Matthew 21:13

‘And he says to them, “It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.”

In defence of His actions, and in order to explain their significance, Jesus then cites Isaiah 56:7 conjoined with Jeremiah 7:11. ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples' conjoined with ‘is this house which is called by My Name become a den of robbers in your eyes? I, even I, have seen it.' It brings out the purpose of His action, to turn the Temple back into a House of Prayer from being a ramp by which as much money as possible could be squeezed out of the people. Of course, the chief priests would have defended the trading on the grounds that it was necessary so as to make it convenient for the people to obtain what was necessary in their religious worship. But it could have been carried out elsewhere, and that certainly did not excuse the underhand tactics that were often employed, nor did it justify causing disruption in the only part of the Temple where Gentiles could worship.

Jesus was always very conscious of the context of His quotations and this particular one from Isaiah very much had the coming new age in mind (as had His use of the ass), when reformed worship would become genuine and true. He may well indeed have intended people to remember back to another leader who had purified the Temple in former days, in the days of Judas Maccabaeus. That too had been associated with the waving of palm branches. Then it had been from the defilement of idolatry. This time it was from the defilement of Mammon.

It was not only Jesus Who was against the Temple trading. It is thought by many that it had in fact become something of a scandal. Extortionate rates of exchange were regularly charged (shared out in different ways, some charitable so as to justify them); sheep which had been rejected for sacrifice because they were blemished, suddenly became unblemished after they had been bought at a cheap price, and were then sold on as unblemished, and accepted as such; high prices were charged for everything. This would not necessarily be true of all, but it would probably be true of a large minority, even a majority. Business corrupts. And even the chief priests raked in their percentage. But even worse in Jesus' eyes was that it prevented the neediest and lowliest people, the Gentiles and the underprivileged, from praying and worshipping. Note that He was equally concerned to drive out the buyers!

Thus Jesus was revealing that in the new age that He was bringing in, prayer and worship was to become foremost, and everything else must be subsidiary to that, especially corrupt forms of religion and Mammon. Purification of Jerusalem and the Temple were in fact a part of national Messianic expectation (Malachi 3:1; Psalms of Solomon 17:30). But this was only a final gesture, a last call to repent, for as He will shortly make clear the corruption of the Temple had gone too far, and it must be replaced (Matthew 23:38; Matthew 24:2; Matthew 24:15; compare John 2:19; John 4:21). It was in fact symbolic of precisely how different the new age was going to be!