Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Matthew 21:12-22, Tables, the blind and the lame, and a fig tree
Jesus drives out the sellers and overturns the money changers' tables, heals the blind and the lame in the temple courts, and the next morning curses a leafy fig tree that withers at once.
Matthew 21:12-22, in every translation this tool compares.
In the temple courts Jesus throws out the traders, upends the tables used for changing money and selling doves, and charges that a place meant for prayer has become a hideout for thieves, drawing on Isaiah and Jeremiah. He heals blind and lame people who come to him there, and children's shouts in his honor anger the priests. The next morning he curses a fig tree that has leaves but no fruit, and it withers. He tells the amazed disciples that faith can move mountains.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/temple-and-courts\/","n":"The temple and its courts","s":"Herod's huge rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, believed to be God's dwelling, laid out in courts that kept Gentiles, women and Jewish men at set distances.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/passover-pilgrims\/","n":"Passover and the pilgrim crowds","s":"The spring festival that retold God's rescue of Israel from Egypt. Jerusalem filled with pilgrims, and hopes of freedom ran high.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/chief-priests-and-council\/","n":"Chief priests, elders and the council","s":"The Jerusalem aristocracy of priestly families and elders who ran the temple and the Sanhedrin and dealt with Rome.","r":""}
Pilgrims had to buy sacrifices and change money in Jerusalem, so the sellers were needed; the question was where the trade took place (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Wilkins puts the market in the Royal Stoa on the south side of the temple courts, where pilgrims changed money into Tyrian shekels. Prophesying the temple's fall could be fatal, as Jeremiah 26 shows and as Josephus reports of a later prophet (the cultural backgrounds notes). Blind and lame priests could not serve in the sanctuary, and the rule was in time widened to exclude all the blind and lame, so healing them in the courts made a statement (Keener); the Herod's Temple article places the blind and lame begging in the court of the Gentiles. The Sadducean priests who ran the temple were not looking for a Messiah, and spoke Greek as their first language, which is why Jesus quotes Psalm 8 in Greek (Keener). The sources read this mountain differently: Keener and the cultural backgrounds notes take moving mountains as a figure for the impossible, with the Mount of Olives in view, while Wright argues that the phrase, spoken in Jerusalem, "would naturally refer to the Temple mount."
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 21:12-17, 21:12, 21:14, 21:15-17, 21:19-20 and 21:21-22
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 21:12, 21:14, 21:16 and 21:21
- N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, ch. 9, section (iii) Jesus' Action in the Temple
- Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Matthew 21:12 and 21:14
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Herod's Temple
