‘And he was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people sought to destroy him,'
Every day Jesus returned to the Temple to preach (and to heal ‘the blind and the lame'- Matthew 21:14). Meanwhile all the leading authorities were banded together, differences forgotten, in order to find a way of destroying Him, the chief priests because He had affected their profits and their reputations, the Scribes because he had shown up their teaching and their lives, and the principal men of the people because they had no doubt yielded to the pressure of the other two parties and were concerned that there might be disorder in the city which might affect their wealth. Not being willing to go and listen to Jesus themselves, they accepted the word of their respected colleagues. So the leaders of the most religious nation on earth were banded together against the most gracious and loving man on earth, and all for the wrong reasons. Like the monkeys in the story of Mowgli they gathered together and said in unison, ‘We all say so, so it must be true'. Thus almost the whole Sanhedrin, the leading judicial authority in Jerusalem, were banded up against Him. Truth had to come second when the status quo, which benefited them all, was at stake.