Matthew 21:13

and said unto them, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

During the first days of this, His last week in lowliness on earth, Jesus made Bethany His headquarters, spending the days in the city and returning to His friends overnight. It was on Monday of Holy Week that Jesus was most grievously hurt and offended by the state of affairs in the Temple, as once before, John 2:13. Originally, every person that wanted to bring a sacrifice to the Temple took the animal from his own herd or flock. But in the course of time there was a change made, chiefly due to the various restrictions as to the fitness of the various animals. The Jewish officials in Jerusalem took advantage of the situation by starting a market right at the Temple-gates and in the Temple-courts. There were the various sacrificial animals, such as bullocks, sheep, goats, doves, and others, all guaranteed to measure up to the standard of Levitical purity. And since this business involved a good deal of money-changing, a formal bank business had developed within a stone's throw of the holy place. A strange scene: The lowing of the cattle, the bleating of the sheep and lambs, the cooing of the doves, the cry of the venders, the clink of money, all this in the place which was sacred to the name of God. Add to this the fact that the priests were often deriving benefit from this arrangement by drawing down a nice percentage for the concession, as Luther says, and we have a picture of commercialism in the Church such as can hardly be duplicated, although it has more than once been equaled in the Church. "Avarice covered with the veil of religion is one of those things on which Christ looks with the greatest indignation in His Church. Merchandise of holy things, simoniacal presentations, fraudulent exchanges, a mercenary spirit in sacred functions; ecclesiastical employments obtained by flattery, service, or attendance, or by anything which is instead of money; collations, nominations, and elections made through any other motive than the glory of God; these are all fatal and damnable profanations, of which those in the Temple were only a shadow. " A holy indignation took hold upon Jesus at the sight of this blasphemous spirit and its evidence. With the authority and dignity of the outraged Son of God He strode into the court. Roughly He pushed aside and cast out the merchants, impatiently He knocked down the tables of the petty bankers and of the dove-sellers, incidentally reminding the people of the words of the prophets. Isaiah 56:7; Jeremiah 7:11. As a house of prayer the Temple of Solomon had been built for all nations, 1 Kings 8:1, and a house of prayer the present structure was to be as well. But they, by their mercenary spirit and practices, had made it a den of thieves, in which cheating and overreaching was the order of the day.