The Last Week of Jesus's LifeSýnishorn

Monday, March 30, 33 AD

As Jesus stares at the corrupt marketeers who once overcharged his soon-to-be-refugee parents when he was a baby (Luke 2:24), all four gospels report that this is where he makes his public stand. Jesus braided a whip out of rushes and “drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:15).

Note that the non-violent Jesus never lays a hand on a human being while he seizes their means of corruption, and that in his anger he never sins. He overturned the chairs of those selling doves and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

In grinding the cartel’s business to a halt during the busiest week of their fiscal year—while simultaneously symbolizing the temple’s total destruction like a prophet of old—Jesus has just made the biggest “mistake” of his life.

Why?

Because the temple booths are monopoly controlled by an ultra-wealthy, supremely powerful, and altogether shadowy Jewish elite—none other than the aristocratic Annas ben Seth, high priest emeritus and the ultimate puppet master who holds the temple’s purse strings in the tightest of nooses.

Not only does Annas have a monopoly on the temple court stalls (and the nation’s tithes), he has four additional branches on the Mount of Olives too. The infamous markets are literally called “The Booths of the Sons of Annas.” Here, pilgrims have no choice but to purchase sacrificial lambs, oil, and wine at exorbitant prices from the godfather and his mafia family. It is pure exploitation of destitute pilgrims, a blatant affront to the Leviticus 25:35–37 laws which forbid turning a profit off the poor, and Jesus will not abide by its continuance.

The House of Annas hears of the commerce-crushing commotion and rushes to the Court of the Gentiles. Amidst the stampede of cattle and callous merchants, Jesus the economic saboteur stares at the high priests and their lawyers and invokes Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11—two texts that the Sadducee high priests roundly reject—publicly proclaiming that the religionists are robbing Jews under the guise of helping them worship God.

“It is not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17, italics added). Note that Jesus does not call them legalists or heretics or even religionists. The Greek word he uses for robbers is lestai—violent zealots, bandits hellbent on political corruption and economic robbery. I will leave it to the reader to look up the context of both Old Testament passages and realize Jesus’s double-quotation serves as a resounding eviction notice of the House of Annas from the House of God. By adding “you” to Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11, Jesus makes these verses a declaration of war against the temple administration.

Annas is simultaneously furious and fearful. This Galilean racketeer has ground his temple thievery to a halt on the busiest week of the year. What’s more, he’s publicly indicted the high priestly family as thieves, murderers, and worshipers of Baal (which their jam-packed treasury of Tyrian shekels prove they are). It is a personal affront, and the final straw. Mark 11:18 says the chief priests immediately begin looking for a way to kill Jesus.

With zero transactions in today’s market, the massive Passover crowds flock to the rabbi, hanging on his every word as he heals the lame and blind. The high priests want to kill Jesus on the spot, but they are rightly terrified of the people (Luke 22:2). They send their spies to keep a close watch on the rabbi’s proceedings this day.

The religionists patiently listen to Jesus’s teachings and witness his miracles but grow furious when they hear kids shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Can you hear it echo off the walls of the courtyard, the once-bustling marketplace that is now a place of holy teaching for Galilee’s greatest son?

Hosanna to the Son of David. An extremely political phrase.

The elites confront Jesus. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” Jesus, always ready to defend children, retorts with, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” (Matthew 21:16).

Perhaps the parents in the crowd cheer. The kids certainly do. While the religionists lick their wounds for being publicly chastised in front of the pilgrim faithful, Jesus and the disciples head back to their lodgings in Bethany.