Jesus the Prophet

What Jesus did in the Temple the day after his arrival in Jerusalem during the Feast was not a “cleansing” of the Temple, but a prophetic protest of the Temple. It was creative and dangerous prophetic theater—not a sudden loss of temper. Jesus wasn’t cleansing the temple for it’s continued use, Jesus was protesting Temple corruption and predicting its destruction. This is why following his protest, Jesus spoke with disciples about the signs of the end—the end of the Temple the Temple age. In so doing Jesus was preparing the way for a radically new kind of Temple.