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Jesus Clears the Temple Courts
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
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In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
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So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
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Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
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They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”
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But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
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Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
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Jesus Teaches at the Festival
Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach.
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Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him,
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The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him.
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Unbelief of the Jewish Leaders
Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
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At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.
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He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.
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At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
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and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.
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If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
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They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple courts they asked one another, “What do you think? Isn’t he coming to the festival at all?”
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“I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus replied. “I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret.
