Capernaum his home after this. It is called his city. The greater number of his apostles were reared in Capernaum and the other cities on the Sea of Galilee.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Right and Wrong Uses of Gods House
Joh 2:12-22
This market was established in the Temple courts, and many evils were associated with it. The animals were sold at exorbitant prices, which made the dealers only the more covetous. The money-changers made considerable profit in supplying Jewish coins-which alone could be offered in the Temple service-in exchange for Roman and Greek money. Our Lords presence was august, His soul being aflame with the passion of zeal for His Fathers honor. The consciences of those who offended were smitten by the contrast between that holy zeal and their own eagerness to barter.
Our Lords reference to His body as the true temple is very impressive and interesting. The Apostle adverts to it in 1Co 6:19. As Jesus cleansed the Temple so He can cleanse our hearts. When He comes to dwell within us, He finds our hearts desecrated by unholy things, which He quickly casts out. He sits as a refiner of silver: His fan is in His hand, and He thoroughly purges His floor. Our Lords reference to the distraction of His body, by the act of the Jewish leaders, and to His resurrection, proves that from the first He had His sacrifice well before His eyes. In the next chapter this becomes the more apparent.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days. 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: and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers money, and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Fathers house an house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
Following the baptism of our Lord, He went out into the wilderness where, as we learn from the other Gospels, He was tempted of the Devil. Then He returned to Judea and began a slow progress toward Galilee. We have already followed Him in the calling of His earliest disciples and considered His presence and His action at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. Now the Lord went on from Cana to Capernaum. Capernaum is called elsewhere his own city. It was not His own birthplace, we know. Neither was it the city in which He had lived as a child and young man, but it was the city that He chose as a residence as He began His ministry. Of course, He was not there very much, and He could say, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head (Mat 8:20). He was seldom at home, but if He had a home at all, it was Capernaum. Capernaum, therefore, was one of the most privileged of the Galilean cities. There He often appeared in the synagogue.
I cannot express the emotion that overwhelmed several of us as we stood in the recently excavated synagogue in Capernaum and realized we were standing, in all probability, on the very stones where His feet once stood. As we looked down from that raised platform, we could imagine the healing of the withered arm and the deliverance of the poor woman who had been so crippled that her body was bent together for so many years. We remembered that it was there that He delivered His great discourse-I am the bread of life (Joh 6:35). We could look down to the seashore and we knew that there Matthew once had his office as collector of customs, and we noticed the road going by and thought of the Lord Jesus as He raised the daughter of Jairus, after healing the woman who pressed her way through the crowd, crying in faith, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole (Mat 9:20-21).
Capernaum, blessed above all places on earth, for Jesus chose it as His home. There He taught and did His works of power, but, alas, it was of this very city that later on He said, Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell (Mat 11:23)- the city so privileged! Do you know, that very city was blotted out of existence? For centuries no one knew where it stood, until in recent years it was excavated from under a mound of sand. Surely Capernaums fate should be a solemn warning for us today. The greater our privileges, the greater our responsibility. If God has, in loving-kindness, permitted us to live in a country where Bibles are found on every hand, and yet we turn a deaf ear to His proclamation and despise His Word, how dreadful it will be, some day, to face Him in the judgment whom we have rejected while on earth. God grant that the lesson of Capernaum may sink deeply into the heart!
He went down to Capernaum and with His mother and brethren and disciples continued there a short time, and then He started south again to manifest Himself at Jerusalem. The Jews Passover was at hand. In the Old Testament the Passover is called the Passover of the Lord, but wherever you turn in the New Testament you find it called the Jews Passover, as we also read of the Jews feast of the tabernacles. Why the change? Why are they not called feasts of the Lord? Why are they designated feasts of the Jews? Because the Jews had turned away from the Lord, and the keeping of these feasts had become mere formality, so that the Lord no longer owns them as His. Let us be warned by this of the danger to which we are all exposed of putting outward observances in the place of spiritual realities.
The Jews feast of the Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. When He reached the temple He was shocked to see business going on in its courts as though it were a worldly market or counting-house. What had, perhaps, begun innocently enough as an accommodation to supply lambs for visiting Passover guests and the exchanging of money for those from distant lands, had degenerated into a feverish effort to make merchandise of what was needed in order to observe the sacrificial service connected with the Passover. Covetous-ness and overreaching prevailed to such an extent that God was dishonored and the temple scandalized. There was the bleating of sheep and the cooing of doves disturbing the worship of the Lord, and these who offered them for sale thought only of enriching themselves. They were commercializing the things of God, and that is always repugnant in His sight. So Jesus asserted Himself as the Lord of the temple. We read in Malachi, And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple (Mai. 3:1) and shall purify it.
He appeared suddenly before the people with a whip of small cords and began to drive out the sheep and the oxen. He said, Make not my Fathers house an house of merchandise (v. 16). Since then, how much there has been of the commercializing of the things of the church of God. Whatever the Lord gives, He gives freely, and what His servants have to offer in the way of ministry to needy souls should be offered just as freely. We bring our gifts out of the appreciation and gratitude of our hearts. What we do for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ should be done because we want to do it.
It must have seemed strange to see Jesus with this whip of cords, crying aloud, Take these things hence; make not my Fathers house an house of merchandise. My house shall be called a house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. Notice the tone of authority. It is, my Fathers house, and my house. He was the Lord of the temple, because He was Lord over all. The disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath [consumed] me (v. 17; see also Psa 69:9). How well that applied to Him!
The Jews began to object, and asked, What sign showest thou? (v. 18). They challenged Him to work some miracle in order to attest His authority, to do something marvelous in order to accredit Himself. But He said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (v. 19). It was as though He said, You want a sign that I am the Son of God, that I am the One promised of the Father-you shall have a sign. In Gods due time, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. They did not understand and turned angrily upon Him, saying, This temple was forty-and-six years in building, and would you raise it up in three days after it was destroyed! He meant the temple of His body. But He did not explain. It was of no use to do so. Men get into such a state that there is no use trying to make clear spiritual realities to them.
So our Lord had nothing to say to them. They had chosen their own way, and He did not attempt to explain the mystery of His words. But when He had risen from the dead, His disciples believed Him. We may consider those words today, and we can see the meaning. Destroy this temple. What was the temple? It was the building, as originally constructed, in which Jehovah manifested His presence. There in the holiest of all was that uncreated light, the Shechinah glory. That was the visible manifested presence of God on earth. The temple simply hid that glory from the eyes of the multitude outside. The high priest entered the holiest of all once every year. And so the Lord Jesus Christs body, when He came into this scene, was the real temple of God. His body answers to the outer court, His soul to the holy place, and His spirit to the holy of holies. God was manifest in Christ. God Himself dwelt in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, for He was God and Man in one person. He spoke of the temple of His body, for God and Man were there in one person. So He said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
Notice, I will raise it up. In other words, He was to die, but He died in perfect confidence that He would rise. Have you noticed how the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is attributed to each person of the blessed Trinity? In another place He says, No man taketh [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again (19:18). He laid down His life, and He took His life again. He raised up the temple. But elsewhere we read that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and then we are told that the Holy Spirit raised up Jesus, our Lord, from the dead. Each person of the Godhead had His part in the resurrection of Jesus. And now He has been declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead. Apart from this we should have no gospel to preach to a lost world.
But Christ is risen, and we are told that, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Rom 10:9-10).
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Capernaum: Joh 6:17, Mat 4:13, Mat 11:23
and his brethren: Joh 7:3-5, Mat 12:46, Mat 13:55, Mat 13:56, Mar 6:3, Act 1:13, Act 1:14, 1Co 9:5, Gal 1:19
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
The Father’s House
Joh 2:12-22
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
1. The connecting link. The connecting verse between the last study and this one, is Joh 2:12. In that verse we read that Jesus went to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples: and “they continued there not many days.”
Capernaum stands for illumination, light, blessing. It was there that Christ wrought many of His great miracles. It was there that He dwelt, and taught. We remember how it is said of that city, “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto Heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.”
Light brings responsibility, and responsibility brings accountability. When God has done great things for us, He expects great things of us. If they had not known His will they would not have had sin; but when they knew, they sinned willfully, and their sin was augmented.
Let those of us who have been raised in a land of churches and of the open Bible fear lest we abuse our privileges and sin against our opportunities.
Remember, our Lord will judge everyone according to his responsibility and knowledge.
2. The Jews’ passover. Joh 2:13 tells us, “And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”
(1) Why the Jewish passover? It almost startles us when we observe the new name given to the passover. It had always been called “the Lord’s passover.” It was a memorial feast unto Jehovah. Its backward look was to the day of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt through the shed blood of the passover lamb. Its forward look was the day of Israel’s future and final deliverance, when Christ, the Passover Lamb, was to be slain. Paul, in speaking of the Passover, said, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” Accordingly, the lamb slain under God’s order through Moses, as the people were about to leave Egypt, anticipated the coming of Christ, the Lamb of God.
We read of the Lamb slain, of the Lamb worshiped, of the wrath of the Lamb, of the marriage of the Lamb, etc.
(2) Why not the Lamb’s passover? The reason that the name was changed from the Lord’s passover, to the Jews’ passover, was because the feast had lost its meaning to Israel. They were following the ritual of the feast, but they knew nothing of the deeper meaning of the feast. They would kill the lamb, but they knew nothing of the significance of the lamb. The Lord plainly said in Isa 1:1-31, “I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.”
These sacrifices were definitely commanded, and yet now definitely repudiated. The shedding of the blood of a lamb meant nothing to God, in itself. Its only value lay in its prophetical significance. It anticipated the death of Christ, therefore God was altogether displeased with their sacrifices.
It is even so in the ordinances of the church. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, when they are considered no more than church ordinances, and when their vital significance and message concerning Christ is lost, become no more than a hollow mockery. God does not delight in seeing His people buried beneath the water unless that burial prefigures the death and resurrection of Christ, and our oneness with Him in that death and resurrection. The Lord’s Supper means nothing in the church unless we discern the Lord’s body and recognize His shed Blood.
I. THE FATHER’S HOUSE A DEN OF THIEVES (Joh 2:14-15)
In the sermon on the marriage of Cana of Galilee we discovered that Israel’s joy was gone. The wine had run out, and the wine stood for joy,-the joy which we have in Christ by virtue of His shed Blood.
We have before us, today, the apostasy of Israel in departing from God’s method of procedure. This is set forth in this study.
Let us examine for a moment the needs of the passover. They had to have sheep, oxen, and doves for sacrifices. They had to have their money changed, for their offerings. Many of the people had come from afar hoping to secure their sacrifices by purchase. Others had come with Roman money in their hands desiring to exchange that money for Jewish coin, because it was an abomination for the Jews to offer the money of the country under which they were vassals.
The Jewish vendors, and, perhaps Roman vendors arguing that it was far easier, and much more convenient, for the people to have the cattle, and doves and money in the temple enclosure, thereby entered the courts of God with their traffic, using it for unholy and forbidden purposes.
2. When the Lord Jesus came to the passover and found such conditions prevailed, He drove out the cattle and the sheep. He ordered the men to take out the doves, and He overturned the tables of the money-changers. He knew that the feast of the passover should have no sign of leaven anywhere about it. In 1Co 5:7 are the words, “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Then the Holy Ghost goes on in Joh 2:10, and speaks of the covetous and idolaters. In Col 3:5 covetousness is called idolatry. When Christ saw the money-changers and the cattle within the temple enclosure, He saw covetousness and its willful disobedience to the sanctity of God’s courts, and He drove them out.
II. PRESENT WORLD CONDITIONS (Joh 2:14-15)
In the twentieth century, the day in which we live, we are facing very much the same conditions that existed in the days of Christ. We wish to show you a very significant thing.
1. The Jews returning homeward. The Jews, in large numbers, are turning their faces Zionward. The fig-tree is a type of Israel, and it is bringing forth its leaves. All of this signifies that Christ’s Coming is near at hand.
2. The abomination of desolation will be shortly set up. What is the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet? That abomination, of which Christ also emphatically prophesied, is the antichrist entering into the Jewish temple. The antichrist will permit no man to buy or sell, without the mark of the beast, doubtless, therefore our study conditions will again thrive in his day.
3. The Lord suddenly coming into the temple. This study describes Christ entering into His Father’s house, rebuking them for making His temple a den of thieves. Then He drove out the money-changers. Malachi tells us that once more the Lord will suddenly come to His temple. He will come when the antichrist sets up the abomination of desolation. With the brightness of His coming, and with the breath of His lips, He will destroy the antichrist.
As Christ, therefore, purged the temple, at His first coming, He will likewise purge it at His Second Coming. Then, the Branch spoken of in Zechariah will arise and build the temple, in even more than its Solomon glory. “In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD; * * and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.”
III. CLOSING THE TEMPLE (Joh 2:15-16)
We have spoken of Christ purging the temple in the days of His Second Coming. Now let us make a more personal application and describe our lesson, in its relationship to present-day church conditions. Has the Church, also, turned the Father’s House into a house of merchandise? Have we made the “temple,” a place for the selling of oxen, sheep, and doves, and for the changing of money at our money tables? Let us see.
1. The church is turning from soul-winning to social service. Take the Y.M.C.A. which was founded with the one thought of winning men to Christ. What do we have today? Soul-winning is not even a feature in either the Y.M.C.A. or, in the Y.W.C.A. In our own city, we never hear of such a thing as a soul won to Christ through the ministrations of these organizations. Their whole attention is given to serving the youth of one community socially, ethically, intellectually, and physically.
Take the general run of the churches. They are given over in a very large way to social service. They are becoming a civic center, and some are political centers. They are seeking to foster ethical relationships. They are turning themselves toward solving the social unrest, toward equalizing wealth and wages, and things far distant from the Cross of Christ and the salvation of sinners.
2. The church is turning from prayer to the pantry. The place of prayer and the house of prayer are neglected. The pantry and the church kitchen are popularized. Many churches have become centers in providing entertainment to those who need salvation, purity, and the power of the Holy Ghost.
Our young people have plenty of time to turn from their school studies and their home duties to attend a social, but they are always too busy and too much occupied to attend the prayer meeting.
3. The church is turning from tithing to tables. Are there any money-changers’ tables in the house of God? Instead of bringing in our tithes and offerings, how many churches are selling doves, so to speak, and cattle; that is, they are selling them well cooked with fancy gravies, seeking to make money by dealing to the public well prepared victuals. Our Lord is grieved at all of this.
IV. CHRIST’S ZEAL FOR HIS FATHER’S HOUSE (Joh 2:17)
1. Let us observe Christ’s relationship to the Father. He said, “Make not My Father’s house an house of merchandise.” Let us emphasize the pronoun “MY.” No other Prophet or priest who ever lived dared to utter such a statement as this, calling God His Father as Christ called Him.
2. Let us consider Christ’s zeal for His Father’s House. With a whip in His hand, He drove them out. Once more the Deity of Christ shines forth. Who would have dared, singlehanded and alone, to enter the Temple and do what Christ did? Christ Jesus had all judgment committed unto Him. He was not afraid. He knew that men loved their money. He knew that cattle traders and sheep sellers were a tough lot. He knew that money-changers were covetous, and yet, courageously He entered in and everyone of them stood by in fear. They made no effort to justify their deeds. They stood whipped and condemned and acknowledged their iniquity.
3. Let us observe the other side of Christ’s character. We think of Christ, usually, as the meek and lowly Jesus. We think of Him with hands extended, saying, “How often would I * * and ye would not.” We think of Him as weeping over Jerusalem, as calling, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Christ is so continually set forth in the beauty of His love and long-suffering, that sometimes we forget that He is just and that judgment is in His hands. However, mark how prudently He acts in His judgments. He drove out the cattle knowing that their owners could recover them. He turned over the tables of the money-changers knowing they could pick up their money. He did not turn loose the doves, because they would have flown away. He did but command their owners to carry them hence. The judgments of Christ are just and right, and according to truth.
V. THE JEWS SEEKING A SIGN (Joh 2:18)
“Then answered the Jews and said unto Him, What sign shewest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things?”
1. The request for a sign demonstrated that the Jews knew not the Lord. They asked for a sign because they were blinded, first, to the Prophets, and now to the fulfillment of the words of the Prophets. In the Book of Acts we read of how they that dwelt in Jerusalem and their rulers did not know Him, nor yet the prophecies. Thus it was that He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him when He came.
2. The request for a sign grieved the heart of the Lord. He must have drawn back in sadness. He realized that the Jews had no conception whatsoever of His miracles and His messages. Neither did they know the Word of God which they themselves were at that very moment fulfilling.
In Mat 16:1-28 we read that they came unto Christ desiring Him to show them a sign from Heaven. He said unto them, “O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” Then He added, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it.”
We must confess that the Jews were altogether blinded. Having eyes, they saw not; having ears, they heard not, neither did they understand how, in them, were fulfilled the words, “Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert and be healed” (Isa 6:9-10).
VI. THE SIGN OF THE RESURRECTION (Joh 2:19-22)
Although Christ was grieved at the people, He gave them the supreme sign of His Deity. It was a sign, however, which would not be realized until after He had been finally rejected, crucified, and slain. This is what He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
1. The Jews knew not His meaning. Joh 2:20 tells us how the Jews turned to the Lord and said, “Forty and six years was this Temple in building, and wilt Thou rear it up in three days?”
2. His disciples knew not what He spake. They did not question Him, but it was not until Christ was risen from the dead, that they remembered what He said unto them, and they believed His Word.
3. How wonderful His announcement. Joh 2:21 says, “But He spake of the temple of His body.” In Mat 12:1-50, the same sign was given unto the scribes and Pharisees. However, in Matthew it was clothed under the story of Jonah and the whale. To them Christ said, “There shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the Prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Thus it was that upon His resurrection Jesus Christ placed every proof of His authority and power, every proof of His claims that He was God, the Son, and Son of God. When Christ arose from the dead, the Father gave full vindication to the Son. He was not only raised from the dead, but He was exalted and made to sit down at the right hand of the Father. There He was clothed with all authority and with all power.
VII. CHRIST KNEW WHAT WAS IN MEN (Joh 2:23-25)
It was during this time, while He was in Jerusalem at the passover, that many did believe on His Name when they saw the miracles which He did. We read, however, that Christ “did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men, and He needed not that any should testify of man: for He knew what was in man.”
1. Christ knew the true from the false. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. When the people rallied to Him, and desired to come and acclaim Him, He knew that their faith was a faith born through admiration of His miracles. They followed Him, not because He was the Son of God, but because they ate of His loaves and fishes, because they saw in Him the mighty Miracle Worker.
2. Christ knew the meaning of the passover. The very feast itself anticipated His being rejected and crucified of men. No one at the feast anticipated so tragic a death for the One who wrought such miracles, who drove out moneychangers, and sellers of cattle. Jesus Christ, with His foreknowledge and omnipotence, saw those very people who now sought to acclaim Him, surging around the Cross and wagging their heads against Him. He could hear them cry, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him.” Therefore, He did not commit Himself unto them. Even Judas who betrayed Him never deceived the Lord. The disciples knew Him not, but Jesus knew them, and knew what was in them.
3. He knows what is in us. There is not a word on our tongue, a thought in our hearts, which He does not see, nor is there anything that we will ever do, or be, that He does not foresee. Known unto Christ are all of His works from the beginning.
AN ILLUSTRATION
Speaking of the Father’s House, we are reminded of an old pilot who died in Boston, thinking as he died of going to his Heavenly-Home.
He had held the pilot’s commission for nearly seventy-five years, and for almost all that time he was a follower of Jesus Christ, As he was passing away, his face brightened, and he started up with this expression, “I see a light.”
His friends thought his mind was wandering and that he was in imagination on the sea, and they said, “Is it the Highland light?”
He said, “No.”
A moment more, and he repeated the sentence, “I see a light.”
They asked him again, “Is it the Boston light?”
And he answered, “No.”
For the third time he said, “I see a light.”
They said again, “Is it the Minot light?”
“Ah, no,” he said; “It is the light of glory! Let the anchor go!”
And they slipped the anchor, and the old pilot stood before Him who had taken him in His arms and presented him without spot or blemish before His Father, saying, “My Father, every weakness, every failure, every blemish, every sin in all this life, put on Mine account.”
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
2
Jesus went on down to the city that he had adopted as a residence (Mat 4:13), which was not far from Cana where he had performed his first miracle. Note that his brethren and disciples are mentioned in the same sentence, which refutes the Romish theory that the “brethren” of Christ always means his disciples. The doctrine is used to support their un-scriptural notion of the perpetual virginity of His mother.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
THE second miracle which our Lord is recorded to have wrought demands our attention in these verses. Like the first miracle at Cana, it is eminently typical and significant of things yet to come. To attend a marriage feast, and cleanse the temple from profanation were among the first acts of our Lord’s ministry at His first coming. To purify the whole visible Church, and hold a marriage supper, will be amongst His first acts, when He comes again.
We see, for one thing, in this passage, how much Christ disapproves all irreverent behavior in the house of God.
We are told that He drove out of the temple those whom He found selling oxen and sheep and doves within its walls,-that He poured out the changers’ money and overthrew their tables,-and that He said to them that sold doves, “Take these things hence, make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.” On no occasion in our Lord’s earthly ministry do we find Him acting so energetically, and exhibiting such righteous indignation, as on the occasion now before us. Nothing seems to have called from Him such a marked display of holy wrath as the gross irreverence which the priests permitted in the temple, notwithstanding all their boasted zeal for God’s law. Twice, it will be remembered, He discovered the same profanation of His Father’s house going on, within three years, once at the beginning of His ministry and once at the end. Twice we see Him expressing his displeasure in the strongest terms. “The thing is doubled” in order to impress a lesson more strongly on our minds.
The passage is one that ought to raise deep searchings of heart in many quarters. Are there none who profess and call themselves Christians, behaving every Sunday just as badly as these Jews? Are there none who secretly bring into the house of God their money, their lands, their houses, their cattle, and a whole train of worldly affairs? Are there none who bring their bodies only into the place of worship, and allow their hearts to wander into the ends of the earth? Are there none who are “almost in all evil, in the midst of the congregation”? (Pro 5:14.) These are serious questions! Multitudes, it may be feared, could not give them a satisfactory answer. Christian churches and chapels, no doubt, are very unlike the Jewish temple. They are not built after a divine pattern. They have no altars or holy places. Their furniture has no typical meaning. But they are places where God’s word is read, and where Christ is specially present. The man who professes to worship in them should surely behave with reverence and respect. The man who brings his worldly matters with him when he professes to worship, is doing that which is evidently most offensive to Christ. The words which Solomon wrote by the Holy Ghost are applicable to all times, “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God.” (Ecc 5:1.)
We see, for another thing, in this passage, how men may remember words of religious truth long after they are spoken, and may one day see a meaning in them which at first they did not see.
We are told that our Lord said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” John informs us distinctly that “He spake of the temple of His body,” that he referred to His own resurrection. Yet the meaning of the sentence was not understood by our Lord’s disciples at the time that it was spoken. It was not till “He was risen from the dead,” three years after the events here described, that the full significance of the sentence flashed on their hearts. For three years it was a dark and useless saying to them. For three years it lay sleeping in their minds, like a seed in a tomb, and bore no fruit. But at the end of that time the darkness passed away. They saw the application of their Master’s words, and as they saw it were confirmed in their faith. “They remembered that He had said this,” and as they remembered “they believed.”
It is a comfortable and cheering thought, that the same kind of thing that happened to the disciples is often going on at the present day. The sermons that are preached to apparently heedless ears in churches, are not all lost and thrown away. The instruction that is given in schools and pastoral visits, is not all wasted and forgotten. The texts that are taught by parents to children are not all taught in vain. There is often a resurrection of sermons, and texts, and instruction, after an interval of many years. The good seed sometimes springs up after he that sowed it has been long dead and gone. Let preachers go on preaching, and teachers go on teaching, and parents go on training up children in the way they should go. Let them sow the good seed of Bible truth in faith and patience. Their labor is not in vain in the Lord. Their words are remembered far more than they think, and will yet spring up “after many days.” (1Co 15:58; Ecc 11:1.)
We see, lastly, in this passage, how perfect is our Lord Jesus Christ’s knowledge of the human heart.
We are told that when our Lord was at Jerusalem, the first time, He “did not commit Himself” to those who professed belief in Him. He knew that they were not to be depended on. They were astonished at the miracles which they saw Him work. They were even intellectually convinced that He was the Messiah, whom they had long expected. But they were not “disciples indeed.” (Joh 8:31.) They were not converted, and true believers. Their hearts were not right in the sight of God, though their feelings were excited. Their inward man was not renewed, whatever they might profess with their lips. Our Lord knew that nearly all of them were stony-ground hearers. (Luk 8:13.) As soon as tribulation or persecution arose because of the word, their so-called faith would probably wither away and come to an end. All this our Lord saw clearly, if others around Him did not. Andrew, and Peter, and John, and Philip, and Nathanael, perhaps wondered that their Master did not receive these seeming believers with open arms. But they could only judge things by the outward appearance. Their Master could read hearts. “He knew what was in man.”
The truth now before us, is one which ought to make hypocrites and false professors tremble. They may deceive men, but they cannot deceive Christ. They may wear a cloak of religion, and appear, like whited sepulchers, beautiful in the eyes of men. But the eyes of Christ see their inward rottenness, and the judgment of Christ will surely overtake them, except they repent. Christ is already reading their hearts, and as He reads He is displeased. They are known in heaven, if they are not known on earth, and they will be known at length to their shame, before assembled worlds, if they die unchanged. It is written, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” (Rev 3:1.)
But the truth before us has two sides, like the pillar of cloud and fire at the Red sea. (Exo 14:20.) If it looks darkly on hypocrites, it looks brightly on true believers. If it threatens wrath to false professors, it speaks peace to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. A real Christian may be weak, but he is true. One thing, at any rate, the servant of Christ can say, when cast down by a sense of his own infirmity, or pained by the slander of a lying world. He can say, “Lord, I am a poor sinner, but I am in earnest, I am true. Thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. Thou knowest all hearts, and thou knowest that, weak as my heart is, it is a heart that cleaves to thee.” The false Christian shrinks from the eye of an all-seeing Savior. The true Christian desires his Lord’s eye to be on him morning, noon, and night. He has nothing to hide.
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Notes-
v12.-[He went down to Capernaum.] The strict accuracy of John’s writing is note-worthy here. Cana was a village in the hill country. Capernaum was a town on the shore of the lake of Galilee, at a very much lower level than Cana. It is therefore said that Jesus “went down.”
Capernaum appears to have been our Lord’s principal residence in Galilee during his earthly ministry. “Leaving Nazareth, he dwelt in Capernaum.” (Mat 4:13.) At no place does He seem to have worked so many miracles; and on no place does He denounce so severe a judgment for its impenitence and neglect of privileges: “Thou Capernaum which art exalted to heaven shalt be cast down to hell.” (Mat 11:23.) It is a striking fact that though Capernaum was a wealthy and important place in our Lord’s time, it has so entirely passed away and been “cast down,” that even its situation has never been clearly ascertained.
[His mother.] Here again we see no mention of Joseph. Whether Mary was a constant companion of our Lord throughout His earthly ministry, may be doubted. We see her here. We see her again at the crucifixion. But we see her in another place “standing without and desiring to speak with him” when He was talking to the people, and giving occasion to the solemn saying, “Who is my mother?” (Mat 12:48.) Indeed there is no proof that Mary ever saw more clearly than the rest of our Lord’s disciples the whole purpose of Christ’s advent, or was at all more prepared than the rest for His crucifixion and sufferings.
[His Brethren.] There is no good ground for supposing that these were our Lord’s brethren according to the flesh, and that Mary ever had any other son after our Lord’s miraculous birth.-For one thing, it is well known to every careful reader, that the word “brethren” is applied in the Bible to many relatives besides those whom we call “brethren.” Abraham says to Lot, “We be brethren,” (Gen 13:8,) though Lot was his nephew. Mishael and Elzaphan were called the “brethren” of Nadab and Abihu, though they were only cousins. (Lev 10:4.)-Jacob said “to his brethren” gather stones (Gen 31:46); yet they were his sons and servants.-For another thing, it is quite possible that Joseph might have had children by a former marriage, before he was espoused to Mary; and these children, we can well understand, would be called our Lord’s “brethren.”-In the last place, we know that the Apostle James was called our “Lord’s brother,” (Gal 1:19,) and yet we are distinctly told that he was the son of Alpheus or Cleophas, the husband of the virgin Mary’s sister. It is therefore most probable that “brethren” in the verse before us means “cousins,” some of whom believed on our Lord, though others did not. (Joh 7:5.)
It is an interesting fact, that two at least of our Lord’s apostles were His kinsmen according to the flesh, viz., James and Jude, the sons of Alpheus. To them we may probably add Simon, on the strength of Mar 6:3, and perhaps Matthew also, on the strength of Mar 2:14 and Mat 9:9.
[And his disciples.] This expression, being used after the words “His brethren,” may raise a doubt whether any of our Lord’s relatives as yet believed on Him, except Mary. It is possible that they only followed Him now out of curiosity, in consequence of the miracle he had just wrought.
v13.-[The Jews’ passover…at hand.] This expression is another proof that John wrote his Gospel for Gentile believers rather than for Jews.
Our Lord’s regular attendance on the feasts and ordinances of the law of Moses, deserves notice. So long as the dispensation of the Old Testament lasted, He gave it all due honour, however unworthy the hands which administered it. The unworthiness of ministers will not justify us in neglecting God’s ordinances.
The exact number of Passovers which our Lord kept, and consequently the exact length of His ministry from His baptism to His crucifixion, are points on which there is much difference of opinion. For myself I can see no better view than the old one, that our Lord’s ministry lasted three years. It evidently began shortly before a Passover, and ended with a Passover. But whether it included only three Passovers, and in that case lasted between two and three years,-or four Passovers, and in that case lasted between three and four years,-I think we have no materials for deciding positively. If I must venture an opinion, I think it most likely that our Lord only kept three Passovers.-But it is an open question, and one happily not of deep moment.-Three Passovers are distinctly named by John, viz., the one before us, the one in the sixth chapter, (Joh 6:3-4,) and the one at which our Lord was crucified. If the “feast” mentioned in the fifth chapter (Joh 5:1,) was the Passover, our Lord kept four Passovers. But this last point cannot be settled.
Sir Isaac Newton thought that our Lord kept no less than five Passovers. Some few writers have maintained that He kept only two. Those who wish to see the subject discussed will find it in Doddridge’s notes on this place.
[Jesus went up to Jerusalem.] Let it be noted, that this journey, and all the circumstances which attended this visit to Jerusalem, are only related by John. For some wise reason the other three Gospel writers were inspired to leave out this part of our Lord’s history.
v14.-[Found in the temple those that sold, &c.] The presence of oxen, sheep, doves, and money-changers, within the temple courts, is easily accounted for. The animals were intended to supply the wants of Jews who came to the Passover and other feasts, from distant places, and required sacrifices. For them the dealers in oxen, sheep, and doves, were ready, within a few yards of the altar. The changers of money came naturally enough where buying and selling went on, to meet the convenience of Jews who had nothing but foreign money, which they wished to exchange for the current coin of Jerusalem. The tendency of the whole custom was evidently most profane. It was no doubt connived at by the priests from covetous motives. They were either connected with those who sold animals and changed money, and shared in their profits; or else they received a rent for the privilege of carrying on business within the sacred walls. No doubt they would have pleaded that all was done with a good intention! Their end was to provide facilities for worshipping God! But good intentions cannot sanctify unscriptural actions. As Dyke says on the passage, “No pretence of good ends can justify that which is forbidden by God.”
When we are told that our Lord found all this going on “in the temple,” we must of course understand that it means “in the courtyards surrounding the temple,-within the precincts of the temple.” But these courtyards, we must remember, were regarded as part of the temple, and therefore holy ground.
I am inclined to see in this visit of our Lord to the temple at His first appearance in Jerusalem after beginning His ministry, a partial though very imperfect fulfilment of Malachi’s prophecy: “The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple.” (Mal 3:1.) While the Jewish nation was expecting the appearance of a conquering Messiah with power and great glory, the true Messiah suddenly appeared in the temple, and declared His presence, not by exhibiting temporal power, but by insisting on greater purity in the temple worship, as the first thing which the nation needed.
That a fuller and more complete accomplishment of Malachi’s words remains yet to come, I feel no doubt. But like many Old Testament prophecies about Messiah, the words were purposely intended to have a double fulfilment,-a partial one at Messiah’s first coming to suffer, a complete one at Messiah’s second coming to reign.
The great majority of the best commentators hold that our Lord cast out the buyers and sellers from the temple twice, once at the beginning of His ministry and once at the end.-It is fair to say that Bishop Pearce and a few other writers think that it only happened once,-at the end of His ministry, just before His crucifixion. But the arguments in favor of this view do not appear to me at all weighty or satisfactory.
v15.-[Made a scourge of small cords.] The Greek word translated “small cords,” means literally a “cord made of rushes.” Some have thought that these rushes were used as litter for the sheep and oxen. Others have thought that such small cords as these might very likely have been lying about, after having been used for tying up the oxen. Whether the scourge was applied to those persons who brought the animals into the temple, as a sort of chastisement, as some old painters have represented the scene, we do not know. The more probable view seems to be, that the scourge was simply meant to assist our Lord in speedily ejecting the sheep and oxen.
The whole transaction is a remarkable one, as exhibiting our Lord using more physical exertion, and energetic bodily action, than we see Him using at any other period of His ministry. A word, a touch, or the reaching forth of a hand, are the ordinary limits of His actions. Here we see Him doing no less than four things: (1) Making the scourge;-(2) Driving out the animals;-(3) Pouring out on the ground the changers’ money; (4) Overthrowing the tables. On no occasion do we find Him showing such strong outward marks of indignation, as at the sight of the profanation of the temple. Remembering that the whole transaction is a striking type of what Christ will do to His visible church at His second coming, we may get some idea of the deep meaning of that remarkable expression, “The wrath of the Lamb.” (Rev 6:16.)
A remark of Dyke on our Lord’s conduct in this place, is worth noticing. “This act of Christ is not to be drawn into imitation, because He did it as Lord of the temple by virtue of His Sonship. Therefore the Papists grossly abuse this place that hence gather the power of the Pope to punish offenders even with corporal punishments, or to deprive princes of their kingdoms. As for ministers, the only whip they may use is their tongue, in powerful preaching against abuses.-As for private persons, God hath not tied their tongues, though He hath their hands. As occasion is offered, they may show their detestation and dislike of corruption.”
v16.-[Said….sold doves….take these things hence.] The distinction between our Lord’s mode of dealing with each of the objects of His displeasure deserves notice. The oxen and sheep He drove out. There was no danger of their being lost by such treatment.-The money He threw on the ground. It might be soon picked up and carried away.-The doves He simply ordered to be taken away. Had He done more, they might have flown away, and been completely lost to their owners.-It would have been well for the church, if all church reformers had blended like wisdom with a like zeal in their proceedings. In the present instance all were rebuked and all instructed. But no one was really injured, and nothing was lost.
[My Father’s house.] This expression is note-worthy. Whether the Jews observed it, in the hurry and confusion of the whole transaction, may be questioned. It was evidently an assertion by our Lord of His divine Sonship, and consequently of his right to vindicate the purity of His Father’s place of worship. On another occasion when our Lord called God His Father, the Jews at once said that He “made himself equal with God.” (Joh 5:18.) Some have thought that the expression is parallel to that used in the description of Christ among the doctors, (Luk 2:49,) and that the words used there, “I must be about my Father’s business,” would have been better rendered, “I must be in my Father’s house.”
The fact that the profane custom which our Lord here reproved was resumed by the Jews, and that two or three years afterward our Lord found the same thing going on again in the temple, and again cast out the buyers and sellers, ought not to be overlooked. It is a striking proof of the desperate wickedness and fallen condition of the priests and rulers of the temple. They were deaf to all counsel and reproof, and given over to a reprobate mind.-The difference between our Lord’s language at the second visit and that used at the first, ought also to be noticed. At the first visit He only says, “Make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise,” a place of buying and selling. At the second visit He says, “Ye have made it a den of thieves.” (Mat 21:13.) The more wicked and hardened men are, the louder must be our protest, and the sharper our rebuke.
[A house of merchandise.] Musculus remarks on this expression, that if the sale of animals for sacrifices called forth Christ’s displeasure, much more must He be displeased at what goes on continually in Roman Catholic Churches. The sale of masses, indulgences, &c., must be far more offensive to Christ than the sale of oxen and sheep.
The complete success of our Lord on this occasion, and the absence of the slightest opposition on the part of the Jews, deserve notice. It is a fact that induced some of the Fathers to call this the greatest miracle Christ ever worked. There are however three things to be remembered in considering this matter. For one thing, the conscience of the Jews was on our Lord’s side. They knew that He was right and they were wrong. For another thing, as a nation familiar with the history of the Old “Testament Prophets, they would not be surprised at an individual apparently under a divine impulse suddenly doing what our Lord did.-Above all there can be little doubt that a divine influence was brought to bear on all present, as it was when our Lord rode into Jerusalem on an ass, and when He caused His enemies in the garden to “go backward and fall to the ground.” (Mat 21:9-10; Joh 18:6.) Here, as on other occasions, our Lord showed His disciples that He had complete power over all wills and minds, when He thought fit to exercise it; and that when He was rejected and disobeyed by the Jews, it was not because He had no power to compel obedience. They had no power against Him except when He permitted.
The allegorical meanings assigned to the sheep, oxen, and doves, by Augustine, Origen, and Bede, are too absurd to be quoted. They may be seen in the Catena of Aquinas. Origen sees in the casting out of the animals, a type of the dissolution of the Jewish dispensation with its offerings and sacrifices.
Beza sees a peculiar fitness in our Lord’s action of purifying the temple. It became Him who was to be our Prophet, Priest, and King, to exhibit the same zeal for the purity of God’s house that was formerly exhibited by such men as the Prophet Isaiah, the priest Jehoiada, and the kings Hezekiah and Josiah. (2Ch 24:6.)
v17.-[His disciples remembered, &c.] These words certainly appear to mean that our Lord’s disciples “remembered” the text which is here quoted, at the very time when our Lord was casting out the buyers and sellers. It occurred to their minds as a striking illustration of the spirit which their divine Master was exhibiting. He was completely absorbed for the moment in zeal for the purity of God’s house. It is one among many proofs of the familiarity of the poor and unlearned Jews with the Old Testament Scriptures. Whether, however, the disciples regarded the Psalm, of which they remembered this verse, as applicable to the Messiah, may be reasonably doubted.
[The zeal of thine house….eaten me.] The 69th Psalm, from which this text is taken, is quoted no less than seven times in the New Testament, as the utterance of Messiah. In the first twenty-one verses of the Psalm the Messiah’s sufferings are related by Himself. The fifth verse is undoubtedly very remarkable as coming from Messiah’s lips, when He speaks of “my foolishness” and “my sins.” Ainsworth says it means, “false-imputation of sins.” “Thou knowest if there be any such as my foes charge me with.” Bonar says much the same.
The text before us shows that it is sometimes justifiable to be entirely absorbed and eaten up, so to speak, by zeal for some object in which God’s glory is concerned. Moses, Phineas, and Paul at Athens, are examples of such zeal. (Exo 32:19; Num 25:11; Act 17:16.)
Augustine remarks on this text, “Let the zeal of the house of God ever eat thee.-For example: Seest thou a brother running to the theatre? stop him, warn him, be grieved for him, if the zeal of God’s house hath now eaten thee.-Seest thou others running and wanting to drink themselves drunk? Stop whom thou canst, hold whom thou canst, frighten whom thou canst; whom thou canst, win in gentleness; do not in any wise sit still and do nothing.”
v18.-[Then answered the Jews and said.] Doddridge remarks here that these Jews were probably the rulers, because the Great Assembly, or Sanhedrim, sat in the temple, and our Lord’s actions would undoubtedly come to their knowledge without delay. This makes the question and answer which follow the more important.
[What sign showest thou….doest these things.] This question of the Jews shows us that they admitted the lawfulness of a man doing such things as our Lord had done, if he could prove that he had a divine commission. He had suddenly taken upon Himself a great and independent authority. Though neither a priest nor a Levite, He had virtually interfered with the management of the temple courts. Let Him now show that He was a prophet, like Elijah or Amos, and they would concede He had a warrant for His conduct.
v19.-[Jesus answered….destroy this temple.] The meaning of this remarkable expression is either hypothetical or prophetical. It must either be rendered, “Supposing you destroy this temple,” or “Ye will destroy this temple,”-“If ye kill my body,” or “When ye shall kill my body.”-It is of course absurd to suppose that our Lord literally commanded the Jews to destroy Him. The use of the imperative instead of the future, must surely be familiar to every Bible reader. See especially the 109th Psalm. In the present case it is truly astonishing that any one can see difficulty in our Lord’s expression. He only used a mode of speaking which is in common use among ourselves. If a lawyer said to his client in a consultation, “Take such a step, and you will be ruined,” we all know that he would not be commanding his client to take the step. He would only mean, “If you do take such a step.”-A similar form of language may be seen in our Lord’s words, “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers,” addressed to the Pharisees. (Mat 23:32.) No one would say that our Lord commanded the Pharisees to do this. It is a prophecy.-So also, “Make the tree good,” (Mat 12:33,) is not so much a command as an hypothesis. See also Isa 8:9-10.
[In three days I will raise it up.] This is a prophecy of our Lord’s resurrection. But it is a very remarkable one, from the fact that our Lord distinctly asserts His own power to raise Himself up. It is like the expression, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again.” (Joh 10:18.) Both the expressions deserve particular notice, because many now-a-days assert that our Lord’s resurrection was owing to the operation of God the Father and of God the Holy Ghost, and that He did not rise by His own power. This is a dangerous heresy. That the Father and the Holy Ghost co-operated in the resurrection of our Lord’s body there can be no doubt. It is clearly taught in many places. But to say that our Lord did not raise his own body, is to contradict the text before us, and the other which has been already quoted.
Hurrion, quoted by Ford, observes, “The efficient cause of Christ’s resurrection was the infinite power of God, which being common to all the Persons in the blessed Trinity, the resurrection is sometimes ascribed to the Father, sometimes to the Son, and sometimes to the Holy Ghost. Christ’s being raised by the Father and the Spirit is not inconsistent with His raising Himself; for ‘what things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son,’ (Joh 5:19,) for being one in nature, they are also one in operation.”
The questions naturally arise in many minds, Why did Jesus not work some miracle at once, as a sign, to convince the Jews? Why did He not at once proclaim Himself the Messiah? Why did he give the Jews so dark and mysterious a reply as the one before us?-The answer to these questions is this. For one thing we must remark, it was a leading principle in our Lord’s dealings with men, not to force conviction on them, but to speak to them according to what He saw was the state of their hearts. He answered fools according to their folly. (Pro 26:5.) If He had given the Jews a more direct reply, He knew that it would have brought His ministry to an abrupt end, and would have led to His being cut off before the time.-For another thing, we must remember, that however dark our Lord’s saying seemed when it was spoken, it did in effect tell the Jews of the greatest and most important sign which could be given them as a proof of His Messiahship. It told them of His future resurrection. It was equivalent to saying, “You ask me for a sign, and I will give you one. I will rise again from the dead the third day after my crucifixion. If I do not so rise from the dead, you need not believe that I am the Messiah. But if I do so rise, you will be without excuse if you do not believe on me.” In effect our Lord staked the truth of His mission on His resurrection. He did the same when He said that He would give the Jewish nation no sign but that of the prophet Jonas. (Mat 12:39.) When the apostles began to preach, they continually referred the Jews to Christ’s resurrection as the proof of His Messiahship. And why did they do so? One main reason was, because their Master had told the Jews, the first time He appeared in the temple, that the great sign they must look to was His own rising again from the dead.
v20.-[Then said….Jews, forty and six years, &c.] This expression has given rise to some difference of opinion. The temple to which the Jews refer, cannot of course be the temple built by Solomon. That temple was completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.-Nor yet does it seem likely to have been the temple built by Zerubbabel and his companions, after the return from Babylon. There is no sufficiently clear proof that this temple was forty and six years building.-By far the most probable view is, that the temple spoken of is the one repaired, or rather re-built by Herod, and that the forty-six years here mentioned mean the time during which these repairs were going on, and that the entire completion of them had not been effected up to our Lord’s time. These repairs, according to Josephus, had been going on exactly forty-six years when our Lord visited the temple. They were so extensive and costly, that eighteen thousand workmen were employed about them, and they amounted to a re-building. Moreover, the minds of the Jews would probably be full of them at this particular time, because they were of recent date, if not going on at that very time. The Greek words might fairly be rendered, “Forty and six years has this temple been building.”-They denote a time, as Whitby remarks, not perfectly past.
If any one desires to see an instance of the extravagant lengths into which a good man may be led, in following the allegorical system of interpreting Scripture, he will do well to read Augustine’s allegorical explanation of the forty and six years. It is far too absurd to be worth inserting here.
[Wilt thou rear it up in three days?] This question implies three things,-a sneer, astonishment, and incredulity. There is probably an emphasis meant to be laid on the word “thou.” Such an one as thou! Wilt thou do it?
That this saying of our Lord, nevertheless, was not thrown away and forgotten, but stuck in the minds of the Jews, though they did not understand it, is strikingly proved by two facts.- One is, that the false witnesses brought it forward, though in a garbled form, when our Lord was arraigned before the high priests.-The other is, that the Jews taunted Him with it when He hung on the cross. (Mat 26:61; Mat 27:40.)
v21.-[But he spake….temple….body.] This verse is an instance of John’s habit of making explanatory comments in his Gospel as he goes on, in order to make things clear to his Gentile readers. Let it be noted, that as our Lord calls His own body a “temple,” so also the bodies of His believing people are called “the temple of the Holy Ghost.” (1Co 6:19.) If it was wrong to defile and profane the temple made of stone and wood, how much more is it wrong to defile by sin the temple of our bodies! Paul and Peter both call our bodies our “tabernacle.” (2Co 5:1; 2Pe 1:13.)
v22.-[When…risen….dead….disciples remembered.] This sentence is an interesting proof of two things. For one thing, it shows how much light was brought to the minds of the disciples by our Lord’s resurrection, and how many hard sayings of His were at once unravelled and made plain.-For another thing, it shows how long truth may lie dormant in men’s minds without being understood, or doing them any service. It is one of the special offices of the Holy Ghost to bring things to remembrance. (Joh 14:26.) We must not suppose religious teaching does no good, because it is not understood immediately. It may do good long after the teacher is dead.
[They believed the Scripture.] What Scripture does this mean? It cannot, of course, be our Lord’s saying. What our Lord said is specially added, as something beside the Scripture, which the disciples “believed.”-Nor yet does it seem likely that it means any particular text in the Old Testament about the resurrection. I incline to the opinion, that it means generally the whole testimony of Scripture to our Lord’s claim to be received as the Messiah. When Jesus rose from the dead, the disciples were fully convinced that the Scripture about the Messiah was fulfilled in their Master.
The expression “believed” cannot mean that the disciples then believed for the first time. As in other places, it signifies that they believed fully, and without any more doubt and hesitation. The same may be said of Joh 14:1.
v23.-[Many believed.] These persons do not appear to have really believed with the heart, but to have been only convinced in their understandings. The distinction between intellectual belief and saving belief, and between one degree of saving belief and another, ought to be carefully noticed in Scripture. There is a faith which devils have, and a faith which is the gift of God. The persons mentioned in this verse had the former, but not the latter. So also we are told that Simon Magus “believed.” (Act 8:13.) Again, there is a real heart-belief which a man may have that admits of great increase. This is the belief spoken of in the preceding verse.
[When they saw the miracles.] This expression shows us that there were many miracles worked by our Lord which are nowhere recorded in Scripture. John himself tells us so twice over. (Joh 20:30; Joh 21:25.) Nicodemus refers to these miracles in the beginning of the following chapter. (Joh 3:2.) If it had been good for us to know anything about these miracles, they would no doubt have been recorded. But it is well to remember that there were such miracles, in order that we may rightly understand the unbelief and hardness of the Jews a Jerusalem. The miracles which are related as having been worked in or near Jerusalem, we must remember, are by no means all that our Lord worked there.
v24.-[Did not commit himself.] The Greek word so rendered means literally “Did not trust himself.” It is the same verb that is generally rendered “believe.”
[He knew all men.] This is a direct assertion of our Lord’s divine omniscience. As God He knew all mankind, and these seeming believers among others. As God, He knew that their hearts were like the stony ground in the parable, and their faith only temporary.
Melancthon makes some very wise remarks on this verse, as to the example which our Lord sets us here of caution in dealing with strangers. It is a melancholy fact, which the experience of years always confirms, that we must not trust implicitly to appearances of kindness, or be ready to open our hearts to every one as a friend, upon short acquaintance. The man who does not hastily contract intimacies, may be thought cold and distant by some; but in the long run of life he will escape many sorrows. It is a wise saying, that a man ought to be friendly with all, but intimate with few.
v25.-[Needed not…testify of man.] These words mean that our Lord had no need of any one’s testimony “about man.” He required no information from others about the real character of those who professed faith in Him.
[He knew what was in man.] This means that our Lord, as God, possessed a perfect knowledge of man’s inner nature, and was a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. We should remember Solomon’s words in his prayer, “Thou only knowest the hearts of all the children of men.” (1Ki 8:39.)
The immense difference between our Lord and all ministers of His Gospel appears strikingly in this verse. Ministers are constantly deceived in their estimate of people. Christ never was, and never could be. When He allowed Judas Iscariot to be a disciple, He was perfectly acquainted with his character.
Wordsworth observes that the two last verses of this chapter “afford an instance of the peculiar manner in which the Holy Spirit, in John’s Gospel, pronounces judgment on things and persons. Compare Joh 6:64, Joh 6:71; Joh 7:39; Joh 8:27; Joh 12:33, Joh 12:37; Joh 13:11; Joh 21:17.”
In leaving the whole passage, I cannot help remarking what a faithful picture of human nature it exhibits, and how many are the ways in which human corruption and infirmity show themselves. Within the space of a few verses we find some openly profaning God’s temple for the sake of gain,-some angrily demanding a sign of Him who shows zeal for purity,-some professing a false faith,-and some few only believing, but even these believing with a weak, unintelligent faith. It is the state of things which exists everywhere and always.
Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels
Joh 2:12. After this he went down to Capernaum. Nazareth, not Cana, would appear to be the place from which Jesus went down (from the hill-country of Galilee,comp. chap. Joh 4:47; Joh 4:49; Joh 4:51) to Capernaum, for His brethren, who are not said to have been with Him in Cana, are now of the company. All that can be said with certainty as to the position of Capernaum is, that it was situated on the western coast of the Lake of Gennesaret, not far from the northern end of the lake; whether the present Tell Hum or (less probably) Khan Minyeh be the site, we cannot here inquire (see note on Mat 4:13). We have here the earliest appearance of this busy and thriving Galilean town in the history of our Lords life. The visit related in Mat 4:13 and Luk 4:31 belongs to a later period than this, a period subsequent to the imprisonment of John the Baptist (see chap. Joh 3:22). Lukes narrative, however (chap. Joh 4:23), contains an allusion to earlier miracles in Capernaum. Whether reference is made to this particular visit (which, through the nearness of the passover, was of short duration) or not, it is interesting to note that the two Evangelists agree in recording a residence of Jesus in this town earlier than that brought into prominence in Mat 4:13. In the Fourth Gospel Capernaum occupies a very subordinate place; the centre of the Judean ministry was Jerusalem.
He, and his mother and brethren, and his disciples. In his usual manner John divides the company into three groups, naming separately Jesus, His relations by natural kindred, His disciples. The brethren of Jesus were James, Joses (or Joseph), Simon, and Judas (Mat 13:55; Mar 6:3). In what sense they are called brethren, whether as the sons of Joseph and Mary, as sons of Joseph by an earlier marriage, or as sons of Marys sister (brother taking the meaning of near kinsman), has been a subject of controversy from the third century to the present day. It is impossible to discuss the question within our limits, though something further must be said when we come to later chapters (7, 19). Here we can only express a very decided conviction that the last mentioned of the three opinions is without foundation, and that the brethren were sons of Joseph, their mother being either Mary herself or, more probably, an earlier wife of Joseph (comp. note on Mat 13:58). This verse alone might suggest that the brethren were not disciples, and from chap. Joh 7:5 we know that they were not.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, 1. How obedient in all things Christ was to the ceremonial law. he was not naturally subject to the law, but, to fulfil all righteousness, he kept the passover yearly, according to the command of God, That all the males should appear before him Exo 23:17 in the temple at Jerusalem.
Hence it is probably concluded, that Christ came up to the passover continually during his private life; and being now come up to Jerusalem to this first passover after his baptism, and solemn entrance upon his office, his first walk was to purge and reform it from abuses, not to ruin and destroy it, because it had been abused.
Now the abuse and profanation of the temple at that time was this: in the outward court of the Gentiles, there was a public mart or market, where were sold oxen, sheep, and doves, for sacrifice; which otherwise the people, with great labour and trouble, must have brought up along with them for sacrifice. Therefore as a pretended ease to the people, the priests ordered these things to be sold hard by the altar; the intention was commendable, but the action not justifiable. No pretence of good ends can justify that which is forbidden of God: a good end can never justify an irregular action.
Observe, 2. Our Saviour’s fervent zeal in purging and reforming his Father’s house. The sight of sin in any persons, but especially in and among professors, ought to kindle in our hearts (as it did here in Christ’s breast) a burning zeal and indignation against it. Yet was not Christ’s zeal so warm as to devote the temple to destruction, because of its abuse and profanation. Places dedicated to the worship and service of God, if idolatrously abused, must not be pulled down, but purged; not ruined, but reformed.
There is a special reverence due to the house of God, but for the Owner’s sake, and the service’s sake. Nothing but holiness becomes that place, where God is worshipped in the beauty of holiness. Christ by purging the court of the Gentiles from merchandise, not unlawful in itself, but necessary for the sacrifices which were offered in the temple, though not necessary to be brought there, did plainly insinuate, that a distinction is to be made betwixt places sacred and profane; and that what may be done as well elsewhere, ought not to be done in the house of God, the place appointed immediately for his worship.
Observe, 3. The greatness of this miracle, in the weakness of the means which Christ made use of to effect and work it: he drove the buyers and sellers before him out of the temple.
But how and with what?
St. Jerome, in Mat 21:1 and following says , That certain fiery rays or beams, darting from Christ’s eyes, drove out these merchants from this place. I dare not avouch this, but I am satisfied that Christ drove them out, unarmed with any weapons that might carry dread and terror with them, at most but with a whip of small cords; which probably might be scattered by the drovers that came thither to sell their cattle.
Behold then the weakness of the means on the one side, and consider the greatness of the opposition on the other. Here was a confluence of people to oppose Christ, this being the most solemn mart of the passover, and here were merchantmen, whose hearts were set upon gain (the world’s god) to oppose him. But neither the weakness of the means, nor the greatness of the opposition, did dismay him, or cause our Saviour to desist from the attempt of reforming what was amiss in the house of God.
Learn we hence, that it matters not how weak the means of the church-reformation is, nor how strong the opposing power is; if we engage Christ in the undertaking, the work shall certainly be accomplished.
O, how great was the work, and how weak and unlikely were the means here! a parcel of sturdy fellows, whose hearts were set upon their wealth, Christ no sooner speaks to them, and shakes his whip at them, but like a company of fearful hares they run before him. Christ, in purging of his church, will make every thing yield and give way to his power. Let it comfort the church under all unlikelihood of reformation. Who art thou, O great mountain? before our spiritual Zerubbabel, thou shalt become a plain.
I shall close my observations upon this miracle of Christ’s whipping the buyers and sellers out of the temple, which both Origen and St. Jerome do make the greatest miracle that ever Christ wrought, all circumstances considered; I shall close it with this reflection, viz. Was there such power and terror in Christ’s countenance and speech here in the temple in the days of his flesh? Oh, how terrible then will his face and his appearance be to the wicked and impenitent world at the great day! Lord! how fearful will his iron courage then be; how terrifying that voice, “Depart, depart from me, depart accursed, depart into fire: depart into everlasting fire, into a fire prepared for the punishment of apostate spirits, the devil and his angels!” God grant we may wisely consider it, and timely flee from the wrath to come.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Joh 2:12-13. After this he went down to Capernaum A city that lay near the north part of the sea of Galilee, and on the south border of the land of Naphthali. See note on Mat 4:13. Here Christ and his disciples continued but a short time, the passover of the Jews being at hand, which Jesus, who was made under the law, and maintained a religious regard to its ceremonial, as well as its moral precepts, would not neglect attending: thus teaching us by his example a strict observance of all divine institutions, and a diligent attendance on religious assemblies. As the evangelists have not informed us how many passovers happened between the baptism and death of Christ, or during the course of his public ministry, learned men have been much divided in their opinions on the subject. But by far the greater part have supposed there were four, reckoning this the first; the feast mentioned Joh 5:1, the second; the passover spoken of Joh 6:4, as the third; and that at which Christ suffered, the fourth. But there are others of a different opinion. The celebrated Sir Isaac Newton reckons five; the first, this which is now before us; the second, according to him, happened four months after Christs discourse with the woman of Samaria, Joh 4:35; the third, a few days before the story of the disciples rubbing the ears of corn, Luk 6:1; the fourth, a little after the feeding of the five thousand; and the last, at the time of our Lords crucifixion.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Second Cycle: 2:12-4:54.
This second cycle is naturally divided into three sections:
1. The ministry of Jesus in Judea, Joh 2:12 to Joh 3:36;
2. The return through Samaria: Joh 4:1-42;
3. The settling in Galilee, Joh 4:43-54.
We shall see that to these three geographical domains three very different moral situations correspond. Hence the varied manner in which Jesus reveals Himself and the different reception which he meets.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
XXIII.
JESUS’ FIRST RESIDENCE AT CAPERNAUM.
dJOHN II. 12.
d12 After this he went down to Capernaum [The site of Capernaum is generally conceded to be marked by the ruins now called Tel-Hum. Jesus is said to have gone “down” because Cana is among the hills, and Capernaum was by the Lake of Galilee, about six hundred feet below sea level], he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples [There is much dispute as to what the New Testament writers mean by the phrase the “brethren of the Lord.” This phrase, found in any other than a Jewish book, would be taken to mean either the full or half brothers of Jesus, and it has probably that meaning here. The Catholic Church, contending for the perpetual virginity of our Lord’s mother, has argued that his brethren were either the sons of Joseph by a former marriage, or that they were sons of Alphus (also called Clopas) and a sister of our Lord’s mother, who, like her, was also called Mary ( Joh 19:25). This latter view is based upon the fact that two of the sons of Alphus bear the same names as those borne by two of our Lord’s brethren, which is far more conclusive, since the names James and Judas were extremely common. Moreover, we learn from Joh 7:5, that the Lord’s brethren did not believe on him, and [119] harmonists place the time of this unbelief late in our Lord’s ministry, when the sons of Alphus were not only believers, but some of them even apostles. Our Lord’s brethren are mentioned nine times in the New Testament, and a study of these references will give us some light. Three of them, viz.: Joh 7:3, Joh 7:5, Joh 7:10, 1Co 9:5, Gal 1:19, are rather noncommittal. The other six ( Mat 12:46, Mat 13:55, Mar 3:32, Mar 6:3, Luk 8:19, Luk 8:20, Joh 2:12) speak of his brethren in connection with his mother, and strongly indicate that Jesus was the first-born son of Mary, and that she had at least four other sons, besides daughters. These brethren of Jesus are constantly represented as attending his mother, without a hint that they were not her children. Against this conclusion there is but one argument which has any force; namely, that our Lord committed his mother into the keeping of the apostle John, rather than to his brethren ( Joh 19:25-27), but this fact may be easily accounted for. Many mothers are but scantily and grudgingly supported by their sons]; and there they abode not many days. [Because the passover was at hand, and he went up to Jerusalem. This notice of the brief sojourn of Jesus at Capernaum throws light on several things: 1. It shows where Jesus spent most of his time between his baptism and the first passover. 2. It helps to explain how the nobleman, who afterwards sought him at Cana, became acquainted with him. 3. It prepares us to look for his first visit to Nazareth at a later period. 4. It also explains why Jesus sought Capernaum as his place of residence after leaving Nazareth. Moreover, it shows that the natural ties of kindred were not immediately snapped by Christ. Until he went up to the first passover, he abode with his mother and his brethren.] [120]
[FFG 119-120]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Verse 12
Capernaum; a large town upon the shores of the Lake of Galilee.–His brethren. This expression is used to designate some near relatives of Jesus, particularly James the Less and Joses.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
2:12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his {f} brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days.
(f) That is, his cousins.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. Jesus’ initial stay in Capernaum 2:12
Sometime after the miracle just narrated, Jesus went down topographically from Cana to Capernaum. Cana was on a higher elevation than Capernaum, though Capernaum was about 13 miles northeast of Cana. Some family members (cf. Mat 12:46; Mar 6:3) and Jesus’ disciples accompanied Him. Jesus had physical brothers. The idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity first appeared in the second century. Evidently this was only for a short stay since John wrote that they stayed a few days. Jesus adopted Capernaum as His ministry base in Galilee and moved there from Nazareth (Mat 4:13; Mar 1:21; Mar 2:1). That may have happened now, or it may have taken place after this event. The purpose of this verse in John’s narrative is transitional.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 6
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE.
After this He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples: and there they abode not many days. And the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and He made a scourge of cords, and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the changers money, and overthrew their tables; and to them that sold the doves He said, Take these things hence; make not My Fathers house a house of merchandise. His disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of Thine house shall eat me up. The Jews therefore answered and said unto Him, What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews therefore said, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou raise it up in three days? But He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He spake this; and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.- Joh 2:12-22.
Whether the Nazareth family returned from Cana to their own town before going down to Capernaum, John does not inform us. Neither are we told why they went to Capernaum at all at this time. It may have been in order to join one of the larger caravans going up to Jerusalem for the approaching Feast. Not only the disciples, some of whom had their homes on the lake-side, accompanied Jesus, but also His mother and His brothers. The manner in which the brothers are spoken of in connection with His mother suggests that He and they bore to her the same relation. They remained in Capernaum not many days, because the Passover was at hand. Having come to Jerusalem, and appearing there for the first time since His baptism, He performed several miracles. These John omits, and selects as more significant and worthy of record one authoritative act.
The circumstances which occasioned this act were familiar to the Jerusalem Jew. The exigencies of Temple worship had bred a flagrant abuse. Worshippers coming from remote parts of the Holy Land, and from countries beyond, found it a convenience to be able to purchase on the spot the animals used in sacrifice, and the material for various offerings-salt, meal, oil, frankincense. Traders were not slow to supply this demand, and vying with one another they crept nearer and nearer to the sacred precincts, until some, under pretence perhaps of driving in an animal for sacrifice, made a sale within the outer court. This court had an area of about fourteen acres, and was separated from the inner court by a wall breast high, and bearing intimations which forbade the encroachment of Gentiles on pain of death. Round this outer court ran marble colonnades, richly ornamented and supported by four rows of pillars, and roofed with cedar, affording ample shade to the traders.
There were not only cattle-dealers and sellers of pigeons, but also money-changers; for every Jew had to pay to the Temple treasury an annual tax of half a shekel, and this tax could be paid only in the sacred currency. No foreign coin, with its emblem of submission to an alien king, was allowed to pollute the Temple. Thus there came to be need of money-changers, not only for the Jew who had come up to the feast from a remote part of the empire, but even for the inhabitant of Palestine, as the Roman coinage had displaced the shekel in ordinary use.
There might seem, therefore, to be room to say much in favour of this convenient custom. At any rate, it was one of those abuses which, while they may shock a fresh and unsophisticated mind, are allowed both because they contribute to public convenience and because they have a large pecuniary interest at their back. In point of fact, however, the practice gave rise to lamentable consequences. Cattle-dealers and money-changers have always been notorious for making more than their own out of their bargains, and facts enough are on record to justify our Lord calling this particular market a den of thieves. The poor were shamefully cheated, and the worship of God was hindered and impoverished instead of being facilitated and enriched. And even although this traffic had been carried on under careful supervision, and on unimpeachable principles, still it was unseemly that the worshipper who came to the Temple seeking quiet and fellowship with God should have to push his way through the touts of the dealers, and have his devotional temper dissipated by the wrangling and shouting of a cattle market. Yet although many must have lamented this, no one had been bold enough to rebuke and abolish the glaring profanation.
Jesus on entering the Temple finds Himself in the midst of this incongruous scene-the sounds and movements of a market, the loud and eager exclamations of competing traders, the bustle of selecting one animal out of a flock, the loud talk and laughter of the idle groups of onlookers. Jesus cannot stand it. Zeal for the honour of His Fathers house possesses Him. The Temple claims Him as its vindicator from abuse. Nowhere can He more appropriately assert His authority as Messiah. Out of the cords lying about He quickly knots together a formidable scourge, and silently, leaving the public conscience to justify His action, He proceeds single-handed to drive out cattle and traders together. A scene of violence ensued,-the cattle rushing hither and thither, the owners trying to preserve their property, the money-changers holding their tables as Jesus went from one to another upsetting them, the scattered coin scrambled for; and over all the threatening scourge and the commanding eye of the Stranger. Never on any other occasion did our Lord use violence.
The audacity of the act has few parallels. To interfere in the very Temple with any of its recognized customs was in itself a claim to be King in Israel. Were a stranger suddenly to appear in the lobby of the House of Commons, and by sheer dignity of demeanour, and the force of integrity, to rectify an abuse of old standing involving the interests of a wealthy and privileged class, it could not create a greater sensation. The Baptist might be with Him, cowing the truculent with his commanding eye; but there was no need of the Baptist: the action of Christ awakening conscience in the men themselves was enough to quell resistance.
No doubt Jesus began His work at the house of God because He knew that the Temple was the real heart of the nation; that it was belief in God which was their strength and hope, and that the loss of that belief, and the consequent irreverence and worldliness, were the most dangerous features of Jewish society. The state of matters He found in the Temple could not have been tolerated had the people really believed God was present in the Temple.
Such an act could not pass without being criticised. It would be keenly discussed that evening in Jerusalem. At every table it would be the topic of conversation, and a most serious one wherever men in authority were meeting. Many would condemn it as a piece of pharisaic ostentation. If He is a reformer, why does He not turn His attention to the licentiousness of the people? Why show such extravagant and unseemly zeal about so innocent a custom when flagrant immoralities abound? Why not spend His zeal in clearing out from the land the polluting foreigner? Such charges are easy. No man can do everything, least of all can he do everything at once. And yet the advocate of temperance is twitted with his negligence of other causes which are perhaps as necessary; and he who pleads for foreign missions is reminded that we have heathen at home. These are the carping criticisms of habitual fault-finders, and of men who have no hearty desire for the advancement of what is good.
Others, again, who approved the act could not reconcile themselves to the manner of it. Might it not have been enough to have pointed out the abuse, and to have made a strong representation to the authorities? Was it fair to step in and usurp the authority of the Sanhedrim or Temple officials? Was it consistent with prophetic dignity to drive out the offenders with His own hand? Even those most friendly to Him may have felt a little jarred as they saw Him with uplifted scourge and flaming eyes violently driving before Him men and beasts. But they remembered that it was written, The zeal of Thine house will consume Me. They remembered perhaps how the most popular king of Israel had danced before the ark, to the scandal indeed of dull-souled conventionalists, but with the approval of all clear-seeing and spiritually-judging men. They might also have remembered how the last of their prophecies had said, Behold, the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple. But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?
This zeal at once explained and justified His action. Some abuses may be reformed by appeal to the constituted authorities; others can be abolished only by the blazing indignation of a righteous soul who cannot longer endure the sight. This zeal, conquering all consideration of consequences and regard to appearances, acts as a cleansing fire, sweeping before it what is offensive. It has always its own risks to run: the authorities at Jerusalem never forgave Jesus this first interference. By reforming an abuse they should never have allowed, He damaged them in the eyes of the people, and they could never forget it. Zeal also runs the risk of acting indiscreetly and taking too much upon it. In itself zeal is a good thing, but it does not exist in itself. It exists in a certain character, and where the character is imperfect or dangerous the zeal is imperfect or dangerous. The zeal of the proud or selfish man is mischievous, the zeal of the ignorant fraught with disaster. Still, with all risks, give us by all means rather the man who is eaten up, possessed and carried away, by a passionate sympathy with the oppressed and neglected, or with unquenchable zeal for rectitude and honourable dealing or for the glory of God, than the man who can stand and be a spectator of wrong because it is no business of his to see that injustice be withstood, who can connive at unrighteous practices because their correction is troublesome, invidious, hazardous. He who lays a sudden hand on wrong-doing may have no legal authority to plead in his defence when challenged, but to all good men such an act justifies itself. It was a similar zeal which at all times governed Christ. He could not stand by and wash His hands of other mens sins. It was this which brought Him to the cross, this which in the first place brought Him to this world at all. He had to interfere. Zeal for His fathers glory, zeal for God and man, possessed Him.
It was therefore no concern of Jesus to make Himself very intelligible to those who could not understand the action itself and demanded a sign. They did not understand His answer; and it was not intended they should. Frequently our Lords answers are enigmatical. Men have opportunity to stumble over them, if they will. For frequently they asked foolish questions, which admitted only of such answers. The present question, What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things? was absurd. It was to ask for a light to see light with, a sign of a sign. His zeal for God that carried the crowd before it, and swept Gods house clean of the profane, was the best proof of His authority and Messiahship. But there was one sign which He could promise them without violating His principle to do no miracle merely for the sake of convincing reluctant minds. There was one sign which formed an integral part of His work; a sign which He must work, irrespective of its effect on their opinion of Him-the sign of His own Resurrection. And therefore, when they ask Him for a sign of His authority to reform the abuses of the Temple, He promises them this sign, that He will raise the Temple again when they destroy it. If He can give them a Temple He has authority in it. Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
What did He mean by this enigmatical saying, which not even His disciples understood till long afterwards? We cannot doubt that in their resistance to His first public act, righteous and necessary, and welcome to all right-hearted men, as it was, He plainly saw the symptom of a deep-seated hatred of all reform, which would lead them on to reject His whole work. He had meditated much on the tone of the authorities, on the religious state of His country-what young man of thirty with anything in him has not done so? He had made up His mind that He would meet with opposition at every point, and that while a faithful few would stand by Him, the leaders of the people would certainly resist and destroy Him. Here in His very first act He is met by the spirit of hatred, and jealousy, and godlessness which was at last to compass His death. But His rejection He also knew was to be the signal for the downfall of the nation. In destroying Him He knew they were destroying themselves, their city, their Temple. As Daniel had long ago said, The Messiah shall be cut off … and the people of a prince who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
To Himself therefore His words had a very definite meaning: Destroy this Temple, as you certainly will by disowning My authority and resisting My acts of reform, and at length crucifying Me, and in three days I will raise it. As by denying My authority and crucifying My Person you destroy this house of My Father, so by My resurrection will I put men in possession of Gods true dwelling-place, and introduce a new and spiritual worship. It is in Christs person this great drama is enacted. The Messiah perishes: the Temple falls. The Messiah lives again: the true Temple rises on the ruins of the symbolical temple. For in the kingdom of God there is no simple restoration. Every revival is at the same time an advance (Godet). A living Temple is better than a Temple of stone. Human nature itself, possessed and inspired by the Divine, that is the true Temple of God.
This sign was in two years given to them. As Jesus drew His last breath on the cross the veil of the Temple was rent. There was no longer anything to veil; the unapproachable glory was for ever gone. The Temple in which God had so long dwelt was now but a shell, mocking and pathetic in the extreme, as the clothes of a departed friend, or as the familiar dwelling that remains itself the same but changed to us for ever. The Jews in crucifying the Messiah had effectually destroyed their Temple. A few years more and it was in ruins, and has been so ever since. That building which had once the singular, wonderful dignity of being the spot where God was specially to be found and to be worshipped, and where He dwelt upon earth in a way apprehensible by men, was from the hour of Christs death doomed to vacuity and destruction.
But in three days a new and better Temple was raised in Christs body, glorified by the presence of the indwelling God. Forty and six years had the Jews spent in rearing the magnificent pile that astonished and awed their conquerors. They had thus themselves rebuilt more splendidly the Temple of Solomon. But to rebuild the Temple they destroyed in crucifying the Lord was beyond them. The sign of rebuilding their Temple of marble, which they scouted as a ridiculous extravagance, was really a far less stupendous and infinitely less significant sign than that which He actually gave them in rising from the dead. If it was impossible to rear that magnificent fabric in three days, yet something might be done towards it: but towards the raising of the dead body of Christ nothing could be done by human skill, diligence, or power.
But it is not the stupendous difficulty of this sign which should chiefly engage our attention. It is rather its significance. Christ rose from the dead, not to startle godless and truth-hating men into faith, but to furnish all mankind with a new and better Temple, with the means of spiritual worship and constant fellowship with God. There was a necessity for the resurrection. Those who became intimately acquainted with Christ slowly but surely became aware that they found more of God in Him than ever they had found in the Temple. Gradually they acquired new thoughts about God; and instead of thinking of Him as a Sovereign veiled from the popular gaze in the hidden Holy of holies, and receiving through consecrated hands the gifts and offering of the people, they learned to think of Him as a Father, to whom no condescension was too deep, no familiarity with men too close. Unconsciously to themselves, apparently, they began to think of Christ as the true Revealer of God, as the living Temple who at all hours gave them access to the living God. But not till the Resurrection was this transference complete-nay, so fixed had their hearts been, in common with all Jewish hearts, upon the Temple, that not until the Temple was destroyed did they wholly grasp what was given them in the Resurrection of Jesus. It was the Resurrection which confirmed their wavering belief in Him as the Son of God. As Paul says, it was the resurrection which declared Him to be the Son of God with power. Being the Son of God, it was impossible He should be held by death. He had come to the Temple calling it by an unheard-of name, My Fathers house. Not Moses, not Solomon, not Ezra, not the holiest of high priests, would have dreamt of so identifying himself with God as to speak of the Temple, not even as our Fathers house or your Fathers house, but my Fathers house. And it was the Resurrection which finally justified His doing so, declaring Him to be, in a sense no other was, the Son of God.
But it was not in the body of Christ that God found His permanent dwelling among men. This sacred presence was withdrawn in order to facilitate the end God has from the first had in view, the full indwelling and possession of each and all men by His Spirit. This intimate fellowship with all men, this free communication of Himself to all, this inhabitation of all souls by the ever-living God, was the end aimed at by all that God has done among men. His dwelling among men in the Temple at Jerusalem, His dwelling among men in the living Person of Christ, were preliminary and preparatory to His dwelling in men individually. Ye, says Paul, are built up a spiritual house. Ye are builded together for a habitation of God. Ye are the temple of the living God. This is the great reality towards which men have been led by symbol-the complete pervasion of all intelligence and of all moral beings by the Spirit of God.
For us this cleansing of the Temple is a sign. It is a sign that Christ really means to do thoroughly the great work He has taken in hand. Long ago had it been said, Behold the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His Temple; and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. He was to come where holiness was professed, and to sift the true from the false, the worldly and greedy religious from the devoted and spiritual. He was not to make pretence of doing so, but actually to accomplish the separation. To reform abuses such as this marketing in the Temple was no pleasant task. He had to meet the gaze and defy the vindictiveness of an exasperated mob; He had to make enemies of a powerful class in the community. But He does what is called for by the circumstances: and this is but a part and a sample of the work He does always. Always He makes thorough, real work. He does not blink the requirements of the case. We shrug our shoulders and pass by where matters are difficult to mend; we let the flood take its course rather than risk being carried away in attempting to stem it. Not so Christ. The Temple was shortly to be destroyed, and it might seem to matter little what practices were allowed in it; but the sounds of bargaining and the greedy eye of trade could not be suffered by Him in His Fathers house: how much more shall He burn as a consuming fire when He cleanses that Church for which He gave Himself that it might be without spot or blemish. He will cleanse it. We may yield ourselves with gladness to His sanctifying power, or we may rebelliously question His authority; but cleansed the house of God must be.