Image source: https://madainproject.com/antonia_fortress_according_to_josephus
Jesus said to
the Jewish religious leaders in Matthew 21, “It is written, ‘My house shall be
called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” What is here
talking about here?
Some
have argued that this means you should not have a book stall, or coffee shop at
Church. But this is talking about something much more profound than that. Jesus
is saying that the religious leaders of his day had turned his Father’s house
into a corrupt business precinct that was being overtaken by thieving
merchants, money lenders/money changers, and other corrupt people. They were taking
advantage of people who were coming to worship God at his Father’s house, the
temple in Jerusalem.
But he was
also talking prophetically here. He was also talking about what would happen in
the days when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Jesus is prophesying who
would take over the temple.
Here is an extended quote from Josephus’ book The
Wars of the Jews, that helps explain this:
CHAPTER 3. Concerning John Of
Gischala. Concerning The Zealots And The
High Priest Ananus; As Also How The
Jews Raise Seditions One
Against Another [In Jerusalem].
1.
Now upon John's entry into Jerusalem, the whole body of the people were in an
uproar, and ten thousand of them crowded about every one of the fugitives that
were come to them, and inquired of them what miseries had happened abroad, when
their breath was so short, and hot, and quick, that of itself it declared the
great distress they were in; yet did they talk big under their misfortunes, and
pretended to say that they had not fled away from the Romans, but came thither
in order to fight them with less hazard; for that it would be an unreasonable
and a fruitless thing for them to expose themselves to desperate hazards about
Gischala, and such weak cities, whereas they ought to lay up their weapons and
their zeal, and reserve it for their metropolis. But when they related to them
the taking of Gischala, and their decent departure, as they pretended, from
that place, many of the people understood it to be no better than a flight; and
especially when the people were told of those that were made captives, they
were in great confusion, and guessed those things to be plain indications that
they should be taken also. But for John, he was very little concerned for those
whom he had left behind him, but went about among all the people, and persuaded
them to go to war, by the hopes he gave them. He affirmed that the affairs of
the Romans were in a weak condition, and extolled his own power. He also jested
upon the ignorance of the unskillful, as if those Romans, although they should take
to themselves wings, could never fly over the wall of Jerusalem, who found such
great difficulties in taking the villages of Galilee, and had broken their
engines of war against their walls.
2.
These harangues of John's corrupted a great part of the young men, and puffed
them up for the war; but as to the more prudent part, and those in years, there
was not a man of them but foresaw what was coming, and made lamentation on that
account, as if the city was already undone; and in this confusion were the
people. But then it must be observed, that the multitude that came out of the
country were at discord before the Jerusalem sedition began; for Titus went
from Gischala to Cesates, and Vespasian from Cesarea to Jamnia and Azotus, and
took them both; and when he had put garrisons into them, he came back with a
great number of the people, who were come over to him, upon his giving them his
right hand for their preservation. There were besides disorders and civil wars
in every city; and all those that were at quiet from the Romans turned their
hands one against another. There was also a bitter contest between those that
were fond of war, and those that were desirous for peace. At the first this
quarrelsome temper caught hold of private families, who could not agree among
themselves; after which those people that were the dearest to one another brake
through all restraints with regard to each other, and every one associated with
those of his own opinion, and began already to stand in opposition one to
another; so that seditions arose every where, while those that were for
innovations, and were desirous of war, by their youth and boldness, were too
hard for the aged and prudent men. And, in the first place, all the people
of every place betook themselves to rapine; after which they got together in
bodies, in order to rob the people of the country, insomuch that for barbarity
and iniquity those of the same nation did no way differ from the Romans;
nay, it seemed to be a much lighter thing to be ruined by the Romans than by
themselves.
3.
Now the Roman garrisons, which guarded the cities, partly out of their
uneasiness to take such trouble upon them, and partly out of the hatred they
bare to the Jewish nation, did little or nothing towards relieving the
miserable, till the captains of these troops of robbers, being satiated with
rapines in the country, got all together from all parts, and became a band of
wickedness, and all together crept into Jerusalem, which was now become a
city without a governor, and, as the ancient custom was, received without
distinction all that belonged to their nation; and these they then received,
because all men supposed that those who came so fast into the city came out of kindness,
and for their assistance, although these very men, besides the seditions they
raised, were otherwise the direct cause of the city's destruction also; for as
they were an unprofitable and a useless multitude, they spent those provisions
beforehand which might otherwise have been sufficient for the fighting men.
Moreover, besides the bringing on of the war, they were the occasions of
sedition and famine therein.
4. There were besides these other robbers that came out
of the country, and came into the city, and joining to them those that were
worse than themselves, omitted no kind of barbarity; for they did not measure
their courage by their rapines and plunderings only, but preceded as far as
murdering men; and this not in the night time or privately, or with regard to
ordinary men, but did it openly in the day time, and began with the most
eminent persons in the city;
for the first man they meddled with was Antipas, one of the royal lineage, and
the most potent man in the whole city, insomuch that the public treasures were
committed to his care; him they took and confined; as they did in the next
place to Levias, a person of great note, with Sophas, the son of Raguel, both
which were of royal lineage also. And besides these, they did the same to the
principal men of the country. This caused a terrible consternation among the
people, and everyone contented himself with taking care of his own safety, as
they would do if the city had been taken in war.
5.
But these were not satisfied with the bonds into which they had put the men
forementioned; nor did they think it safe for them to keep them thus in custody
long, since they were men very powerful, and had numerous families of their own
that were able to avenge them. Nay, they thought the very people would perhaps
be so moved at these unjust proceedings, as to rise in a body against them; it was
therefore resolved to have them slain accordingly, they sent one John, who was
the most bloody-minded of them all, to do that execution: this man was also
called "the son of Dorcas," in the language of our country. Ten more
men went along with him into the prison, with their swords drawn, and so they
cut the throats of those that were in custody there. The grand lying pretence
these men made for so flagrant an enormity was this, that these men had had
conferences with the Romans for a surrender of Jerusalem to them; and so they
said they had slain only such as were traitors to their common liberty. Upon
the whole, they grew the more insolent upon this bold prank of theirs, as
though they had been the benefactors and saviors of the city.
6.
Now the people were come to that degree of meanness and fear, and these
robbers to that degree of madness, that these last took upon them to
appoint high priests. 4 So when they had disannulled the succession, according
to those families out of which the high priests used to be made, they ordained
certain unknown and ignoble persons for that office, that they might have their
assistance in their wicked undertakings; for such as obtained this highest of
all honors, without any desert, were forced to comply with those that bestowed
it on them. They also set the principal men at variance one with another, by several
sorts of contrivances and tricks, and gained the opportunity of doing what they
pleased, by the mutual quarrels of those who might have obstructed their
measures; till at length, when they were satiated with the unjust actions they
had done towards men, they transferred transferred their contumelious behavior
to God himself, and came into the sanctuary with polluted feet.
7.
And now the multitude were going to rise against them already; for Ananus, the
ancientest of the high priests, persuaded them to it. He was a very prudent
man, and had perhaps saved the city if he could but have escaped the hands of
those that plotted against him. These men made the temple of God a strong
hold for them, and a place whither they might resort, in order to avoid the
troubles they feared from the people; the sanctuary was now become a refuge,
and a shop of tyranny. They also mixed jesting among the miseries they
introduced, which was more intolerable than what they did; for in order to try
what surprise the people would be under, and how far their own power extended,
they undertook to dispose of the high priesthood by casting lots for it,
whereas, as we have said already, it was to descend by succession in a family.
The pretense they made for this strange attempt was an ancient practice, while
they said that of old it was determined by lot; but in truth, it was no better
than a dissolution of an undeniable law, and a cunning contrivance to seize
upon the government, derived from those that presumed to appoint governors as
they themselves pleased.
8.
Hereupon they sent for one of the pontifical tribes, which is called Eniachim,
and cast lots which of it should be the high priest. By fortune the lot so fell
as to demonstrate their iniquity after the plainest manner, for it fell upon
one whose name was Phannias, the son of Samuel, of the village Aphtha. He was a
man not only unworthy of the high priesthood, but that did not well know what
the high priesthood was, such a mere rustic was he! yet did they hail this man,
without his own consent, out of the country, as if they were acting a play upon
the stage, and adorned him with a counterfeit thee; they also put upon him the
sacred garments, and upon every occasion instructed him what he was to do. This
horrid piece of wickedness was sport and pastime with them, but occasioned the
other priests, who at a distance saw their law made a jest of, to shed tears,
and sorely lament the dissolution of such a sacred dignity.
9.
And now the people could no longer bear the insolence of this procedure, but
did all together run zealously, in order to overthrow that tyranny; and indeed
they were Gorion the son of Josephus, and Symeon the son of Gamaliel, who
encouraged them, by going up and down when they were assembled together in
crowds, and as they saw them alone, to bear no longer, but to inflict
punishment upon these pests and plagues of their freedom, and to purge the
temple of these bloody polluters of it. The best esteemed also of the high
priests, Jesus the son of Gamalas, and Ananus the son of Ananus when they were
at their assemblies, bitterly reproached the people for their sloth, and
excited them against the zealots; for that was the name they went by, as if
they were zealous in good undertakings, and were not rather zealous in the
worst actions, and extravagant in them beyond the example of others.
10.
And now, when the multitude were gotten together to an assembly, and every one
was in indignation at these men's seizing upon the sanctuary, at their rapine
and murders, but had not yet begun their attacks upon them, [the reason of
which was this, that they imagined it to be a difficult thing to suppress
these zealots, as indeed the case was,] Ananus stood in the midst of them,
and casting his eyes frequently at the temple, and having a flood of tears in
his eyes, he said, "Certainly it had been good for me to die before I
had seen the house of God full of so many abominations, or these sacred places,
that ought not to be trodden upon at random, filled with the feet of these
blood-shedding villains;…”[1]
When Jesus said
his fathers house had become a den of robbers, he was being very literal. That
is exactly what had begun to happen already in his day, probably before it
really. And this culminated in the temple becoming an open den of an actual
band of roving thieves who were some of the main antagonists in the Wars of the
Jews against Rome. These thieves took over the temple because it was the most
secure fortress possible in Jerusalem. And in doing so they brought into the
house of God “so many abominations.”
Many
Christians just assume the abomination of desolation was the Roman’s marching
up on Jerusalem. But they are in correct. The abomination of desolation began
with the revolutionaries of Israel who defiled the temple. The high priest, who
was also a revolutionary, tried to stop them, so did many of the other people
of Jerusalem. But they were not able to. The Romans of course played their part
by utterly destroying the temple once they had beaten the revolutionaries.
But the abomination
began when God’s own people allowed themselves to become corrupted. Let the
Church understand the lesson for us today, as we are now the temple of God.
“19 Or do you
not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you
have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So
glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19).
List of
References
[1] Josephus,
Flavius. The Wars of the Jews; or the history of the destruction of Jerusalem
(pp. 305-310). Kindle Edition.
