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The circumstances which led to the profanation were these. The Jews who came up to the Feasts from a distance would obviously find it more convenient to purchase their sacrificial victims on the spot, and cattle markets were held in the city; but in lapse of time, when the authorities of the temple began to grow mercenary, they determined to have such a large source of profit in their own hands. The Court of the Gentiles was always held in little respect by the Jews, and it seemed to them quite justifiable to utilize it for their purpose. For about twenty days before the Feast the corridors and arcades and outer walls of the sacred enclosure were commonly occupied by cattle pens; and the solemn stillness of the precincts was broken by the unseemly confusion of the lowing of herds, and the wrangling of drovers and pilgrims bargaining for their price. Besides these there were the money changers. After the captivity the Jews of the dispersion, when they came up to the Feasts, in common with those who dwelt in Palestine, made each their offering for the temple service. There was only one coin in which this offering might be paid into the treasury — the half-shekel piece. It was intended as a safeguard to prevent the Korban being desecrated by the introduction of pieces of money upon which heathen emblems were stamped. Those pilgrims, therefore, who came from countries where non-Jewish money was current, as Babylon, Alexandria, Greece, or Rome, were compelled to procure the half-shekel by exchange. It was not only a fruitful source of gain to the bankers, who demanded an exorbitant discount; their extortion kindled the indignation of our Lord, and His ears were pained by the clinking of money and weights and balances, and the strife of words and angry recriminations, mingling with the prayers and praises of the sanctuary. But this was not all. Even the offerings of poor women, and others, whose very poverty might have exempted them from fraudulent imposition, were included in the market. The whole scene was such as would raise the righteous anger of anyone who was jealous for the honour of God's house. It was almost a worse profanation than that which made our cathedrals and churches scenes of riot and desecration in the times of Edward VI, when St. Paul's was turned into a stock exchange for merchants, and its aisles were used as common thoroughfares for both man and beast.

(H. M. Luckock, D. D.)

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KJV: And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;

WEB: They came to Jerusalem, and Jesus entered into the temple, and began to throw out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of those who sold the doves.