EXPLORE IT! - John 2:13-25

Jesus goes to Jerusalem for the Passover, the first of three Passovers mentioned in John. The second being around the time that he feeds the 5,000 people with the loaves and fishes, and the third being the final Passover during which he is crucified. 

The text says that during the Passover, Jesus entered the Temple courts and saw people selling livestock and exchanging money. 

So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market! 

John says his disciples remembered Psalm 69:9, "zeal for your house will consume me," perhaps a bit of wordplay interposing the ideas of "demanding all my attention” and “leading to my destruction." Whether the disciples remembered this during the incident or afterward is not clear. They were, after all, a bit slow at times.

Jesus is also asked to perform a "miraculous sign" to prove he has authority to expel the money changers. The religious leaders want to distract him from his message by getting him to perform magic tricks for them.

But he replies, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." 

The people believe he is talking about the official Temple building, but John states that Jesus meant his body, and that this is also what his disciples came to believe after his resurrection. 

John then says that during the Passover Feast Jesus did perform miraculous signs, but does not list them, and that they caused people to believe in him, but yet he would "not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men." 

Perhaps John included this statement to show that Jesus possesses a knowledge of people's hearts and minds, an attribute of God. 

Now, John mentions the incident with the money changers as occurring at the start of Jesus' ministry, while the synoptic gospels have it occurring shortly before his crucifixion. 

Some scholars insist that this instead shows that Jesus fought with the money changers twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of his ministry. 

The incident in the synoptics occurs in Mark 11:12-19, Matthew 21:12-17, and Luke 19:45-48. 

Perhaps John has relocated the story to the beginning to show that Jesus' arrest was for the raising of Lazarus in John 11, not the incident in the Temple.