Mark 11:17

Jesus quoted Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 to explain his actions. The quotation from Isaiah highlights the temple’s importance for Gentiles. The temple’s design included the Court of the Gentiles, a place meant to help Gentiles come and worship the God of Israel and become part of God’s people.

Jesus judged Israel’s leaders because they were preventing Gentiles from properly using this part of the temple. They had turned a place meant to be a house of prayer for all nations into a den of robbers through dishonest business and profiteering.

The largest area of the temple in Jerusalem was the Court of the Gentiles. Covered porches surrounded it. This was probably where the selling took place.

• In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem as the Messiah is closely associated with the cleansing of the temple (see 11:15–17; compare Matthew 21:1–17; Luke 19:28–48). In John's Gospel, the cleansing of the temple occurs early in the ministry of Jesus (John 2:13–22).

  It is uncertain whether there were two separate cleansings of the temple (an early event recorded in John and this later event recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke) or just one cleansing recorded at different times by John and the other gospel writers.

• In Mark’s Gospel, the story of the cursed fig tree (Mark 11:12–14, 20–25) surrounds the story of Jesus cleansing the temple (11:15–19). This literary pattern, called an inclusio (a structure that places one story around another like bookends), shows that the cleansing of the temple should be understood as an act of judgment, not simply an attempt to reform the temple.

• This section focuses on the relationship between Jesus and the temple in Jerusalem. In Mark’s Gospel, all the events and teachings connected with Jerusalem are gathered in 11:1–16:8.

• The section ends with the second long teaching discourse of Jesus (13:1–37) (see 4:1–34). In this discourse, Jesus speaks about the destruction of the temple and the coming of the Son of Man. This teaching is the high point of many warnings in 11:1–13:37 about God’s coming judgment on Jerusalem and the temple (see especially 11:12–25 and 12:1–12).