Matthew 21:16

‘And they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus says to them, “Yes. Did you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise?' ” '

So they sharply drew His attention to the situation. ‘Do you not hear what these are saying? They are calling you the Son of David.' They knew that such a connection of the Son of David with the Temple could bring down the wrath of the Romans on them, and even possibly the wrath of God. And besides it was unseemly. In the Temple any acclamation should be directed towards God. It should be God Who was being acclaimed. And consider what a noise they were making! It was disturbing everybody.

Jesus' reply was simple. He pointed them again to the Scriptures (Psalms 8:2). There was only One Who brought such praise from the mouths of the young and innocent, and that was God, for their young hearts often saw straight through to what was really important. And in what they were saying they were more right than they knew. It was always those whose hearts were still open to truth, who would discern it.

The quotation is from LXX. Matthew was equally at home with the Greek and Hebrew texts of Scripture, and would sometimes apparently himself translate from the Hebrew, would sometimes quote another translation, and would sometimes make use of LXX, usually when using Mark.

It will be noted that we have here the first mention of the chief priests as publicly active against Jesus, something true in all the Gospels except John. Until His ministry began to impact on the Temple itself they had taken little public notice of Him, and thus the Apostles as a whole had not been aware of them, but now that He was publicly challenging their own patch, they could not publicly ignore Him. For the Temple was their responsibility. John, of course, had inside knowledge of what went on in high priestly circles and knew a lot more therefore about what went on behind the scenes. He knew that they had regularly been consulted by the leading Pharisees whenever Jesus visited Jerusalem and had plotted with them against Him (John 7:32; John 7:45; John 11:47; John 11:57; John 12:10).