Cleansing the Temple

(Mark 15:12-18, NIV; John 2:13-17, GNB)

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money-changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.

And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.’ But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’”

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

It was almost time for the Passover Festival, so Jesus went to Jerusalem. There in the Temple he found men selling cattle, sheep, and pigeons, and also the moneychangers sitting at their tables.

So he made a whip of chords and drove all the animals out of the Temple, both the sheep and the cattle; he overturned the table of the moneychangers and scattered their coins; and he ordered the men who sold pigeons, "Take them out of here! Stop making my Father's house a  marketplace!"

His disciples remembered that the scripture says, "My devotion to your house, O God, burns in me like fire."