He
entered into the temple, and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of robbers’!” He was teaching daily in the temple, but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people sought to destroy him. They couldn’t find what they might do, for all the people hung on to every word that he said.
Luke 19:45-48
Luke 19 [41.] When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had known today the things which belong to your peace! But now, they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come on you, when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, surround you, hem you in on every side, and will dash you and your children within you to the ground. They will not leave in you one stone on another, because you didn’t know the time of your visitation.”
Luke 19 [45.] He entered into the temple, and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of robbers’!”
Luke 19 [47.] He was teaching daily in the temple, but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people sought to destroy him. They couldn’t find what they might do, for all the people hung on to every word that he said.
Luke 20 [1.] On one of those days, as he was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the Good News, the priests and scribes came to him with the elders. They asked him, “Tell us: by what authority do you do these things? Or who is giving you this authority?”
Meaning:
Jesus had wept over Jerusalem because it did not know the time of its visitation (Luke 19:41-44). Now the Lord enters his temple. Malachi had prophesied, “the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1). Luke tells the cleansing of the temple briefly and then describes Jesus teaching there every day. Mark and Matthew give fuller accounts (Mark 11:15-17; Mark 11:18; Matthew 21:12; Matthew 21:13), and John records a similar act early in Jesus’ ministry (John 2:14-16).
- “He entered into the temple, and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it”
The trading took place in the large outer court of the temple, the only area where Gentiles were allowed to pray. Pilgrims needed animals for sacrifice and had to change their money into the coins accepted for the temple tax. What had begun as a service had turned the courts into a noisy market, often with unfair prices, under the authority of the chief priests. Jesus acts with the authority of the Son in his Father’s house. As a boy he had said, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49).
- “My house is a house of prayer”
Jesus quotes Isaiah, where God promises that foreigners who join themselves to him will be welcomed, “for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7). The temple was meant to be the place where people of every nation could meet with God in prayer. The market crowded out the very people it was meant to welcome.
- “But you have made it a ‘den of robbers’!”
The second quotation comes from Jeremiah’s sermon at the temple gate: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” (Jeremiah 7:11). A den is where robbers hide after their crimes. Jeremiah warned that the people of his day thought the temple made them safe while they lived unjustly, and that the temple would be destroyed. By quoting him Jesus gives the same warning.
- “He was teaching daily in the temple”
After clearing the temple Jesus used it for its true purpose: teaching the people the word of God. Luke later sums up these days: “Every day Jesus was teaching in the temple” (Luke 21:37). The chief priests, scribes and leading men wanted to destroy him, but they could not act, “for all the people hung on to every word that he said.” His teaching had authority, as it had from the start (Luke 4:32). Their plot would come to a head at Passover (Luke 22:2).
The Significance of Luke 19:45-48
- A house of prayer
Jesus cares how God’s house is used. Paul tells believers, “Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Churches and individual lives are meant to be places of prayer and welcome, not of profit-seeking or exclusion.
- Hanging on his words
The ordinary people listened eagerly to Jesus even while their leaders plotted. His words still deserve that kind of attention.
Cross-References:
Isaiah 56:7: "for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples." The purpose of God’s house.
Jeremiah 7:11: "Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?" Jeremiah’s warning.
Mark 11:15-17: Mark’s account of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers.
Conclusion: Jesus entered the temple, drove out the traders and declared from Isaiah and Jeremiah that God’s house was meant to be a house of prayer, not a den of robbers. He then taught there daily, and although the leaders sought to destroy him, the people hung on his every word.
PIB Scriptures are derived from the World English Bible