Holy Monday

Matthew 21:12-17 USCCB

The Cleansing of the Temple.[j] 12 Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.[k] 13 And he said to them, “It is written:

‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’[l]
    but you are making it a den of thieves.”

14 The blind and the lame[m] approached him in the temple area, and he cured them. 15 When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wondrous things[n] he was doing, and the children crying out in the temple area, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant 16 [o]and said to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; and have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings you have brought forth praise’?” 17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany, and there he spent the night.

Footnotes


  1. 21:12–17     Matthew changes the order of (Mk 11:11, 12, 15) and places the cleansing of the temple on the same day as the entry into Jerusalem, immediately after it. The activities going on in the temple area were not secular but connected with the temple worship. Thus Jesus’ attack on those so engaged and his charge that they were making God’s house of prayer a den of thieves (Mt 21:12–13) constituted a claim to authority over the religious practices of Israel and were a challenge to the priestly authorities. Mt 21:14–17 are peculiar to Matthew. Jesus’ healings and his countenancing the children’s cries of praise rouse the indignation of the chief priests and the scribes (Mt 21:15). These two groups appear in the infancy narrative (Mt 2:4) and have been mentioned in the first and third passion predictions (Mt 16:21; 20:18). Now, as the passion approaches, they come on the scene again, exhibiting their hostility to Jesus.
  2. 21:12 These activities were carried on in the court of the Gentiles, the outermost court of the temple area. Animals for sacrifice were sold; the doves were for those who could not afford a more expensive offering; see Lv 5:7. Tables of the money changers: only the coinage of Tyre could be used for the purchases; other money had to be exchanged for that.
  3. 21:13 ‘My house…prayer’: cf. Is 56:7. Matthew omits the final words of the quotation, “for all peoples” (“all nations”), possibly because for him the worship of the God of Israel by all nations belongs to the time after the resurrection; see Mt 28:19. A den of thieves: the phrase is taken from Jer 7:11.
  4. 21:14 The blind and the lame: according to 2 Sm 5:8 LXX the blind and the lamewere forbidden to enter “the house of the Lord,” the temple. These are the last of Jesus’ healings in Matthew.
  5. 21:15 The wondrous things: the healings.
  6. 21:16 ‘Out of the mouths…praise’: cf. Ps 8:3 LXX.