telling the story ~ confrontation
Composition version: yes.
lyrics
what is this merchandise
this is a house of prayer
the voice resounds
whose are these flashing eyes
tables fly everywhere
a whip comes down
a hush overcomes the people
could this be the one
prophet priest and temple
all rolled into one....
who does he think he is
some kind of voice from God
or something more
speaking so negative
dividing our house of cards
we can't ignore
we can't ignore
can't ignore
this can't be the one
we can't ignore
can't ignore
we're gonna take him down....
narrative
About three years after His baptismal anointing at the Jordan, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for one of Israel's major festivals, Passover, which was (to put it simply) a celebration of the rescue from Egypt.
Those three years had been eventful. The Messiah had turned out to be a rather controversial figure, repeatedly coming into collision with the Pharisees, a group that had no official standing but had almost universal sway at the popular religious level. Their interpretations of the Mosaic law were widely considered the norm, and in a society like first century Israel, that was highly significant.
The controversy of Jesus went beyond the Pharisees, however. The Sadducees, who held most of the native political power (including the priesthood), were threatened by the countercultural program of Jesus. He was no revolutionary, calling for their violent overthrow, but He threatened them at a more fundamental level: He said the kingdom of God was present in Himself, and God's rule, as evident in His life and program, didn't look much like theirs. Besides, anyone with a strong vision of God's coming kingdom was a perceived threat to the present established order. The implication was inevitable: if God must establish His kingdom through His Messiah, the people presently in charge are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And Jesus' day to day service in Israel did nothing to dispel that implication - His activities of forgiving sins and providing communion with God by His own authority undercut the centrality of the Sadducee-run temple. Not that this was a tip of the hat to the Sadducees' rivals the Pharisees: Jesus collided with them over how to define "the righteous" (those in good standing with Israel's covenant God), over His authority to override their Sabbath concerns in favour of His own agenda, and more. It seemed that Jesus was butting heads with everyone who could possibly pose a threat to Him.
And this all came to a head on that last Passover. Actually, that is putting things too passively: it was Jesus Himself, as always, who brought things to a head. He strode into the temple and began overthrowing tables and driving out the animals being sold there for sacrifice. The temple had a "court of the Gentiles," meaning a place for non-Jews to worship, but it had been transformed into a marketplace. Perhaps it was thought that convenience for God's own people was more important than giving room to outsiders. Jesus responded by calling the temple a "den of thieves" rather than "a house of prayer for all nations," as the prophets had described its intention.
Although Jesus was not violent, this is as close as He came. And the effect of such an action would have been a combination of things which must have mortified the establishment: the implication that God was as interested in Gentiles as Jews; the charge of false worship implicit in the identification of the sellers with thieves; the flagrant undercutting of the authority of those in charge; the dramatic disruption of the temple's affairs; and more generally, a sort of slap in the face to all involved.
No, this would not do. This man had to be stopped, once and for all.