John 2:19 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Destroy this temple,— The miracle which our Lord had already performed, in driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple, was sufficient to convince them of the authority by which he made this reformation, if they were to have been convinced by any miracle at all. Therefore our Lord, instead of satisfying their unreasonable demands, refers them to the great miracle of his resurrection; but refers them to it in such obscure terms, as prejudiced minds could not understand, till the prophesy itself was cleared and explained by the event; yet, if he either pointed to his body, or alluded to their commonly received opinions, one would wonder that they should have mistaken his meaning so far, as to suppose that he meant the temple in which they were at that time assembled. The temple itself was supposed to be inhabited by the Divinity, and to derive its holiness from that circumstance; but as the Divinity dwelt in the body of Christ, that body deserved the name of temple more justly than the building made with hands. One of the rabbies says expressly, that the Messiah, the holy Son of David, is the Holy of Holies; and if that opinion existed in the time of Christ, as probably it might, there could be no great obscurity in the application of this term then. By a similar figure of speech, the apostle calls the bodies of believers—the temple of God, on account of the inhabitation of the Holy Ghost. See Mark 14:58. Instead of destroy this temple, Dr. Heylin reads, ye will destroy. In the prophetic stile, says he, the imperative is often used for the future.