John 2:13-25

The Cleansing of the Temple (John 2:13).

It is difficult to avoid the feeling that this narrative is given here on close proximity to what has gone before because it illustrates the fulfilment of the turning of water into wine. Now Jesus will act to turn the Jerusalem worship into genuine ‘worship for all' by seeking to have banned from the court of the Gentiles the trading that was going on and disturbing the worship. That is not to suggest that it is out of place chronologically. Only that its connection with the previous passage is deliberate. The suggestion that this is the same incident as that in Mark 11 and parallels really does not hold up to careful examination. The detail is different at every point. And what is described here ties in with the newness of Jesus' ministry and with a time when He was not aware of the corruption in the Temple. It has rather, unlike the incident in the other Gospels, the flavour of someone concerned for true worship in God's Temple, and for the purity of that Temple. It reads like the impulsive act of a ‘new prophet' rather than like the thought through policy of Mark 11.