What does Luke 19:46 mean?
Jesus has entered the Temple Mount. The Courtyard of the Gentiles, where non-Jews are supposed to be welcome to worship God, is filled with merchants selling sacrificial necessities and trading money with exorbitant up-charges. Jesus is angry with both the way they discourage Gentiles from worshiping and how they cheat Jewish travelers who need pigeons for sacrifices and shekels to pay the temple tax.Jesus responds with a reference to Isaiah 56:6–7:
And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,Jesus then references God's strong words through Jeremiah to those who came to worship before the Babylonian captivity: "Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD" (Jeremiah 7:11).
to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
The Holy Spirit inspired Luke to write this Gospel around AD 60. This was six years before the Jews revolted against the Romans, and ten years before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple. He also inspired Luke to place this passage right after Jesus' prophecy about Jerusalem's destruction. He knew, and Jesus knew, although Luke did not, how connected the two passages are.
One reason the Jews started rebelling against the Romans in AD 66 was money. The Romans exacted exorbitant taxes against Israelites, leaving many former landowners in poverty. When the people ran out of money, Nero instructed the Judaean governor to take it from the temple. In AD 70, when the Roman army finally reached the Temple Mount, they stole the gold and silver implements and coins from the temple treasury and set fire to the temple. When the metallic plate on the fixtures melted into the seams of the walls and floor, the soldiers ripped the stones apart to dig out the gold: exactly as Jesus had prophesied (Luke 19:44).
The courtyard God designed for Gentiles—including Roman soldiers—to worship Him is instead filled with opportunistic merchants. The businessmen extort money from travelers with the approval of the priests who look on. Had the priests invited the soldiers into right worship of God, including identifying their Messiah, the Romans may not have come to the temple and stolen everything the priests accumulated.
