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15 He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, 16 and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”(A) 17 [a]His disciples recalled the words of scripture,(B) “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 At this the Jews answered and said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?”(C) 19 Jesus answered and said to them,[b](D) “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,[c] and you will raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.(E)

23 While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.(F) 24 But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all, 25 and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well.(G)

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Footnotes

  1. 2:17 Ps 69:10, changed to future tense to apply to Jesus.
  2. 2:19 This saying about the destruction of the temple occurs in various forms (Mt 24:2; 27:40; Mk 13:2; 15:29; Lk 21:6; cf. Acts 6:14). Mt 26:61 has: “I can destroy the temple of God…”; see note there. In Mk 14:58, there is a metaphorical contrast with a new temple: “I will destroy this temple made with hands and within three days I will build another not made with hands.” Here it is symbolic of Jesus’ resurrection and the resulting community (see Jn 2:21 and Rev 21:2). In three days: an Old Testament expression for a short, indefinite period of time; cf. Hos 6:2.
  3. 2:20 Forty-six years: based on references in Josephus (Jewish Wars 1:401; Antiquities 15:380), possibly the spring of A.D. 28. Cf. note on Lk 3:1.