Luke 19:45

‘And he entered into the temple, and began to cast out those who sold,'

And He entered the Temple, and looking around at what was happening there in the Court of the Gentiles, He was angry. And so He began to cast out those who sold (He began and continued), emptying it of the noisy traders so that it was possible for those present to pray in comparative peace. Compare here Malachi 3:1. The Lord had come to His Temple. He was not weeping now. This was the next day (Mark 11:12), but Luke ignores that because he wants us to recognise its connection with the preceding words. The emptying of the traders from the Temples is a symbol of the judgment that is coming. Now He is here in anger at the duplicity of the priesthood, and warning of what will happen if they do not cleanse up their act.

The effectiveness of what He did resulted as much from His moral authority as from brute force, and the traders were also no doubt aware of the twelve husky looking Apostles in the background.

Perhaps also we are to link it with His entry into Jerusalem as its Messiah. For He may well by this have indicated that one purpose of His coming was in order to purify the Temple worship, by removing what corrupted it and making it a place of prayer. We can compare how both Hezekiah and Josiah were noted as having cleansed the Temple of what offended (2 Kings 23:4; 2Ch 29:5; 2 Chronicles 29:16; 2 Chronicles 34:8), and in both cases it was followed by the observance of the Passover (2 Kings 23:21; 2 Chronicles 30:1; 2 Chronicles 35:1). They had emptied it of idolatry, Jesus was emptying it of the new idolatry, Mammon.