Nor did the Temple-authorities now, as on the former occasion, seek to raise the populace against Him, or challenge His authority by demanding the warrant of a sign.' The contest had reached quite another stage. They heard what He said in their condemnation, and with bitter hatred in their hearts sought for some means to destroy Him. But fear of the people restrained their violence. For, marvellous indeed was the power which He wielded. With rapt attention the people hung entranced on his lips, [5099] astonished' at those new and blessed truths which dropped from them. All was so other than it had been! By His authority the Temple was cleansed of the unholy, thievish traffic which a corrupt priesthood carried on, and so, for the time, restored to the solemn Service of God; and that purified House now became the scene of Christ's teaching, when He spake those words of blessed truth and of comfort concerning the Father - thus truly realising the prophetic promise of a House of Prayer for all the nations.' [5100] And as those traffickers were driven from the Temple, and He spake, there flocked in from porches and Temple-Mount the poor sufferers - the blind and the lame - to get healing to body and soul. It was truly spring-time in that Temple, and the boys that gathered about their fathers and looked in turn from their faces of rapt wonderment and enthusiasm to the Godlike Face of the Christ, and then on those healed sufferers, took up the echoes of the welcome at His entrance into Jerusalem - in their simplicity understanding and applying them better - as they burst into Hosanna to the Son of David.'
It rang through the courts and porches of the Temple, this Children's Hosanna. They heard it, whom the wonders He had spoken and done, so far from leading to repentance and faith, had only filled with indignation. Once more in their impotent anger they sought, as the Pharisees had done on the day of His Entry, by a hypocritical appeal to His reverence for God, not only to mislead, and so to use His very love of the truth against the truth, but to betray Him into silencing those Children's Voices. But the undimmed mirror of His soul only reflected the light. [5101] These Children's Voices were Angels' Echoes, echoes of the far-off praises of heaven, which children's souls had caught and children's lips welled forth. Not from the great, the wise, nor the learned, but out of the mouth of babes and sucklings' has He perfected praise.' [5102] And this, also, is the Music of the Gospel. __________________________________________________________________
[5077] St. Mark i. 35; St. Luke v.16; St. Matt. xiv. 23; St. Luke vi. 12; ix. 28.
[5078] pro, used of the last night-watch in St. Mark i. 35.
[5079] dn sukn min, a single tree.
[5080] St. Mark.
[5081] Tristram, Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 352.
[5082] On the fig-tree generally, see the remarks on the Parable of the Barren Fig-tree, Book IV. ch. xvi.
[5083] Shebh. iv. 7.
[5084] Jer. Shebh. 35 b, last lines.
[5085] St. Luke xiii. 6-9.
[5086] Comp. St. John xi. 35-44.
[5087] St. Matt. xxi. 18. 22.
[5088] St. Mark xi. 20.
[5089] Bengel.
[5090] We remind the reader, that the expression rooting up mountains' is in common Rabbinic use as a hyperbole for doing the impossible or the incredible. For the former, see Babha B. 3 b ({hebrew}); for the latter ({hebrew}) Ber. 64 a; Sanh. 24 a; Horay. 14 a.
[5091] The other words are spurious.
[5092] So Meyer.
[5093] St. Mark xi. 25.
[5094] Ver. 26 is in all probability a spurious addition.
[5095] St. Matt. xviii. 21, 22.
[5096] St. Luke ix. 52-56.
[5097] See the full account in Book III. ch. v.
[5098] The grounds on which this second has to be distinguished from the first cleansing of the Temple, which is recorded only by St. John (ii. 13-23) have been explained on a previous occasion. They are stated in most commentaries, though perhaps not always satisfactorily. But intelligent readers can have no difficulty in gathering them for themselves. The difficulty lies not in the two purifications, nor yet in the silence of the Synoptists as to the first, since the early Jerusalem Ministry lay not within the scope of their narratives, but in the silence of the Fourth Gospel in regard to the second purification. But here we would remark that, less than any of the others, is the Fourth Gospel a history or successive narration; but, if we may so say, historical dogmatics - the Logos in the historical manifestation of His Person and Work. If so, the first included the second purification of the Temple. Again, to have introduced it, or the cursing of the fig-tree, would have been to break up the course, and mar the symmetry of the narrative (St. John xii.), which presents in successive and deepening shading the attestation of the Christ: at the Supper of Bethany, on His Entry into Jerusalem, before the Greeks in the Temple, by the Voice from Heaven before His gainsayers, and to his disciples.