Matthew 21:13 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

But ye have made it a den of thieves— The Jews, reckoning the lower and outer court of the temple as a place of no sanctity, because it was designed for accommodatingthe Gentile proselytes in their worship, not only kept the daily market there, of such things as were necessary in offering sacrifices, but suffered the common porters, in going from one part of the city to another, to pass through it with their burdens, for the sake of shortening their way: but as these abuses occasioned great disturbances to the proselytes, Jesus reformed them a second time, see John 2:14 telling the people around him that the Gentiles worshipped there by divine appointment as well as the Jews; the temple being ordained of God to be the house of prayer for all nations, Mark 11:17 and to prove this, he cited Isaiah 56:7 from which the inference was plain, that they were guilty of a gross profanation of the temple, who carried on any traffick even in the courts of the Gentiles; much more they, who made gain, committed frauds and extortions in the prosecution of their traffick; because thus they turned God's house of prayer into a den of thieves. The expression of a den of thieves may allude to those gangs of robbers which at that time infested Judea, and used to hide themselves in the holes and dens of the mountains, as appears from several passages in Josephus's history; not but that our blessed Saviour here plainly refers to Jeremiah 7:11. St. Jerome, who thinks this one of our Lord's greatest miracles, in his commentary on the place, gives a lively description of several artifices whereby the avaricious priests endeavoured to extort money. "In the temple of Jerusalem, (says he) the finest and most spacious of any in the world, where the Jews from almost all the countries of the earth assembled, sacrifices of different kinds, some for the rich, and others for the poorer sort, were offered according to the law; but, because those who came from distant countries often wanted such sacrifices, the priests took the advantage of buying up allthe beasts appointed for that purpose, sold them to those who wanted them, and received them again at their hands; and because some who came to worship were so very poor that they could not even purchase the lesser sacrifices, namely birds, the priests placed bankers in thecourts of the temple, to lend money upon security; but finding that they could not do this without transgressing the law, they had recourse to another device, namely, to appoint a kind of pawn-brokers, instead of bankers; that is to say, men, who forthe advancing a small sum, took fruits, herbs, and other commodities, instead of interest-money. Our Lord, therefore, having observed this method of traffick carried on by the priests in his Father's house, not only expelled their agents, but arraigned them also as a band of thieves; for he is really a robber who makes lucre of religion, and whose worship is not so much for the veneration he has for God, as the opportunity of making his own interest and advantage." See Jerome on the place, and bishop Smallbrooke's Vindication of our Saviour's Miracles, vol. 1 Chronicles 4 p. 130.