Nowhere in the texts is there the smallest indication that Jesus distanced himself from the acclamations of the crowd around him. Apparently, in entering Jerusalem on an ass’s colt Jesus was deliberately exhibiting an unmistakable sign. He wanted to come to the city as a poor, unarmed king, the messiah of peace of Zechariah 9:9 and the one who proclaimed the reign of God, as in Zechariah 14:9 (“and the LORD will become king over all the earth”). The radical rejection of all force and violence stated in Zechariah 9:10 (“He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations”) fits Jesus’ self-awareness very well. Apparently he knew Zechariah 9:9 and applied the text to himself. As we saw above (chap. 11), Jesus read his Bible with an unfathomable sensitivity to what is essential.
If Jesus, when entering the city, was acting deliberately on the words of the book of Zechariah, that, of course, presumes that in that hour he made himself publicly known as the Messiah. We will have to speak in detail later about his messianic awareness (see chap. 19, “Jesus’ Sovereign Claim”). Here, we can anticipate this much: Jesus was extremely reticent about using the word “messiah.” The concept could all too easily be misunderstood in a political sense. In addition, Jesus’ claim dissolved a sometimes superficial notion of the messiah. The Old Testament itself offered a sufficient basis for a deeper understanding of the concept and for transforming, purifying, and seeing it in a new light—quite apart from the fact that in the time of Jesus the expectation of a messiah was much more varied and nuanced than is often supposed. We may take it as given that when the people shouted “blessed is the [now] coming kingdom of our ancestor David,” Jesus would have understood it in a deeper sense than many of those who were shouting it. He had to take all possible misunderstanding on himself.
At any rate, taking possession of the city would have been so important to him that in this instance he accepted the possibility of being misunderstood. The solemn entrance into the city was connected with his understanding of the reign of God. That reign was breaking forth. It had to be proclaimed everywhere, but especially in the capital city. And it had to be not only proclaimed but made present in a sign by him as representative of the reign of God. That was the reason for the action in the temple that came next and was intimately connected with his taking possession of the city.5
If Jesus wanted to enter Jerusalem as the humble king of Zechariah 9:9, that ultimately presumes that he was aware that everything would be decided in Jerusalem. A confrontation would ensue. Probably he had no illusions about the outcome of that confrontation, but he had to summon Jerusalem to decision because there the temple stood, there was the center of Israel, there the people of God gathered for the greatest feast of the year. There, at the Passover feast, all Israel was represented, and the proclamation of the reign of God must necessarily be as public as possible. This certainly suggested a provocative entry into the city.
I also assume that the evangelists correctly interpreted Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem. He wanted to establish a symbol, against the background of the book of Zechariah. The question of the extent to which the developing situation as he approached the city exerted external pressure to establish this sign, or to what degree he himself deliberately performed it, is not at all decisive, since in both cases it would be true that his entry became a vocal, resonant sign-action (cf. Luke 19:40), and he willed it to be so.6
The Temple Action
When Jesus entered Jerusalem as Messiah and representative of the reign of God, to proclaim that reign in the capital city as a climax to all his work in Galilee, he could not avoid the temple. The ancient principle obtained: the king, or the ruler, is responsible for the temple.7 So the action in the temple associated with the entry into Jerusalem is no accident. The proclamation of the reign of God in Jerusalem also affected the temple and its surroundings; in fact, it applied to the temple above all. Therefore the temple action almost had to follow. In Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels it occurs immediately after the entry into the city, and in Mark’s gospel it is closely associated with it. Mark relates it as follows:
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. (Mark 11:15-18)
Obviously all this took place neither in the priests’ court nor in the courts of the men or of the women. It happened on the edges of the gigantic “court of the Gentiles” surrounding the central part of the temple. There, on the south side, in the “royal hall,” stood the booths of those who sold doves and changed money. The doves were sold to the poor who could not afford a sacrificial animal; the money changers for a fee exchanged coins for Tyrian double drachmas and tetradrachmas, the only money with which one could pay the annual temple tax.8 The extensive court of the Gentiles, however, was not only populated by those visiting the temple; it was also crossed by people looking to avoid walking the long way around. They used the temple area as a shortcut into the city or between its different quarters.
It is completely impossible that Jesus could have “cleansed” this huge area. Consequently, interpreters prefer to speak now of a “temple action” by Jesus. He must have demonstratively overturned tables and booths and scolded people carrying loads who took shortcuts over the temple mount. He could only establish a sign. And such a sign demanded also a word of interpretation. What did he say? Currently, biblical scholars are increasingly convinced that this interpretative word was Jesus’ so-called temple saying. What does that mean? According to Mark, when Jesus was being interrogated by the Council, “false witnesses” came forward and asserted, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands’” (Mark 14:58). In that form it is an incredible saying. It contrasts the gigantic temple, probably the greatest in the world at that time, with another temple not made by human hands, that is, established by God. And Jesus himself will build it. We can understand that even the authors of the gospels were alarmed by that saying. Mark attributes it to false witnesses. But they did not agree, and so their statements were useless. Luke, in depicting the interrogation, simply omits the scene with the temple saying (Luke 22:66-69). Matthew softens it; in his gospel the false witnesses do not assert that Jesus said he would tear down the temple but that he could do it (Matt 26:61). Finally, John interprets the saying as referring to the “temple of his body,” that is, to Jesus’ resurrection (John 2:19-21).
Apparently, then, the early church had problems with the saying, and understandably so, since, after all, it was the Romans who destroyed the temple, and it was not rebuilt. But even the attempts to come to terms with the difficult temple saying and interpret it correctly show that there must have been such a saying. We cannot reconstruct it precisely. It must have referred to the temple of the end time. The Old Testament—and especially the book of Zechariah—had already assumed that at some time there would be such a temple in the midst of a Jerusalem gleaming with holiness.9 It is also clear that this eschatological temple is ultimately God’s creation. But Jesus must have said that the rebuilding of the final temple was already beginning with him. That, at any rate, would correspond exactly to his idea of the coming of the reign of God and the role he himself was to play in it. The temple action would then be an indication, a sign, in fact the initiation of this new building of the temple of the end time.10