Mark 14:58

We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(58) This temple.—The word here, as in Matthew 26:61 and John 2:19, is that which indicates generally the sanctuary or shrine, and here the “Holy Place” of the Temple.

Made with hands . . . made without hands.—The antithesis is peculiar to St. Mark, but we may, perhaps, trace an echo of it in the “more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands,” of Hebrews 9:11.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

14:53-65 We have here Christ's condemnation before the great council of the Jews. Peter followed; but the high priest's fire-side was no proper place, nor his servants proper company, for Peter: it was an entrance into temptation. Great diligence was used to procure false witnesses against Jesus, yet their testimony was not equal to the charge of a capital crime, by the utmost stretch of their law. He was asked, Art thou the Son of the Blessed? that is, the Son of God. For the proof of his being the Son of God, he refers to his second coming. In these outrages we have proofs of man's enmity to God, and of God's free and unspeakable love to man.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

See this fully explained in the notes at Matthew 26:57-75.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

58. We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands—On this charge, observe, first, that eager as His enemies were to find criminal matter against our Lord, they had to go back to the outset of His ministry, His first visit to Jerusalem, more than three years before this. In all that He said and did after that, though ever increasing in boldness, they could find nothing. Next, that even then, they fix only on one speech, of two or three words, which they dared to adduce against Him. Further, they most manifestly pervert the speech of our Lord. We say not this because in Mark's form of it, it differs from the report of the words given by the Fourth Evangelist (Joh 2:18-22)—the only one of the Evangelists who reports it all, or mentions even any visit paid by our Lord to Jerusalem before His last—but because the one report bears truth, and the other falsehood, on its face. When our Lord said on that occasion, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," they might, for a moment, have understood Him to refer to the temple out of whose courts He had swept the buyers and sellers. But after they had expressed their astonishment at His words, in that sense of them, and reasoned upon the time it had taken to rear the temple as it then stood, since no answer to this appears to have been given by our Lord, it is hardly conceivable that they should continue in the persuasion that this was really His meaning. But finally, even if the more ignorant among them had done so, it is next to certain that the ecclesiastics, who were the prosecutors in this case, did not believe that this was His meaning. For in less than three days after this they went to Pilate, saying, "Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, after three days I will rise again" (Mt 27:63). Now what utterance of Christ known to His enemies, could this refer to, if not to this very saying about destroying and rearing up the temple? And if so, it puts it beyond a doubt that by this time, at least, they were perfectly aware that our Lord's words referred to His death by their hands and His resurrection by His own. But this is confirmed by Mr 14:59.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

See Poole on "Mark 14:53"

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

We heard him say,.... In a discourse of his, recorded in John 2:19,

I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands; which was a very false testimony; for Christ did not say be would destroy any temple at all, only put the Jews on doing it; much less did he point at, or design the temple of Jerusalem, but his own body; nor did he use the distinction of a temple, made with and without hands; nor did he affirm that he would build another; only said, he would raise up in three days, that which they should destroy. By this testimony these witnesses would suggest, that Christ had a design upon their temple to demolish it, and that he must be a sorcerer, or a magician, to pretend to build a temple without hands in three days time; See Gill on Matthew 26:61.

Geneva Study Bible

We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Mark 14:58. ὅτι, etc.: Mk.’s version of the testimony borne by the witnesses differs in important respects from that of Mt.; viz., by the insertion of the words τὸν χειροποίητον and ἄλλον ἀχειροποίητον. Mt.’s form doubtless comes nearest to what the witnesses actually said. Mk.’s puts into their mouths, to a certain extent, the sense in which he and his fellow-Christians understood Christ’s saying, viz., as a prophecy that the material temple would be superseded by a spiritual temple = the community of believers in Jesus. If they had really spoken, as here reported, the falsehood would have lain rather in the animus of their statement than in its meaning: the animus of men who regarded it as impious to speak of the temple of God being destroyed, as contemptuous to characterise it as hand-made, and as blasphemous to suggest that another could take its place.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

58. We heard him say] The statements now made are given with more detail by St Mark than any other of the Evangelists. He alone tells us they said that they had heard our Lord declare, “He would destroy the Temple made with hands and in three days build another made without hands.” In the opposition made with hands and made without hands we have proof of the falseness of the accusation.

Mark 14:58

Vincent's Word Studies

Made with hands

Mark adds this detail; also made without hands, and the following sentence.