What does Matthew 21:17 mean?
Jerusalem was crowded with travelers because of the Passover holiday, making lodging there difficult. Fortunately, Jesus also had good friends in the town of Bethany, about two miles away. Jesus likely spent the nights of that week at the home of the siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, returning to Jerusalem each day.Jesus' relationship with these three may be the closest thing to a "friendship" seen in the Gospels. He stayed in their home when He was travelling and had frank and honest conversations with both Martha (Luke 10:38–42) and Mary (John 11:28–37). Matthew does not include the event, but Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead not long before this in a display of His authority and power over death (John 11).
Matthew 21:12–17 describes Jesus' entrance into the massive Jewish temple in Jerusalem during what we now call Holy Week. He immediately drives a marketplace out of the temple and overturns the money-changers' tables. He also heals some blind and lame people and refuses to silence some children who are praising Him as the Son of David. He quotes part of a psalm to chief priests and scribes who find this inappropriate.
Jesus fulfills a prophecy from Zechariah about the coming of the king to Jerusalem by riding in on a donkey. The people celebrate and praise Him as the Messiah. Jesus drives the marketers and moneychangers out of the temple and heals some people. He curses a fig tree and tells the disciples nothing will be impossible for them with faith. Jesus forces cowardly and hypocritical religious leaders to back down with a question about John the Baptist. He then exposes their fraudulent spirituality with two parables about vineyards. Jesus applies to Himself a psalm about a rejected stone being made the cornerstone by the Lord.
