Abstract
John’s version of Jesus’s temple entrance is remarkable for its depiction of Jesus wielding a whip and driving out animals and people from the precincts. Focusing on the violence of Jesus’s “righteous anger,” some interpreters have used John 2:13–22 to justify violence in God’s name throughout history. Others push back against such readings by mitigating or ignoring the violence of Jesus’s actions. This article seeks to find a middle ground by focusing on ancient understandings of what happens when holiness is profaned. Using 2 Maccabees as a comparison, I argue John 2:13–22 presents Jesus’s arrival in the temple as a clash caused by holiness breaking out. This presentation emphasizes Jesus’s identity as God’s glory made flesh and plays into ancient audience expectations in 2:13–17. In 2:18–22, however, Jesus undercuts these assumptions by predicting his own death and resurrection. Rather than endorsing violence, then, John 2:13–22 is better understood as a type of bait and switch, in which the narrative emphasizes Jesus’s identity, the problem he faces in the world, and the surprising way God responds. Instead of spreading violence, Jesus receives it upon his own body, thus revealing God’s inviolability that results in life for those who will receive it.
In a journal issue devoted to the question of violence in the Gospel of John, John 2:13–22 cannot be avoided. While one can more easily see Jesus’s refusal to use violence at various points in the Gospel, particularly at his arrest in 18:1–12, Jesus’s first appearance in the Jerusalem Temple is more difficult. After all, upon entering, Jesus finds those selling animals for sacrifice (oxen, sheep, and doves) and moneychangers collecting the temple tax. Upon seeing them, Jesus reveals a whip he has fashioned out of ropes or cords found in the temple courts, using it to clear out the animals and their keepers before turning over tables and pouring out coins. “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market house!” Jesus commands the dove-sellers in 2:16. The disciples associate Jesus’s behavior with “zeal” for the temple described by the speaker of Ps 69:9 (68:10 LXX): “Zeal for your house will consume me.” This Psalm is traditionally associated with David, a righteous sufferer estranged from his kindred and humiliated as a result of his faithfulness to the Lord. 1 Yet, in John 2, Jesus seems less like a sorrowful sufferer than he does one who is inflicting suffering. How can this be the same Jesus who so willingly surrenders his life later in the Gospel, refusing to answer Rome’s violence with his own? Is Jesus non-violent or not?
A number of interpreters have sought to reconcile this quandary by diminishing the violence of Jesus’s actions in 2:14–16, either minimizing those impacted by Jesus’s outburst or skirting over the scene’s contrast with Jesus’s later behavior. In what follows, I offer a short overview of these previous interpretations before suggesting an alternative view informed by ancient understandings of what happens when the sacred is profaned. Instead of diminishing or overlooking Jesus’s violent behavior in John 2:14–16, I suggest the Fourth Gospel emphasizes this scene with its unique presentation at the outset of the Gospel. Adding details and a scripture quotation not found in the other Gospel accounts, John uses this scene to amplify and confirm Jesus’s identity as God’s glory made flesh, as described in the Prologue (1:14–16) and revealed in the first sign at Cana (2:10–11). Jesus’s arrival in the temple, therefore, is nothing less than a clash resulting from the holiness of God’s glory encountering the profane in what should be a sacred place. The intensity of Jesus’s reaction not only further reveals his identity but also reinforces the depth of the problem he faces in the world: Not even God’s people can recognize the glory in the chosen sacred space. While previous prophets and Second Temple period literature emphasize God’s judgment against the temple and its systems in similar scenarios, John’s Gospel undermines the very expectations it sets up. Instead of spreading violence, Jesus will receive it upon his own body in his arrest and death, before claiming victory in his resurrection. In this way, Jesus reveals God’s inviolability that results in life for those who will receive it.
Violent or non-violent? Previous readings of John 2:13–22
Before diving into the argument at hand, first noting previous approaches to this difficult passage is helpful. As with most histories of interpretation, scholars are located along a spectrum of readings. At one extreme are those who minimize, or seek to eliminate altogether, Jesus’s violence in 2:14–16. Andy Alexi-Baker, for example, agrees with N. Clayton Croy and others who argue that Jesus does not use his whip against people in 2:15, but only against the oxen and sheep. 2 This whip, moreover, is not a Roman flagellum (φραγέλλιον, 2:15) since weapons were not allowed on the Temple Mount and killing on sacred ground was considered sacrilege throughout the Greco-Roman world. 3 Jesus’s hand-made whip must have been fashioned from the animals’ bedding, or, as Bruce Chilton suggests, from the ropes used to tether the animals in their stalls. 4 Going yet further, Alexi-Baker argues that Jesus frees these animals “by moving them out of the temple, [and] at least temporarily stayed their execution on the bloody altar.” 5 Instead of starting violence, then, Jesus effectively stops it by forcing a halt to sacrifices. At the other extreme one finds Jennifer Glancy, who not only sees Jesus’s actions in the temple as violent but as the key violent act that initiates all other violence in the Gospel. Glancy reads 2:14–16 as Jesus’s attack on people as well as animals that profanes the holy temple by halting the sacrifices taking place. With this “violent epiphany,” Jesus gives a sign that profanes and that claims the holy space for himself by forcibly taking it from those who had come to worship. 6
Most scholars, of course, lie somewhere between these two extremes. They argue Jesus’s actions are violent, intense, and dramatic, but they do not justify later violence by Christians, particularly against Jews. 7 The dramatic differences between these two readings, however, help identify some key interpretive questions. First, what does Jesus make when he enters the temple? Alexi-Baker is right that the Mishnah outlaws weapons from the temple and Glancy agrees that Jesus’s whip is probably called a φραγέλλιον because it was made from multiple cords, not because it was a Roman weapon. Yet, as she argues, even if Jesus had to fashion the whip out of materials on the temple grounds, the Gospel nevertheless shows his intentionality in its making and its use. John 2:14–15 reads that Jesus “found (εὗρεν) the sellers of oxen and sheep and doves, and those exchanging coins sitting, and having made (ποιήσας) a whip from cords he cast all of them out.” 8 The language of these verses indicates Jesus was prepared for the sight he encountered on the temple grounds.
Scholars debate the second question these interpretations raise, namely, against whom or what does Jesus use this hand-made whip? The difficulty lies in the use of πάντας (“all”), a masculine plural adjective, in 2:15. If John had meant Jesus used the whip to cast out only the animals, would not the Gospel have used a neuter plural (πάντα) instead? Like Alexi-Baker and Glancy, scholars are divided on this issue. Alexi-Baker suggests the masculine plural shows that the gender of βόας (oxen) has determined the gender of the adjective, since to use a neuter plural would have indicated only the sheep (πρόβατα) were chased out. 9 Moreover, he repeats the arguments of many that if Jesus’s behavior had targeted people, he surely would have been arrested and killed by the ever-present Roman guards. 10 Thus, he opts for the translation, “And having made a whip of cords he cast all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen.” Glancy, however, agrees with others who argue the masculine plural πάντας must include the sellers along with their animals. 11 Chilton likewise concludes πάντας includes people, but he focuses on the location of πάντας rather than its gender alone. Coming immediately after a collection of substantive participles (τοὺς πωλοῦντας) and nouns (βόας καὶ πρόβατα καὶ περιστερὰς καὶ τοὺς κερματιστὰς), Chilton argues πάντας must refer to “all of them” instead of just a portion. 12 His translation reads: “And having made a whip of cords he cast all of them out of the temple, along with the sheep and the oxen.” Regardless of the grammatical conclusion one reaches here, however, the scene remains intense; Jesus uses this whip to “cast out” the animals and merchants, either by chasing them both or by targeting the animals, causing their owners to chase after them. He then turns to command the dove-sellers to “Take these things out of here!” (2:16). Having Jesus turn his whip against animals alone perhaps lessens that intensity, but it does not remove it altogether.
Finally, both Alexi-Baker and Glancy suggest reasons for Jesus’s behavior. Although their readings differ on the other two questions, they are closer on this third one. Alexi-Baker implies that Jesus is disrupting the sacrificial system in a type of protest against it. Here his reading is similar to scholars who associate Jesus’s actions with prophetic sign acts against the temple system (esp. Jeremiah and Ezekiel). Instead of trusting the priests to access God’s presence in the temple, many of these scholars argue that Jesus announces their replacement. 13 Believers now encounter the divine through Jesus’s crucified and resurrected body rather than through the Jerusalem Temple and its priestly cult, a fact made even more significant since John’s Gospel was written after 70 CE. Glancy, too, sees Jesus’s action as revelatory and connected to the temple’s destruction at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE. According to Glancy, John 11:47–50 ties Jesus’s death to the destruction of the temple, but Jesus’s violent action at 2:13–22 creates that connection, making Jesus the instigator. 14 For Alexi-Baker, however, the real pay-off is the deconstruction of readings (such as Augustine’s) that use John 2:13–22 to promote “just war” and other forms of Christian violence. 15 Glancy finds in the passage no such message; she argues John’s Gospel approves of Jesus’s violence. Even if we agree with this reading, however, she challenges readers to reflect further, writing, “justified violence—even if one considers violence justifiable—does not equal non-violence.” 16 So, what are we to do?
A clash of holy and profane
Rather than focusing on contemporary understandings of “violence” and “non-violence,” I suggest a focus instead on ancient understandings of temple precincts as holy spaces meant to be kept from corrupting impurity. Although Jesus’s behavior may be troubling to a contemporary audience, the Fourth Gospel was written and shared in a time that emphasized the incongruence of the sacred with the profane. When Jesus enters the temple (2:13), he does so as the embodiment of God’s glory (δόξα), the holy דֹבְּכ that “tented” (ἐσκήνωσεν) among the people able to recognize him (1:14; cf. Exod 40:34–35). Yet, as the Prologue explains and, later, John (the Baptist) 17 reveals, God’s glory in Jesus goes largely unrecognized (John 1:11, 26). In the opening scenes, this mixed reception occurs on common, or profane, grounds, in Bethany beyond the Jordan (1:28) and at a wedding (2:1–11), although both scenes contain elements of purification that would enable participants to commune with the sacred (e.g., ritual washing in baptism and water in jars used for purification, 1:26, 33; 2:6). When Jesus arrives at the temple, the holy place, one might anticipate a warm welcome for the arrival of God’s glory. Instead, Jesus reacts violently to what he sees. Rather than undermining his revelation, however, Jesus’s behavior not only confirms his identity as God’s holy one (cf. 6:69), but also the gravity of the world’s predicament: Jesus is not even recognized in his Father’s house.
To make this argument, I offer some basic definitions of holy and profane (as well as pure and impure) and then demonstrate how these concepts operate by looking briefly at 2 Maccabees. As I will show, the common belief was that holiness was dangerous and, thus, needed to be protected from impurity. Yet, this protection of holiness was meant to save people who would otherwise suffer death and destruction when holiness broke out against the impurities seeking (even unintentionally) to profane it. Second, Maccabees offers a helpful example of these understandings in Second Temple Judaism. According to 2 Maccabees, God’s holiness should not be equated with the temple or even Jerusalem. When God’s holiness is profaned, violence breaks out against whomever impiously encroaches. In this way, 2 Maccabees emphasizes the permanence of God’s holiness and the need for Jews to fear and trust the Lord and not Gentile invaders and oppressors. In repeated clashes between the holy and the profane, 2 Maccabees illustrates a key axiom for understanding Jesus’s appearance in the Gospel of John as well: “[T]he Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the holy place, but the place for the sake of the nation” (2 Macc 5:19; cf. John 11:48). The final section of the article then provides a close reading of John 2:13–22.
Key definitions: Holy and profane, pure and impure
Jacob Milgrom and Mary Douglas offer helpful analyses of the key terms: holy/profane, pure/impure. According to Milgrom, God’s holiness is a creative and life-giving force wholly opposed to all forms of mortality. 18 To approach holiness safely, people must be in a state of purity, that is, free from corruption and decay. As Douglas explains, impurity results from intentional and unintentional “breaches in the covenant” such as “corpse pollution, bloodshed, and unsanctified death.” 19 Jonathan Klawans adds further nuance, arguing for different types of purity/impurity: ritual versus moral. Ritual impurity is a regular occurrence for all people who live in a world of death and decay. These impurities are not “sins” in the sense of having negative culpability, but only pollutions from daily life (e.g., menstruation or seminal emissions, caring for a corpse, etc.) resolved through ritual cleansings and temporary separations from the holy. Moral impurity, however, results from intentional and culpable breaches of the covenant from idolatry, adultery, and murder. These impurities were much more difficult to resolve, requiring direct intervention on Yom Kippur by the high priest. 20 In the rituals, priests not only cleansed themselves and the people from impurity, but also the temple itself to ensure both the safety of the people who lived in God’s midst and the continued presence of God’s holiness among them.
Impurity that encroaches upon God’s holiness results in a clash that threatens to make the things, places, and people marked for God’s use (“sacred”) profane (or “common”). As Milgrom and Douglas note, such a clash is dangerous; it causes God’s holiness to break out. Focusing on Exod 19:21–22, Douglas observes the instructions for the people both to purify themselves and to fence off Mt Sinai to protect themselves from the Lord. She writes: The danger is two-edged: the people might break through or the Lord might break out, and in either case, people will die. This is the effect of holiness. The holy thing that is not correctly guarded and fenced will break out and kill, and the impure person not correctly prepared for contact with the holy will be killed. Furthermore, a person who has had the misfortune to “contract” holiness, to use Milgrom’s term, may inadvertently contaminate other unprotected things or persons, merely by contact.
21
Priests, therefore, had the crucial job of discerning impure from pure as well as correctly administrating offerings and sacrificial rituals, thereby protecting the people from God’s holiness in the sanctuary and protecting God’s holiness from impurity (Lev 10:8–11; Ezek 22:26–31). Milgrom argues this dividing of pure from impure was the main function of the priests who examined individuals, acknowledged purification, and offered sacrifices of expiation. 22 Priests also taught God’s commandments to the people so they could participate in this system correctly by avoiding some impurities altogether and by seeking purification when others naturally occurred. 23 When priests fail in any of these functions, the protective system breaks down and God’s holiness will break out, resulting either in death (2 Sam 6:6–7; Lev 10:1–3) or in a withdrawal that leaves the people vulnerable to attack (Lev 27:14–16; Ezek 5:11; 10).
Even when priests discern correctly, however, the threat of holiness remains for any impure person who dares to encroach and profane God’s holy place. In fact, this expectation of a violent encounter with God’s holiness was key to the protection of the Jerusalem Temple, as well as of other temples throughout the Greco-Roman world. A god’s or goddess’s ability to protect their holy place, and thus retain its holiness, was a sign of their power and worthiness of worship. The presumed inviolability of temples meant they were places trusted to protect people’s possessions. When violated, people anticipated a deity’s wrath upon those who committed such sacrilege unless the act was sanctioned by a more powerful deity or even by the deity itself. 24 In spite of these expectations, however, temples, including the Jerusalem Temple, were regularly violated since they could house vast amounts of wealth deposited for safekeeping by worshippers as well as the symbolic value of their conquest. 25 The trope of the temple-robbing tyrant, thus became commonplace in Roman rhetoric to denounce unfit rulers. 26 These same expectations appear in the Second Temple Jewish writing 2 Maccabees, which emphasizes God’s inviolable holiness and the repercussions faced by those who profane God’s holy place.
Holy and profane in 2 Maccabees
Second Maccabees was written around 140 BCE and offers an interpretation of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids. While 1 Maccabees highlights the military prowess of the Maccabean leaders, 2 Maccabees focuses on the actions of a few righteous martyrs who suffer as a result of their faithfulness to the temple and to the Torah after the high priesthood is corrupted. Seeing the injustice of their deaths, God intervenes to bring victory through Judas Maccabeus. While Judas remains a key figure in the book, I agree with Daniel R. Schwartz that he is not properly the “subject” of 2 Maccabees; instead, the book is about Jerusalem, which acts as a litmus test for the people’s relationship with God. 27 I have chosen 2 Maccabees as a comparative text for the Gospel of John for several reasons, including its composition in Greek and focus on Hellenistic pressures from a foreign oppressor on Jerusalem and its temple. Similar scenes are, of course, found in 1 Maccabees and Josephus’s writings, but 2 Maccabees contains particularly relevant depictions of clashes between the sacred and the profane, highlighting the importance of a righteous high priest for the preservation of the temple.
In 2 Macc 3:1, the narrative begins by establishing an idyllic time in Jerusalem “while the holy city was inhabited with all peace and the laws wisely preserved because of the piety of the high priest Onias along with his hatred of wickedness.” 28 The crisis begins when the “temple captain” (προστάτης τοῦ ἱεροῦ) Simon disagreed with Onias about the running of the “city market” (ἀγορανομίας). 29 Instead of submitting to Onias, Simon encouraged a foreign incursion into the temple by describing the wealth housed in the temple treasury. When King Seleucus heard of the wealth, he sent Heliodorus “ostensibly to make a tour of inspection” but, in reality, to seize these funds (3:4–8). When Heliodorus reports his true purpose to Onias, the high priest responds by emphasizing the temple’s holiness: “And he said that it was utterly impossible that wrong should be done to those people who had trusted in the holiness of the place and in the sanctity and inviolability of the temple that is honored throughout the world” (3:12). Heliodorus, more fearful of Seleucus than the Lord, still ventures forth with his guards to collect the funds.
When he arrives at the temple treasury “the Sovereign of spirits and of all authority caused so great a manifestation that all who had been so bold as to accompany him [Heliodorus] were astounded by the power of God, and became faint with terror” (3:24). Appearing before Heliodorus was an armed rider with two guards who “stood on either side of him and flogged (ἐμαστίγουν) him continuously, inflicting many blows” (3:26). The sight of Heliodorus’s injured body inspires praise from the people, who interpret the event as evidence that the “Almighty Lord had appeared” in the temple. Rather than dying, Heliodorus is saved through the righteous intervention of Onias, who makes a sacrifice on his behalf (3:32–34). Thus thwarted and healed, Heliodorus returns to King Seleucus and warns him against sending anyone but his enemies to Jerusalem since “there is certainly some power of God about the place. For he who has his dwelling in heaven watches over that place himself and brings it aid, and he strikes and destroys those who come to do it injury” (3:38–39).
The holy city and its temple, however, do not always fare so well. When Antiochus IV ascended after the death of Seleucus, the high priesthood is passed to Onias’s brothers, each of whom offer money to the king and “show irreverence to the divine laws” (4:17). Under the leadership of Jason and Menelaus, the city and temple suffer repeated incursions and sacrilege at their hands. The unrest that follows eventually causes Antiochus to come to Judea to put down what he saw as a revolt against his rule (5:11). In his tyrannical rage, Antiochus slaughters mercilessly throughout the countryside before he “dared to enter the most holy temple in all the world, guided by Menelaus, who had become a traitor both to the laws and to his country” (5:15). As a complete contrast to Onias, Menelaus “took the holy vessels with his polluted hands (ταῖς μιαραῖς χερσὶν) and swept away with profane hands (ταῖς βεβήλοις χερσὶν) the votive offerings that other kings had made to enhance the glory and honor of the place” (5:16).
Although Antiochus believed the events supported his superiority, 2 Maccabees emphasizes all these incursions were permitted by the Lord who “was angered for a little while because of the sins of those who lived in the city, and that was the reason he was disregarding the holy place” (5:17). The violence against the city and temple, like that suffered by Heliodorus, was caused by a clash between the holy and profane. While Heliodorus suffered as an outsider encroaching upon holy ground, Antiochus entered a temple already profaned by the high priest Menelaus. Second Maccabees 5:18–20 explains the contrast as follows: But if it had not happened that they [the people of Jerusalem] were involved in many sins, this man [Antiochus] would have been flogged and turned back from his rash act as soon as he came forward, just as Heliodorus had been, whom King Seleucus sent to inspect the treasury. But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the holy place, but the place for the sake of the nation. Therefore the place itself shared in the misfortunes that befell the nation and afterward participated in its benefits; and what was forsaken in the wrath of the Almighty was restored again when the great Lord became reconciled.
Thus, rather than serving as evidence of the Lord’s weakness, even Antiochus’s profane incursion confirms the Almighty’s holiness. Moreover, Antiochus too ultimately suffers for his sacrilege in a gruesome death even after he acknowledges God’s holiness and power, since no righteous priest like Onias was there to intercede on his behalf in a purified temple (9:5–10:9).
The narrator’s comment in 2 Macc 5:19 is particularly relevant for this study: “But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the holy place, but the place for the sake of the nation.” The high priests and Jewish people had seemingly flipped these two realities, even perhaps the righteous Onias, who calls the temple inviolable (3:12). For 2 Maccabees, it is a mistake to believe the temple itself (“the holy place”) was God’s permanent dwelling and, therefore, completely immune to pollution. Instead, as Heliodorus rightly proclaims, God “dwells in heaven” and does not need a temple. God chose the nation, the people, and only then the place. God’s holiness is protective of this place when the high priest and people live in accord with God’s decrees that cleanse them from impurity. When the high priests compromise with Gentile rulers, the situation reverses, and God’s holiness withdraws. Left impure from ineffective and unfit sacrifices, the temple and the people suffer when God’s holiness breaks out, leaving the temple abandoned and open to attack. Yet, God’s wrath is not permanent, nor is a righteous high priest always required to make reconciliation. Instead, it is the willing suffering of righteous mothers and their children (6:10; 7:1–41), along with old men (6:18–31; cf. 14:37–46), whose sacrifices inspire Judas Maccabeus and his companions to gather 6000 faithful Jews to call out to God (8:2–4). Having suffered violence at the hands of corrupt priests and Antiochus, these suppliants inflict violence to oust the Gentiles from Jerusalem and reconsecrate the temple. When the temple faces a renewed threat from Nicanor, the righteous priests call out with a prayer in line with the narrator’s perspective from 5:19–20 when they say to “the constant Defender of our nation”: O Lord of all, though you have need of nothing, you were pleased that there should be a temple for your habitation among us; so now, O holy One, Lord of all holiness, keep undefiled forever this house that has been so recently purified. (14:34, 3–36)
The preservation of the “house,” then, is part of God’s gracious gift to the Jews. 30 When they live in accord with God’s holiness, the house and city prosper; when they profane what is sacred, however, the place suffers from God’s holiness along with the people. In this way, 2 Maccabees emphasizes that God’s permanent holiness should be feared and trusted rather than the temporary violence of hubristic Gentile invaders (cf. 15:6–11). Indeed, even the Gentiles operate under God’s supervision, only allowed to conquer for as long as God’s wrath remains against the Jews. Mirroring Jesus’s statement to Pilate in John 19:11, these Gentiles would have no power unless it had been given to them from above.
As shown by Milgrom, Douglas, and this short exploration of 2 Maccabees, ancient Jewish audiences anticipated a clash when holiness was profaned by impurity. 31 These confrontations were dangerous and violent, thus encouraging people to respect the power and permanence of God’s holiness. With its stories of the temple’s repeated pollutions, 2 Maccabees corrects presumptions that the place itself is inviolable. When encroached, either by Gentiles or by unrighteous priests, God’s holiness breaks out with direct violence (e.g., against Heliodorus) or by withdrawing and allowing Antiochus’s entrance. Both reactions, however, reinforce God as the “Almighty Lord” even as the temple is profaned. Without priests (especially a high priest) to rightly discern purity from impurity and preserve the temple by administering God’s commands, the place and nation are left open to attack. In John 2:13–22, therefore, when Jesus enters the temple precincts and erupts, ancient audiences were primed to see this incident as a clash caused by holiness encountering the profane. Jesus’s reaction reveals and confirms his identity as the “Holy One” (6:69) who embodies God’s glory even though he remains unrecognized by the priests and leaders within the temple grounds.
The holy one in a profaned Temple (John 2:13–22)
Part of the reason Jesus’s behavior is so shocking for contemporary audiences reading John 2:13–22 is its contrast with his previous appearances in the Gospel. In 1:19–34, he wanders wordlessly in the background and is described by John (the Baptist) as the one whom the priests, Levites, and Pharisees cannot recognize even while he stands among them (1:19–28) and as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). In fact, Jesus does not speak until 1:38 when two of John’s disciples leave to follow him. Even still, Jesus says little (“What are you looking for?” and “Come and see,” 1:38–39) while the disciples begin to collect others to join the group (1:40–41, 43–46). Rather than loud outbursts, Jesus offers revelation in small tidbits, first renaming Simon “Peter” and astounding Nathanael with his prophetic knowledge (1:42, 47–51). In Cana, Jesus’s relatively low-key behavior continues as his mother coaxes him to respond to the crisis of wine at the wedding. Instead of performing the sign directly in front of everyone, Jesus changes water into wine behind the scenes. Nevertheless, the narrator claims Jesus “revealed his glory” in this sign with the result that “his disciples believed in him” (2:11). In John 2:13–22, however, Jesus suddenly takes over as the main actor. He is not compelled by anyone else to respond or act; he alone found the merchants and the moneychangers, expelled the animals with a handcrafted whip, poured out the coins, and commanded: “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house into a market house!” (2:16). The previously quiet Jesus is center stage in the temple, causing a scene and interrupting the very sacrifices meant to purify those seeking to participate in Passover.
While the dramatic change in Jesus’s behavior might surprise current readers, it is, however, entirely understandable in the light of the background supplied above. Indeed, the force of Jesus’s reaction to the people and activities taking place in the temple precincts is a moment of confirmation for ancient readers, as well as a sign for characters within the text, that Jesus is indeed the embodiment of God’s holy glory. Jesus’s coming to the temple is not simply the arrival of another pilgrim for the feast. Instead, John presents it as the arrival of God’s glory, as an epiphany in what is supposed to be the holy place. Jesus’s reaction with intentional, even if measured, violence reflects the expectations of what happens when holiness is profaned. Jesus’s words reinforce this expectation: “Stop making my Father’s house [a holy place] a market house [a profane place]!” Many commentators rightly note that commercial activity was required for the temple practices to take place. 32 Pilgrims needed to purchase animals for sacrifice and every Jewish male needed to exchange money in order to pay the yearly tax that paid for temple upkeep. How, then, could these things be considered profaning the holy site?
The specific word Jesus uses to describe the temple court as a “market house” (ἐμπορίον) provides a clue. Appearing only three times in the LXX, ἐμπορίον is used twice to describe the city of Tyre, an island city founded by the Phoenicians in what is modern-day Lebanon (Isa 23:17; Ezek 27:3). 33 Tyre was a port and a key trading hub for various nations throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. For this reason, Tyre was constantly inhabited and operated as an economic center, shuttling commercial goods from one part of the Mediterranean to the other. Because of Tyre’s importance in trade, it provided the standard weight for exchanging shekels at the Jerusalem Temple. The Tyrian shekel, then, was the coin that would have been sitting on the tables of the moneychangers when Jesus arrived. 34 The description of the temple as an οἶκον ἐμπορίου, therefore, results in a comparison between the temple, which was supposed to be a holy place, and Tyre, a profane gentile city whose wealth nevertheless directly influenced the daily life of the temple in Jerusalem. 35 This connection is stronger if indeed audiences heard the promise of Zech 14:21 in Jesus’s words and understood the “Canaanites” referenced in that verse as “merchants.” In the final verses of Zechariah’s prophecy, he describes a completely sanctified Jerusalem and temple so that “the Canaanites shall no longer be in the house of the Lord Almighty on that day.” 36
Many scholars, therefore, suggest Jesus’s behavior in John 2:13–16 is a prophetic action. Some argue Jesus is protesting corrupt economic practices in the temple that preyed upon pilgrims traveling for Passover. In this reading, Jesus is similar to OT prophets who criticized corrupt priests who exploited God’s people by compromising with rulers. Given the exploration of purity/impurity above, however, the problem is not simply the exploitation and suffering of the poor. These problems are caused by repeated pollutions of holiness that lead to a complete disregard for God’s laws. Ezekiel explicitly criticizes priests who can no longer distinguish between pure and impure writing: And its priests nullified my law and were profaning my holy things; they were making no distinction between holy and profane, and they were making no distinction between clean and unclean, and they were hiding their eyes from my sabbaths, and I was being profaned in their midst. (22:26, NETS)
As above, God’s holiness was dangerous, and by compromising for the sake of wealth or perceived safety, priests profaned the holy place, leaving it and the people open to attack. Indeed, Ezekiel interprets the eventual destruction of the temple as the result of God’s holiness leaving Jerusalem in judgment.
In the Gospel of John, however, Jesus is not just another prophet. He is God’s very glory arriving in what was supposed to be a holy place. When he erupts and commands cultic practices to stop, Jesus reflects understandings of holiness breaking out against incursions. In this way, John’s intensification of Jesus’s reactions reflects the Gospel’s characterization of him as the location of God’s glory on earth. Just as Heliodorus was “flogged by heaven” (2 Macc 3:34) to prevent his entry into the temple treasury, Jesus uses his makeshift whip to cast out pollution. Whether or not this action included the whipping of people along with animals, it is a sudden and violent encounter that reinforces the holiness Jesus embodies. This intensity later encouraged the disciples to associate his behavior with righteous “zeal” described in Psalm 69/68.
Yet, Jesus’s behavior (like that of the prophets before him) does not require his rejection of the temple or cultic system entirely, but rather it is a revelation of its current profaned state in contrast to his own permanent holiness.
37
Indeed, such criticism may well be the result of priestly and other Jerusalem-centered leaders’ collaboration with their Roman occupiers. Richard Horsley and Tom Thatcher note,
Ever since it had been established under the Persian Empire, the temple-state in Jerusalem had served as a local instrument of imperial control and taxation. Under Herod and then especially under direct Roman supervision, the high priesthood became all the more dependent on, and submissive to, imperial rule.
38
Commanding and controlling the economy of Judea and the surrounding environs, the temple and its administrators benefited from preserving a status quo of peace with the Romans. Not all Jews were pleased with such an arrangement, however, as intra-Jewish debates and polemics, particularly from Qumran, demonstrate. 39 In his largely pro-Roman histories, Josephus details conflicts within the temple between Roman-approved leaders (kings and high priests) and the people, who resisted displays of imperial superiority as profaning the temple (J.W. 1.33.1–5; 2.1). In this conflict, Horsley and Thatcher conclude, “The priestly aristocracy at the head of the temple-state in Jerusalem thus became, effectively, the face of Roman imperial rule in Judea.” 40
Such an understanding reflects John’s association between the priests’ and Pharisees’ concern over Roman aggression in John 11:47–53. Rather than fearing the result of God’s holiness breaking out, the priests and Pharisees instead fear the Romans. In language strikingly similar to 2 Macc 5:19, John 11:48 communicates their concern: “If we should allow him to continue, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away our place and the nation (οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ ἀροῦσιν ἡμῶν καὶ τὸν τόπον καὶ τὸ ἔθνος).” Yet, 2 Macc 5:19 reminds its readers, “[T]he Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the holy place, but the place for the sake of the nation” (ἀλλ̓ οὐ διὰ τὸν τόπον τὸ ἔθνος, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ ἔθνος τὸν τόπον ὁ κύριος ἐξελέξατο). 41 As in 2 Maccabees, the temple and Jerusalem are not inherently holy, but only become so when God chooses to inhabit them. Moreover, this election is meant to benefit, rather than exploit, the nation and its people. When the priestly leadership accommodates foreign occupiers like Rome or Antiochus, they sacrifice the righteous instead of protecting them (cf. John 10:1–18; Ezek 34). Jesus, in contrast, chooses not only to die for “the nation” but dies “so that he might gather into one the dispersed children of God” (John 11:52).
This line of interpretation takes seriously the disciples’ later association of Jesus’s actions with Ps 69:9 (LXX 68:10) in John 2:17. A holy zeal drives Jesus’s actions in John 2:14–16. Wally Cirafesi suggests Jesus here takes “the priestly role of cleansing his father’s defiled temple in an act of pious ‘zeal’” that was a “defining feature of priestly figures remembered throughout Israelite and Jewish history.” 42 At the same time, Jesus is more than another pious priest in John’s narrative; he is God’s holiness come down. While righteous priests showed zeal, Jesus’s very being confronts the profaning he finds in his “father’s house.” The inability of the Jews to recognize Jesus’s revelatory behavior even in this holy space thus emphasizes the extent of the problem faced by Jesus in this Gospel. The Jews do not recognize the sign given to them because they cannot recognize Jesus who “stands in their midst” (1:26; cf. 1:11). Like the priests of Ezekiel 22, they can no longer distinguish between pure and impure, holy and profane, because their compromises with rulers have caused them to lose sight of God’s glory. Jesus will later accuse these leaders of seeking their own “glory” rather than God’s (John 5:41–44; 7:17–18; 8:54–58), thus leading them to reject him and his message. By claiming to see, these leaders reveal themselves to be blind and remain under God’s wrath (9:40–41; cf. 3:21). Jesus’s violence in John 2:14–16, therefore, coheres with ancient expectations of a holy judgment against the profane.
Yet, even as John 2:14–17 plays into these expectations, 2:18–22 cuts against them as Jesus turns to receive the violence rather than to destroy those around him. There is ultimately no bruised Heliodorus or punished Antiochus IV in John 2. Indeed, Jesus is the only person “flogged” (ἐμαστίγωσεν) in the Gospel of John, and Pilate, Rome’s representative, is described as the one performing that action (19:1). In John 2, the Gospel shifts the attention from the physical temple (“the place”) to Jesus’s body (vv. 18–22). When asked for a sign to show divine authority for his actions, Jesus tells the Jews: “Destroy this sanctuary (ναὸν), and in three days I will raise it” (2:19). Although the Jews understandably interpret Jesus’s words to be referencing the physical sanctuary within the temple precincts, the narrator clarifies for the Gospel audience: “But Jesus was speaking about the sanctuary (ναὸν) of his body. When, therefore, he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus spoke” (2:21–22). As Cirafesi observes, “Jesus’s words in 2:19 are clearly not meant as judgment on the Jerusalem temple; John actually goes out of his way in vv. 21–22 to ensure that the reader understands this.” 43 The destruction described here is not of the Jerusalem Temple, but of Jesus’s own body, a mobile sanctuary in which God’s glory resides (1:14–16). This sanctuary’s destruction, however, is not divinely caused. It is divinely received and extinguished. Rather than breaking out, Jesus’s holiness will receive the violence of Rome and the “ruler of this world” who craves death (8:44; 12:31). While these forces may claim victory (“Destroy this sanctuary”), God triumphs (“and I will raise it in three days”). The new sanctuary, then, is Jesus’s resurrected body whose holiness remains intact despite its temporary destruction. In this way, John 2:13–22 is a type of bait and switch that both reinforces Jesus’s identity as God’s glory and shows the surprising way God resolves the problem of violence and death caused by the ruler of this world.
Conclusion
When all is said and done, then, is Jesus violent or non-violent in John 2:13–22? The reading above has sought to show that today’s audiences misunderstand and misapply the passage when they force it into contemporary conversations without acknowledging ancient expectations. This passage does not justify the use of violence, but it does use violence to emphasize Jesus’s identity as God’s Holy One. Yet, while Jesus’s behavior begins with the clash resulting from profaned holiness, Jesus’s words in 2:19, and the narrator’s interpretation of them in 2:20–22, undermine these same expectations. Instead of coming in judgment that leads to destruction, Jesus comes to save the world by receiving its violence in order to show his inviolability to it (3:14–18). Jesus’s body, although polluted by death, lives; it remains a sanctuary where believers experience the divine. Here, noting the differences of degrees of violence between works like 2 Maccabees and John 2 is helpful. As Alexi-Baker argues, Jesus’s actions hardly amount to threats against the human lives within the temple. Glancy’s warning is, however, also helpful; one cannot deny Jesus’s violence altogether. Indeed, to do so would be to miss the gravity of Jesus’s self-revelation, the depth of the problem God faces in the world’s blindness, and the surprising way God responds in the person and work of Jesus.
Read with this balance, one can see that John 2:13–22 does not conflict with Jesus’s arrest scene in John 18:1–12 after all. When he is first approached by the Roman cohort and Jerusalem authorities, Jesus responds to their summons with the divine name: “I am.” His revelation causes all those gathered to “draw back and fall to the ground” (18:6). Yet, rather than continuing to dominate those around him with violence, Jesus submits to his arrest and stops Peter from inflicting more damage with his sword (18:10–12). As in John 2:13–22, therefore, Jesus first shows his holiness but then moves to receive violence rather than to inflict it upon those around him. In this way, John shows that although Jesus has the authority to judge, he repeatedly refuses to do so in order to reveal that his kingdom is “not from this world” (18:36). Instead of mimicking the world’s violence, Jesus conquers it through his death and resurrection that unleash God’s life-giving holiness for all who come to him.