Fr.
McIntyre's Commentary on John 2:13-22. 13. And the pasch of the Jews
was at hand. Some take ‘and’ in the sense of ‘for,’ as though
explaining, why our Lord remained not many days at Capharnaum (v. 12).
But it is simply continuative. The phrase ‘not many days’ marks a
contrast with the subsequent longer stay. St. John calls the feast ‘the
Pasch of the Jews,’ because he writes from a Christian standpoint.
All
male adults were bound to go up to the Temple at the three great annual
festivals of Pasch, Pentecost, and Tabernacles (Deut. 16:16). The first
and the greatest was the Pasch, or Passover (also called Phase). It was
celebrated in the first month of the religious year, the month Nisan or
Abib (between March and April), from the 14th to the 21st of the month.
A characteristic feature in its celebration was the eating of
unleavened bread during the seven days of the festival, and the
sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb (Deut. 16:1–8; Exod. 12:1–28). Hence it
was also called the feast of the Azymes, or Unleavened Bread. It was
primarily intended as a memorial of the deliverance from Egypt, and
derives its name from the passing over (Hebrew ‘pasach’ = to pass over)
of the Jewish houses when the angel destroyed all the firstborn of Egypt
(Exod. 12:21–27). But secondarily, it was an agricultural festival
marking the beginning of the harvest—“the month of new corn” (Deut.
16:1). It was prophetic of our Lord, the true Lamb of God (John 19:36;
Exod. 12:46). Hence St. Paul’s “Purge out the old leaven, that you may
be a new paste, as you are unleavened. For Christ our pasch is
sacrificed “(1 Cor. 5:7).
14.
And he found in the temple them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and
the changers of money sitting. All this noisy traffic was carried on in
the Court of the Gentiles. Here were set up the stalls where animals,
oil, wine, incense, and other requisites for sacrifice could be bought.
All Jews and proselytes, except priests, women, slaves, and minors, had
to pay, under pain of distraint of their goods, the annual
Temple-tribute of half a shekel (= 1s. 2d.). This Temple-tribute had to
be paid in exact half-shekels of the Sanctuary. When it is remembered
that, besides strictly Palestinian coin, Persian, Tyrian, Syrian,
Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman money circulated in the country, it will be
understood what work fell to the money-changers. We can picture to
ourselves the scene around the table of an Eastern money-changer—the
weighing of the coins, deductions for loss of weight, arguing,
disputing, bargaining—and we can realise the terrible truthfulness of
our Lord’s charge (ver. 16) (Eders., l.c., p. 76).
15.
And when he had made as it were (‘as it were’ omitted in Greek) a
scourge of little cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the sheep
also and the oxen. As is evident from the next verse, the ‘all’ does not
refer to the sellers and money-changers, but only to the animals. The
Greek =‘He drove all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen.’
16.
And to them that sold doves he said, &c. Some see here a sign of
greater leniency, because the doves were the offerings of the poor. But
this is imaginary. The simpler explanation is that doves in cages could
not be driven out like sheep and oxen (comp. Matt. 21:12, on which
occasion such supposed leniency was absent).
the
house of my Father. Our Lord here implies that he is the Son of God,
and He assumes authority in the temple (see v. 18). We thus see a
fulfilment of the prophecy: “And presently the Lord, whom you seek, and
the Angel of the testament, whom you desire, shall come to his temple”
(Mal. 3:1). ‘Presently,’ i.e., suddenly, unexpectedly, although the
Precursor had announced His coming (Mal. 3:1; Matt. 11:10). A second
cleansing, with a few differences of detail, took place in Passion-week
(Matt. 21:12, 13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45, 46). Abuses, particularly
public and legally tolerated abuses, die hard. Repetition of the abuse
naturally called for a repetition of the cleansing.
17.
And his disciples remembered that it was [better, is] written: The zeal
of thy house hath eaten [will eat] me up. The words remembered are in
Psa. 68:10. This psalm is certainly Messianic, and is one of the two
psalms (the other is Psa. 21) most frequently quoted in the New
Testament (see 15:25; 19:28; Acts 1:20; Rom. 15:3; 11:9).
18.
The Jews (i.e., the leaders, or Temple-officials) therefore answered
and said to him: What sign dost thou show unto us, seeing thou dost
these things? The very majesty of Christ’s presence had overawed them;
their own consciences, too, made cowards of them: they dared not resist.
They did not venture even to condemn what He had done; but they
craftily sought to turn away attention from their own evil-doing, by
putting our Lord upon the defensive. They asked our Lord for a sign,
i.e., miracle, to justify His assumption of authority over them. This
move would attract the attention, and probably enlist the sympathy, of
the crowd.
19.
Destroy this, temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Their
question was deceitful and captious; but they were caught in their own
deceit. Our Lord utters a prophecy which reads like a challenge. The
words are enigmatic. Our Lord’s sacred humanity in which dwelt the
fulness of the Godhead was truly the very shrine of a temple (ναός, not
the more comprehensive term ἱερόν of v. 14). By His reply, therefore,
our Lord foretold His resurrection from the dead (v. 21). It was a
prophecy with which He afterwards met similar requests during the
subsequent course of His ministry. “An evil and adulterous generation
seeketh a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas
the prophet” (Matt. 12:39; 16:4). If the Jewish leaders had been acting
in good faith they might have learned, as the disciples learned, what
our Lord’s language meant; but in their malicious eagerness they jumped
at conclusions, and in so jumping they landed themselves in a dilemma.
Taking our Lord’s words literally, they understood them to be a
challenge. Let the Jews pull down the temple, and the sign they had
asked for would be given in the raising of it up in three days. But they
were afraid to pull the temple down; and so they themselves stood in
the way of the sign for which they had asked, and dared not take up
their own challenge. In their confusion, therefore, they could only put a
futile and evasive question.
20.
Six and forty years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it
up in three days? The rebuilding of Zorobabel’s temple was begun by
Herod the Great in the eighteenth year of his reign (A.U.C. 734 or 735),
and the work was not finished till the year A.D. 64, in the reign of
Agrippa II. It was therefore not completed at the time referred to in
St. John’s narrative.
22.
When therefore he was risen again from the dead, his disciples
remembered that he had said this. Words that seemed dead, incidents that
had been forgotten, spring into life again and are clearly remembered
when the mind receives an unusual stimulus.
and
they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had said. We read
in St. Luke (24:44–45) that our Lord, after His resurrection, said to
the Apostles, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was yet
with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in
the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
Then he opened their understanding, that they might understand the
scriptures.” After our Lord’s resurrection, then, the minds of the
Apostles were flooded with fresh light; they saw more clearly than
before the meaning of the Old Testament Scriptures concerning the
Messiah, and our Lord’s own words came back to their memory with
redoubled force. Therefore did the Apostles believe with a faith that
had grown in clearness and intensity.
The
narrative is continued of what resulted from our Lord’s manifestation
of Himself at the first Pasch in Jerusalem. Two groups have been set
before us—the one of unbelieving Jews who resist the light of evidence,
the other of disciples who believe, and are rewarded by a clearer and
more abundant knowledge. In the narrative that immediately follows we
get first a group of another kind, and then an important typical
instance. The sections are clearly marked by the language. The first
transition in 2:23 (ὡς δὲ ἦν ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις) and the second in 3:1 (ἦν
δὲ ἄνθρωπος). In each case δέ introduces the special matter.
Comments
Post a Comment