19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
20The Jews therefore said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple! Will you raise it up in three days?”21But he spoke of the temple of his body.22When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this, and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
20 The Jews therefore said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple! Will you raise it up in three days?”
21 But he spoke of the temple of his body.
22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this, and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
TYNDALETyndale New Testament (1534)
19 Iesus answered and sayd vnto them: destroye this temple and in thre dayes I will reare it vp agayne.
20 Then sayde the Iewes: xlvi. yeares was this temple abuyldinge: and wylt thou reare it vp in thre dayes:
21 But he spake of the temple of his body.
22 Assone therfore as he was rysen from deeth agayne his disciples remembred that he thus sayde. And they beleved the scripture and the wordes which Iesus had sayde.
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GNVGeneva Bible (1599)
19 Iesus answered, and said vnto them, Destroy this Temple, and in three daies I will raise it vp againe.
20 Then said the Iewes, Fourtie and sixe yeeres was this Temple a building, and wilt thou reare it vp in three daies?
21 But he spake of the temple of his bodie.
22 Assoone therefore as he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembred that hee thus sayde vnto them: and they beleeued the Scripture, and the worde which Iesus had saide.
Mark 14:58(v19)“We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.’ ”
Mark 15:29(v19)Those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads, and saying, “Ha! You who destroy the temple, and build it in three days,
Matthew 27:40(v19)and saying, “You who destroy the temple, and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!”
Matthew 26:60-61(v19)and they found none. Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none. But at last two false witnesses came forward, and…
1 Corinthians 6:19(v21)Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
Show all 40 cross-references
Matthew 12:40(v19)For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart…
Romans 8:11(v19)But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life…
John 10:17-18(v19)Therefore the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down by…
John 12:16(v22)His disciples didn’t understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written…
Acts 2:32(v19)This Jesus God raised up, to which we all are witnesses.
1 Corinthians 3:16(v21)Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that God’s Spirit lives in you?
Acts 2:24(v19)whom God raised up, having freed him from the agony of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it.
Acts 3:15(v19)and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, to which we are witnesses.
Ephesians 2:20-22(v21)being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom the whole building,…
Colossians 1:19(v21)For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him,
Colossians 2:9(v21)For in him all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily,
Hebrews 8:2(v21)a servant of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.
Psalms 16:10(v22)For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither will you allow your holy one to see corruption.
Luke 24:7-8(v22)saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again?” They…
John 1:14(v21)The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 14:26(v22)But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I said…
John 16:4(v22)But I have told you these things, so that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you about them. I didn’t tell you these things…
2 Corinthians 6:16(v21)What agreement does a temple of God have with idols? For you are a temple of the living God. Even as God said, “I will dwell in them and…
1 Peter 3:18(v19)Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the…
Mark 8:31(v19)He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and…
John 11:25(v19)Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies.
Romans 6:4(v19)We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,…
1 Corinthians 15:3-4(v19)For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was…
1 Peter 2:4-5(v21)coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious. You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual…
Matthew 27:63(v19)saying, “Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’
John 5:19(v19)Jesus therefore answered them, “Most certainly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing. For…
Acts 3:26(v19)God, having raised up his servant Jesus, sent him to you first to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your wickedness.”
Romans 4:24(v19)but for our sake also, to whom it will be accounted, who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead,
1 Corinthians 15:12(v19)Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
Colossians 2:12(v19)having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the…
John 2:17(v22)His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will eat me up.”
Acts 11:16(v22)I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John indeed baptized in water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit.’
Luke 24:44(v22)He said to them, “This is what I told you, while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets,…
John 2:11(v22)This beginning of his signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
John 20:8-9(v22)So then the other disciple who came first to the tomb also entered in, and he saw and believed. For as yet they didn’t know the Scripture,…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (18 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv19–2019. Destroy this temple. This is an allegorical mode…
19. Destroy this temple. This is an allegorical mode of expression; and Christ intentionally spoke with that degree of obscurity, because he reckoned them unworthy of a direct reply; as he elsewhere declares that he speaks to them in parables, because they are unable to comprehend the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom, (Matthew 13:13.) But first he refuses to them the sign which they demanded, either because it would have been of no advantage, or because he knew that it was not the proper time. Some compliances he occasionally made even with their unreasonable requests, and there must have been a strong reason why he now refused. Yet that they may not seize on this as a pretense for excusing themselves, he declares that his power will be approved and confirmed by a sign of no ordinary value; for no greater approbation of the divine power in Christ could be desired than his resurrection from the dead. But he conveys this information figuratively, because he does not reckon them worthy of an explicit promise. In short, he treats unbelievers as they deserve, and at the same time protects himself against all contempt. It was not yet made evident, indeed, that they were obstinate, but Christ knew well what was the state of their feelings.
But it may be asked, since he performed so many miracles, and of various kinds, why does he now mention but one? I answer, he said nothing about all the other miracles, First, because his resurrection alone was sufficient to shut their mouth: Secondly, he was unwilling to expose the power of God to their ridicule; for even respecting the glory of his resurrection he spoke allegorically: Thirdly, I say that he produced what was appropriate to the case in hand; for, by these words, he shows that all authority over the Temple belongs to him, since his power is so great in building the true Temple of God.
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This temple. Though he uses the word temple in accommodation to the present occurrence, yet the body of Christ is justly and appropriately called a temple. The body of each of us is called a tabernacle, (2 Corinthians 5:4; 2 Peter 1:13,) because the soul dwells in it; but the body of Christ was the abode of his Divinity. For we know that the Son of God clothed himself with our nature in such a manner that the eternal majesty of God dwelt in the flesh which he assumed, as in his sanctuary.
The argument of Nestorius, who abused this passage to prove that it is not one and the same Christ who is God and man, may be easily refuted. He reasoned thus: the Son of God dwelt in the flesh, as in a temple; therefore the natures are distinct, so that the same person was not God and man. But this argument might be applied to men; for it will follow that it is not one man whose soul dwells in the body as in a tabernacle; and, therefore, it is folly to torture this form of expression for the purpose of taking away the unity of Person in Christ. It ought to be observed, that our bodies also are called temples of God, (1 Corinthians 3:16, and 1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16) but it is in a different sense, namely, because God dwells in us by the power and grace of his Spirit; but in Christ the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, so that he is truly God manifested in flesh, (1 Timothy 3:16.)
I will raise it up again. Here Christ claims for himself the glory of his resurrection, though, in many passages of Scripture, it is declared to be the work of God the Father. But these two statements perfectly agree with each other; for, in order to give us exalted conceptions of the power of God, Scripture expressly ascribes to the Father that he raised up his Son from the dead; but here, Christ in a special manner asserts his own Divinity. And Paul reconciles both.
If the Spirit of Him, that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you, (Romans 8:11.)
While he makes the Spirit the Author of the resurrection, he calls Him indiscriminately sometimes the Spirit of Christ, and sometimes the Spirit of the Father.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn v21That is, of his body.
That is, of his body.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv19–2219 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this…
19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
Ver. 19. Destroy this temple] This was the same in effect with that sign of the prophet Jonah, Mat 12:39-40. His resurrection was a plain demonstration of his Deity, Superas evadere ad auras, hic labor, hoc opus est, befitting a God, Rom 1:4.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv19–22Our Saviour refuseth to give them any sign, but…
Our Saviour refuseth to give them any sign, but that of his resurrection the third day from the dead. This was the sign to which he afterwards refers the Pharisees, Mat 12:39; Luk 11:29. Our Saviour’s words must not be understood as commanding or licensing them to destroy him, but as foretelling what they would do. It is in Scripture very ordinary to use the imperative mood for the future tense of the indicative; see Gen 42:18; Deu 32:50; Isa 8:9,10; 54:1; Joh 13:27.
Destroy, is as much as, I know you will destroy, or, If you do destroy this temple, I will build it up in three days. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is ordinarily in Scripture attributed to the Father; but here Christ saith he would do it; and the Spirit, by whom he is said to have been quickened, equally proceedeth both from the Father and the Son. Nor is this the only text where it is attributed to Christ; see Joh 20:17,18. It was the work of the Trinity, out of itself, and so the work of all the three Persons. These words were three years after this made a great charge against Christ, Mat 26:61; but they reported them thus, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days. He said only, this temple, meaning his body.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv19–22Jesus answered and said unto them,.... In a dark…
Jesus answered and said unto them,.... In a dark and enigmaticai way, though very properly and pertinently; since it was with respect to the temple, and his power over it, and right to purge it, that a sign was required of him:
destroy this temple; pointing, as it were, with his finger to his body; for of that he spake, as appears from Joh 2:21, the dissolution of which, by death he means, the separation of his soul from his body, though not of either from his divine person: and it is to be understood, not as a command, or a grant, or as an exhortation, and advice to them, to kill his body; but rather as a prophecy of what they would do; or as putting the case, that should they, as he knew they would, destroy his body, then says he, as a sign of having a power to do what I have done,
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in three days I will raise it again; by which he would appear to be the Son of God, with power, that had power of laying down his life, and taking it up again; and is the very sign, namely, his resurrection from the dead on the third day, he gives the Jews, when they sought one of him at another time, and upon another occasion.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv19, 20, 22This temple - Doubtless pointing, while he spoke, to…
This temple - Doubtless pointing, while he spoke, to his body, the temple and habitation of the Godhead.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv19–22Verse 19. Destroy this temple] τον ναον τουτον, This…
Verse 19. Destroy this temple] τον ναον τουτον, This very temple; perhaps pointing to his body at the same time.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv19, 20, 22Destroy this temple - The evangelist informs us Joh…
Destroy this temple - The evangelist informs us Joh 2:21 that by “temple,” here, he meant his body. It is not improbable that he pointed with his finger to his body as he spoke. The word “destroy,” used here in the “imperative,” has rather the force of the “future.” Its meaning may thus be expressed: “You are now profaners of the temple of God. You have defiled the sanctuary; you have made it a place of traffic. You have also despised my authority, and been unmoved by the miracles which I have already performed. But your wickedness will not end here. You will oppose me more and more; you will reject and despise me, until in your wickedness you will take my life and ‘destroy’ my body.” Here was therefore a distinct prediction both of his death and the cause of it. The word “temple,” or “dwelling,” was not unfrequently used by the Jews to denote the “body” as being the residence of the spirit, 2Co 5:1. Christians are not unfrequently called the temple of God, as being those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells on earth, 1Co 3:16-17; 1Co 6:19; 2Co 6:16. Our Saviour called his body a temple in accordance with the common use of language, and more particularly because “in him the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily,” Col 2:9. The temple at Jerusalem was the appropriate dwelling-place of God. His visible presence was there especially manifested, 2Ch 36:15; Psa 76:2. As the Lord Jesus was divine - as the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him so his body might be called a “temple.”
In three days I will raise it up - The Jews had asked a “miracle” of him in proof of his authority that is, a proof that he was the Messiah. He tells them that a full and decided proof of that would be his “resurrection from the dead.” Though they would not be satisfied by any other miracle, yet by this they ought to be convinced that he came from heaven, and was the long-expected Messiah. To the same evidence that he was the Christ he refers them on other occasions. See Mat 12:38-39. Thus early did he foretell his death and resurrection, for at the beginning of his work he had a clear foresight of all that was to take place. This knowledge shows clearly that he came from heaven, and it evinces, also, the extent of his love that he was “willing” to come to save us, knowing clearly what it would cost him. Had he come “without” such an expectation of suffering, his love might have been far less; but when he fully knew all that was before him, when he saw that it would involve him in contempt and death, it shows compassion “worthy of a God” that he was willing to endure the load of all our sorrows, and die to save us from death everlasting. When Jesus says, “‘I’ will raise it up,” it is proof, also, of divine power. A mere “man” could not say this. No deceased “man” can have such power over his body; and there must have been, therefore, in the person of Jesus a nature superior to human to which the term “I” could be applied, and which had power to raise the dead - that is, which was divine.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn v20Six and forty years, &c. This many understand of…
Six and forty years, &c. This many understand of the time the second temple was building, from the edict of Cyrus to the sixth year of Darius Hystaspes. Others, of the enlarging and beautifying the temple, which was begun by Herod the great, forty-six years before the Jews spoke this to our Saviour. (Witham) --- Interpreters are much embarrassed by these words; as the building of the temple, which then existed, had been finished in much less than 46 years. Herod renewed the temple from the foundations, and spent in that work only nine years and a half. It was begun 46 years before the first Pasch at which our Saviour appeared. (Usher, ad an. Mundi 3987.) --- But this prince, according to Josephus, continued to make new building and embellishments to the very time in which the Jews uttered these words: it is now 46 years, &c.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv19–22Destroy this temple, &c.--(See on Mar 14:58-59).
Destroy this temple, &c.--(See on Mar 14:58-59).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv19–2219. Destroy this temple—Our Lord gives them a sign,…
19. Destroy this temple—Our Lord gives them a sign, and at the same time a test. They are welcome to try the experiment. It was a suitable sign too; for as his mastery over the temple was the very point in question, he tells them he can rebuild the temple in a much shorter time than they can destroy it. Herein he asserts, as the eternal Son of God, his absolute omnipotence. It is this they understand; and they are so deeply impressed with the utterance that it meets him afterwards as a charge, namely, at his trial before their tribunal! That this was a true but not the only meaning will soon appear.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv19–2219. Destroy this temple] It is S. Matthew (Mat_26:61)…
19. Destroy this temple] It is S. Matthew (Mat_26:61) and S. Mark (Mar_14:58, see notes) who tell us that this saying was twisted into a charge against Christ, but they do not record the saying. S. John, who does record the saying, does not mention the charge. Such coincidence can scarcely be designed, and is therefore evidence of the truth of both statements. See on Joh_18:11. The word used in these three verses for ‘temple’ means the central sacred building (naos), whereas that used in Joh_2:14 means the whole sacred enclosure (hieron). The latter is never used figuratively.
raise it up] In the charge His accusers turn this into build, a word not appropriate to raising a dead body. There is no contradiction between Christ’s declaration and the ordinary N.T. theology, that the Son was raised by the Father. The expression is figurative throughout; and ‘I and My Father are one.’ Comp. Joh_10:18. This throwing out seeds of thought for the future, which could not bear fruit at the time, is one of the characteristics of Christ’s teaching.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv19–22(19) Here, as in Mat_12:38, a sign is given…
(19) Here, as in Mat_12:38, a sign is given referring to His resurrection. The sign is in its nature an enigma, meaningless to him who does not seek to understand it, but full of meaning for him who earnestly examines into the thing signified, and in such a form as impresses itself on the memory and educates the moral powers. We have had an example of this enigmatic teaching in Joh_1:15; Joh_1:27; Joh_1:30. We shall meet with others. (Comp. John 4, 6; Joh_16:25.) The enigma turns in the present case upon the double sense of the word “temple.” It meant the sacred shrine of the Deity, the Holy and Most Holy place, as distinct from the wider Temple area. But the true shrine of the Deity was the body of the Incarnate Word. The Temple of wood and stone was but the representative of the Divine Presence. That Presence was then actually in their midst. They had no reverence for the one; for, like its outer courts, it had become a house of merchandise, and was fast becoming a den of thieves. This very demand for an outward sign, while all around them feel a spiritual power, shows they have as little reverence for the other. They will destroy the real shrine; the shrine of wood and stone even will not be left to represent a Presence no longer among them. He will raise up the temple of His body the third day, and in that resurrection will be the foundation stone of the spiritual temple for the world. The use of the word “temple” by the Jews in this double sense is attested by their interpretation of the Old Testament. We have an example of the use of “tabernacle” in a parallel sense in Joh_1:14 (comp. 2Pe_1:13-14), and the full idea of a spiritual worship and presence in Joh_4:21-24. The sign may have been suggested by the double thought then present—the Jews destroying the sanctity of the material Temple, the disciples seeing in Him one consumed by zeal for it. (Comp. 1Co_3:16-17.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv20, 22Vers. 20, 21. The immediate reference of the words…
Vers. 20, 21. The immediate reference of the words to the building before them was only one of a thousand misapplications of the words of Jesus. The seeds of truth which his words contain would take root in after days. Meanwhile the Jews answered and said taking the obvious and literal sense of the words, and treating them with an ill-concealed irony, if not scoff, to which our Lord made no replyIn forty and six years was this temple built as we see it today. This is one of the most important chronological data for the life of our Lord. Herod the Great, according to Josephus ("Ant.," 15:11 1), commenced the rebuilding of the second temple in the autumn of the eighteenth year of his reign. We find that his first year reckoned from Nisan, A.U.C. 717-718. Consequently, the eighteenth year must have commenced between Nisan, A.U.C. 734-735 and 735-736. The forty-sixth year after this would make the. Passover at which this speech was delivered the spring of A.U.C. 781 (Wieseler, "Chronicles Synopsis of the Four Gospels," translation; and Herzog, "Encyc.," 21:546. The fact that Josephus, in his "Bell. Jud:," 1:21, gives the fifteenth year of Herod"s reign instead of the eighteenth, is shown by Wieseler to be an error of the transcriber, see p. 152, note), which, if we compare with the other hints, is a fixed point from which to reckon the birth year and death year of our Lord. The "about thirty years old" of the Lord at his baptism throws us to about A.U.C. 751, B.C. 2, for the year of his birth, and if there be only one Passover mentioned in John"s Gospel between this and the last Passover, it gives A.U.C. 783 for the year of his death. This date is at least coincident with the date derived from the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, as that of the commencement of the mission of John (see my examination of these dates in appendix to "John the Baptist"). The temple which Herod began to repair in the eighteenth year of his reign was not completed until A.D. 64, under Herod Agrippa II, a very short period before its utter destruction. The irony and scorn are manifest: Wilt thou raise it up in three days? John shows, in ver. 21, that, in the deep sense in which our Lord used the words, he abundantly justified his promise. But he ekeinov , the Lord, not the people, not the disciplesspake of the temple of his body. This is the reflection which was made upon the word of Jesus by the evangelists in after days. Even Mark (Mar_14:58) reveals the presence of a spiritual interpretation of the words by some of his unsympathetic listeners. It must not be forgotten that, in the synoptists, we find the presence of the idea that his service was a temple service, and that he was greater than the temple. (Mat_12:6; cf. also Heb_3:6 1Co_12:12, 27 6:15 Rom_12:5 Eph_4:12 Eph_1:22, Eph_1:23; with Eph_2:19-22) Nor must it be forgotten that the Logos itself was, in the figurative language of Philo, spoken of as the house, or temple, of God. Later rabbinical representations also describe "the body of man as the temple in which the Shechinah operates" (Wunsche). A difficulty arises from the Lord"s having claimed in these words to be on the point of raising himself from the dead, whereas elsewhere his resurrection is referred to the mighty power of God, as in ver. 22; Act_2:24 Act_3:15 Act_4:10 Rom_4:24 Gal_1:1 Eph_1:20, etc. Without doubt, God and the Father, the Supreme Power, was thus seen in living activity; but the Divine nature of Christ not infrequently so steps forward into his consciousness that he can say, "I and the Father are one;" and (Joh_10:17, Joh_10:18) "I will lay down my life that I may take it again". (cf. Eph_4:8-10)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson1891 · Public DomainOn v1919–22. Destroy this temple. His own body. The sign…
19–22. Destroy this temple. His own body. The sign that he would give the Jewish nation was his Resurrection. The Jews did not understand him, nor his own disciples, until after he rose from the dead.
Forty and six years. It had been forty-six years since Herod the Great began the reconstruction of the temple, and it was not yet entirely completed. When Jesus was on trial before the Sanhedrim, these words were brought up as blasphemy.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v19
John
THE DESTROYERS AND THE RESTORER
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Joh 2:19.
This is our Lord’s answer to the Jewish request for a sign which should warrant His action in cleansing the Temple. There are two such cleansings recorded in the Gospels; this one His first public act, and another, omitted by John, but recorded in the other Gospels, which was almost His last public act.
It has been suggested that these are but two versions of one incident; and although there is no objection in principle to admitting the possibility of that explanation, yet in fact it appears to me insufficient and unnecessary. For each event is appropriate in its own place. In each there is a distinct difference in tone. The incident recorded in the present chapter has our Lord’s commentary, ‘Make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise’; in that recorded in the Synoptic Gospels the profanation is declared as greater, and the rebuke is more severe. The ‘house of merchandise’ has become, by their refusal to render to Him what was His, ‘a den of thieves.’ In the later incident there is a reference in our Lord’s quotation from the Old Testament to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Kingdom. There is no such reference here. In the other Gospels there is no record of this question which the Jews asked, nor of our Lord’s significant answer, whilst yet a caricatured and mistaken version of that answer was known to the other Evangelists, and is put by them into the mouths of the false witnesses at our Lord’s trial. They thus attest the accuracy of our narrative even while they seem not to have known of the incident.
All these things being taken into account, I think that we have to do with a double, of which there are several instances in the Gospels, the same event recurring under somewhat varied circumstances, and reflecting varied aspects of truth. But it is to our Lord’s words in vindication of His right to cleanse the Temple rather than to the incident on which they are based that I wish to turn your attention now: ‘Destroy this Temple,’ said our Lord, as His sufficient and only answer to the demand for a sign, ‘and in three days I will raise it up.’
Now these words, enigmatical as they are, seem to me to be very profound and significant; and I wish, on this Easter Sunday, to look at them as throwing a light upon the gladness of this day. They suggest to me three things: I find in them, first, an enigmatical forecast of our Lord’s own history; second, a prophetic warning of Israel’s; and last, a symbolical foreshadowing of His world-wide work as the Restorer of man’s destructions. ‘Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’
I. First then, I think, we see here an enigmatical forecast of our Lord’s own history.
Notice, first, that marvellous and unique consciousness of our Lord’s as to His own dignity and nature. ‘He spake of the temple of His body.’ Think that here is a man, apparently one of ourselves, walking amongst us, living the common life of humanity, who declares that in Him, in an altogether solitary and peculiar fashion, there abides the fulness of Deity. Think that there has been a Man who said, ‘In this place is One greater than the Temple.’ And people have believed Him, and do believe Him, and have found that the tremendous audacity of the words is simple verity, and that Christ is, in inmost reality, all which the Temple was but in the poorest symbol. In it there had dwelt, though there dwelt no longer at the time when He was speaking, a material and symbolical brightness, the expression of something which, for want of a better name, we call the ‘presence of God.’ But what was that flashing fire between the cherubim that brooded over the Mercy-seat, with a light that was lambent and lustrous as the light of love and of life-what was that to the glory, moulded in meekness and garbed in gentleness, the glory that shone, merciful and hospitable and inviting-a tempered flame on which the poorest, diseased, blind eyes could look, and not wince-from the face and from the character of Jesus Christ the Lord? He is greater than the Temple, for in Him, in no symbol but in reality, abode and abides the fulness of that unnameable Being whom we name Father and God. And not only does the fulness abide, but in Him that awful Remoteness becomes for us a merciful Presence; the infinite abyss and closed sea of the divine nature hath an outlet, and becomes a ‘river of water of life.’ And as the ancient name of that Temple was the ‘Tent of Meeting,’ the place where Israel and God, in symbolical and ceremonial form, met together, so, in inmost reality in Christ’s nature, Manhood and Divinity cohere and unite, and in Him all of us, the weak, the sinful, the alien, the rebellious, may meet our Father. ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ ‘In this place is One greater than the Temple.’
And so this Jewish Peasant, at the very beginning of His earthly career, stands up there, in the presence of the ancestral sanctities and immemorial ceremonials which had been consecrated by all these ages and commanded by God Himself, and with autocratic hand sweeps them all on one side, as one that should draw a curtain that the statue might be seen, and remains poised Himself in the vacant place, that all eyes may look upon Him, and on Him alone. ‘Destroy this Temple . . . . He spake of the temple of His body.’
Still further, notice how here we have, at the very beginning of our Lord’s career, His distinct prevision of how it was all going to end. People that are willing to honour Jesus Christ, and are not willing to recognise His death as the great purpose for which He came, tell us that, like as with other reformers and heroes and martyrs, His death was the result of the failure of His purpose. And some of them talk to us very glibly, in their so-called ‘Lives of Jesus Christ’ about the alteration in Christ’s plan which came when He saw that His message was not going to be received. I do not enter upon all the reasons why such a construction of Christ’s work cannot hold water, but here is one-for any one who believes this story before us-that at the very beginning, before He had gone half a dozen steps in His public career, when the issues of the experiment, if it was a man that was making the experiment, were all untried; when, if it were merely a martyr-enthusiast that was beginning his struggle, some flickering light of hope that He would be received of His brethren must have shone, or He would never have ventured upon the path-that then, with no mistake, with no illusion, with no expectation of a welcome and a Hosanna, but with the clearest certitude of what lay before Him, our Lord beheld and accepted His Cross. Its shadow fell upon His path from the beginning, because the Cross was the purpose for which He came. ‘To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world,’ said He-when the reality of it was almost within arm’s length of Him-’to bear witness to the Truth,’ and His bearing witness to the truth was perfected and accomplished on the Cross. Here, at the very commencement of His career, we have it distinctly set forth, ‘the Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many.’
And, brethren, that fact is important, not only because it helps us to understand that His death is the centre of His work, but also because it helps us to a loving and tender thought of Him, how all His life long, with that issue distinctly before Him, He journeyed towards it of His own loving will; how every step that He took on earth’s flinty roads, taken with bleeding and pure feet, He took knowing whither He was going. This Isaac climbs the mountain to the place of sacrifice, with no illusions as to what He is going up the mountain for. He knows that He goes up to be the lamb of the offering, and knowing it, He goes. Therefore let us love Him with love as persistent as was His own, who discerning the end from the beginning, willed to be born and to live because He had resolved to die, for you and me and every man.
And then, further, we have here our Lord’s claim to be Himself the Agent of His own resurrection. ‘I will raise it up in three days.’ Of course, in Scripture, we more frequently find the Resurrection treated as being the result of the power of God the Father. We more ordinarily read that Christ was raised; but sometimes we read, as here, that Christ rises, and we have solemn words of His own, ‘I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.’ Think of a man saying, ‘I am going to bring My own body from the dust of death,’ and think of the man who said that doing it. If that is true, if this prediction was uttered, and being uttered was fulfilled-what then? I do not need to answer the question. My brother, this day declares that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. ‘Destroy this Temple’-there is a challenge-’and in three days I will raise it up’; and He did it. And He is the Lord of the Temple as well as the Temple. Down on your knees before Him, with all your hearts and with all your confidence, and worship, and trust, and love for evermore ‘the Second Man,’ who ‘is the Lord from Heaven!’
II. Now let us turn to the other aspects of these words. I think we see here, in the next place, a prophetic warning of the history of the men to whom He was speaking.
There must be a connection between the interpretation of the words which our Evangelist assures us is the correct one, and the interpretation which would naturally have occurred to a listener, that by ‘this Temple’ our Lord really meant simply the literal building in which He spoke. There is such a connection, and though our Lord did not only mean the Temple, He did mean the Temple. To say so is not forcing double meanings in any fast and loose fashion upon Scripture, nor playing with ambiguities, nor indulging in any of the vices to which spiritualising interpretation of Scripture leads, but it is simply grasping the central idea of the words of my text. Rightly understood they lead us to this: ‘The death of Christ was the destruction of the Jewish Temple and polity, and the raising again of Christ from the dead on the third day was the raising again of that destroyed Theocracy and Temple in a new and nobler fashion.’ Let us then look for a moment, and it shall only be for a moment, at these two thoughts.
If any one had said to any of that howling mob that stood round Christ at the judgment-seat of the High Priest, and fancied themselves condemning Him to death, because He had blasphemed the Temple: ‘You, at this moment, are pulling down the holy and beautiful house in which your fathers praised; and what you are doing now is the destruction of your national worship and of yourselves,’ the words would have been received with incredulity; and yet they were simple truth. Christ’s death destroyed that outward Temple. The veil was ‘rent in twain from the top to the bottom’ at the moment He died; which was the declaration indeed that henceforward the Holiest of All was patent to the foot of every man, but was also the declaration that there was no more sanctity now within those courts, and that Temple, and priesthood, and sacrifice, and altar, and ceremonial and all, were antiquated. That ‘which was perfect having come,’ Christ’s death having realised all which Temple-worship symbolised, that which was the shadow was put away when the substance appeared.
And in another fashion, it is also true that the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, inflicted by Jewish hands, was the destruction of the Jewish worship, in the way of natural sequence and of divine chastisement. When the husbandmen rejected the Son who was sent ‘last of all,’ there was nothing more for it but that they should be ‘cast out of the vineyard,’ and the firebrand which the Roman soldier, forty years afterwards, tossed into the Holiest of All, and which burned the holy and beautiful house with fire, was lit on the day when Israel cried ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’
Oh, brethren! What a lesson it is to us all of how blind even so-called religious zeal may be; how often it is true that men in their madness and their ignorance destroy the very institutions which they are trying to conserve! How it warns us to beware lest we, unknowing what we are about, and thinking that we are fighting for the honour of God, may really all the while be but serving ourselves and rejecting His message and His Messenger!
And then let me remind you that another thing is also true, that just as the Jewish rejection of Christ was their own rejection as the people of God, and their attempted destruction of Christ the destruction of the Jewish Temple, so the other side of the truth is also here, viz. that His rising again is the restoration of the destroyed Temple in nobler and fairer form. Of course the one real Temple is the body of Jesus Christ, as we have said, where sacrifice is offered, where God dwells, where men meet with God. But in a secondary and derivative sense, in the place of the Jewish Temple has come the Christian Church, which is, in a far deeper and more inward fashion, what that ancient system aspired to be.
Christ has builded up the Church on His Resurrection. On His Resurrection, I say, for there is nothing else on which it could rest. If men ask me what is the great evidence of Christ’s Resurrection, my answer is-the existence in the world of a Church. Where did it come from? How is it possible to conceive that without the Resurrection of Jesus Christ such a structure as the Christian society should have been built upon a dead man’s grave? It would have gone to pieces, as all similar associations would have gone. What had happened after that moment of depression which scattered them every man to his own, and led some of them to say, with pathetic use of the past tense to describe their vanished expectations, ‘We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel’? What was the force that instead of driving them asunder drew them together? What was the power that, instead of quenching their almost dead hopes, caused them to flame up with renewed vigour heaven-high? How came it that that band of cowardly, dispirited Jewish peasants, who scattered in selfish fear and heart-sick disappointment, were in a few days found bearding all antagonism, and convinced that their hopes had only erred by being too faint and dim? The only answer is in their own message, which explained it all: ‘Him hath God raised from the dead, whereof we are all witnesses.’
The destroyed Temple disappears, and out of the dust and smoke of the vanishing ruins there rises, beautiful and serene, though incomplete and fragmentary and defaced with many a stain, the fairer reality, the Church of the living Christ. ‘Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’
III. Lastly, we have here a foreshadowing of our Lord’s world-wide work as the Restorer of man’s destructions.
Man’s folly, godlessness, worldliness, lust, sin, are ever working to the destruction of all that is sacred in humanity and in life, and to the desecrating of every shrine. We ourselves, in regard to our own hearts, which are made to be the temples of the ‘living God,’ are ever, by our sins, shortcomings, and selfishness, bringing pollution into the holiest of all; ‘breaking down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers,’ and setting up the abomination of desolation in the holy places of our hearts. We pollute them all-conscience, imagination, memory, will, intellect. How many a man listening to me now has his nature like the facade of some of our cathedrals, with the empty niches and broken statues proclaiming that wanton desecration and destruction have been busy there?
My brother! what have you done with your heart? ‘Destroy this temple.’ Christ spoke to men who did not know what they were doing; and He speaks to you. It is the inmost meaning of the life of many of you. Hour by hour, day by day, action by action, you are devastating and profaning the sanctities of your nature, and the sacred places there where God ought to live.
Listen to His confident promise. He knows that in me He is able to restore to more than pristine beauty all which I, by my sin, have destroyed; to reconsecrate all which I, by my profanity, have polluted; to cast out the evil deities that desecrate and deform the shrine; and to make my poor heart, if only I will let Him come in to the ruined chamber, a fairer temple and dwelling-place of God.
‘In three days,’ does He do it? In one sense-Yes! Thank God! the power that hallows and restores the desecrated and cast-down temple in a man’s heart, was lodged in the world in those three days of death and resurrection. The fact that He ‘died for our sins,’ the fact that He was ‘raised again for our justification,’ are the plastic and architectonic powers which will build up any character into a temple of God.
And yet more than ‘forty and six years’ will that temple have to be ‘in building.’ It is a lifelong task till the top-stone be brought forth. Only let us remember this: Christ, who is Architect and Builder, Foundation and Top-stone; ay! and Deity indwelling in the temple, and building it by His indwelling-this Christ is not one of those who ‘begin to build and are not able to finish.’ He realises all His plans. There are no ruined edifices in ‘the City’; nor any half-finished fanes of worship within the walls of that great Jerusalem whose builder and maker is Christ.
If you will put yourselves in His hands, and trust yourselves to Him, He will take away all your incompleteness, and will make you body, soul, and spirit, temples of the Lord God; as far above the loftiest beauty and whitest sanctity of any Christian character here on earth as is the building of God, ‘the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ above ‘the earthly house of this tabernacle.’
He will perfect this restoring work at the last, when His Word to His servant Death, as He points him to us, shall be ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On v20General Information:
General Information:
Verses 21 and 22 are not part of the main story line, but instead they comment on the story and tell about something that happens later. (See: End of Story)
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forty-six years ... three days
"46 years ... 3 days" (See: Numbers)
you will raise it up in three days?
This remark appears in the form of a question to show that the Jewish authorities understand that Jesus wants to tear down the temple and build it again in three days. "Raise" is an idiom for "establish." AT: "you will establish it in three days?" or "you cannot possibly rebuild it in three days!" (See: Rhetorical Question and Idiom)
believed
Here "believe" means to accept something or trust that it is true.
this statement
This refers back to Jesus' statement in John 2:19.
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv19, 222:19-21 Destroy this temple: Herod the Great began reconstructing…
2:19-21 Destroy this temple: Herod the Great began reconstructing the Temple’s magnificent structure in 20 BC, and work on it continued until AD 64. This explains why Jesus’ audience was amazed when he claimed he could destroy and rebuild it in a few days. However, Jesus spoke figuratively of his own body as the temple where God was present (see 1:14, 51)—his body was destroyed and restored in three days through the resurrection, rendering the Jerusalem Temple and its services obsolete. Later, at his trial, Jesus’ symbolic reference to destroying the Temple was used as evidence of blasphemy (Mark 14:58).
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv19–20 19. Destroy this temple. This is an allegorical mode…
19. Destroy this temple. This is an allegorical mode of expression; and Christ intentionally spoke with that degree of obscurity, because he reckoned them unworthy of a direct reply; as he elsewhere declares that he speaks to them in parables, because they are unable to comprehend the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom, (Matthew 13:13.) But first he refuses to them the sign which they demanded, either because it would have been of no advantage, or because he knew that it was not the proper time. Some compliances he occasionally made even with their unreasonable requests, and there must have been a strong reason why he now refused. Yet that they may not seize on this as a pretense for excusing themselves, he declares that his power will be approved and confirmed by a sign of no ordinary value; for no greater approbation of the divine power in Christ could be desired than his resurrection from the dead. But he conveys this information figuratively, because he does not reckon them worthy of an explicit promise. In short, he treats unbelievers as they deserve, and at the same time protects himself against all contempt. It was not yet made evident, indeed, that they were obstinate, but Christ knew well what was the state of their feelings.
But it may be asked, since he performed so many miracles, and of various kinds, why does he now mention but one? I answer, he said nothing about all the other miracles, First, because his resurrection alone was sufficient to shut their mouth: Secondly, he was unwilling to expose the power of God to their ridicule; for even respecting the glory of his resurrection he spoke allegorically: Thirdly, I say that he produced what was appropriate to the case in hand; for, by these words, he shows that all authority over the Temple belongs to him, since his power is so great in building the true Temple of God.
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This temple. Though he uses the word temple in accommodation to the present occurrence, yet the body of Christ is justly and appropriately called a temple. The body of each of us is called a tabernacle, (2 Corinthians 5:4; 2 Peter 1:13,) because the soul dwells in it; but the body of Christ was the abode of his Divinity. For we know that the Son of God clothed himself with our nature in such a manner that the eternal majesty of God dwelt in the flesh which he assumed, as in his sanctuary.
The argument of Nestorius, who abused this passage to prove that it is not one and the same Christ who is God and man, may be easily refuted. He reasoned thus: the Son of God dwelt in the flesh, as in a temple; therefore the natures are distinct, so that the same person was not God and man. But this argument might be applied to men; for it will follow that it is not one man whose soul dwells in the body as in a tabernacle; and, therefore, it is folly to torture this form of expression for the purpose of taking away the unity of Person in Christ. It ought to be observed, that our bodies also are called temples of God, (1 Corinthians 3:16, and 1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16) but it is in a different sense, namely, because God dwells in us by the power and grace of his Spirit; but in Christ the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, so that he is truly God manifested in flesh, (1 Timothy 3:16.)
I will raise it up again. Here Christ claims for himself the glory of his resurrection, though, in many passages of Scripture, it is declared to be the work of God the Father. But these two statements perfectly agree with each other; for, in order to give us exalted conceptions of the power of God, Scripture expressly ascribes to the Father that he raised up his Son from the dead; but here, Christ in a special manner asserts his own Divinity. And Paul reconciles both.
If the Spirit of Him, that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you, (Romans 8:11.)
While he makes the Spirit the Author of the resurrection, he calls Him indiscriminately sometimes the Spirit of Christ, and sometimes the Spirit of the Father.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v21 That is, of his body.
That is, of his body.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv19–22 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this…
19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
Ver. 19. Destroy this temple] This was the same in effect with that sign of the prophet Jonah, Mat 12:39-40. His resurrection was a plain demonstration of his Deity, Superas evadere ad auras, hic labor, hoc opus est, befitting a God, Rom 1:4.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv19–22 Our Saviour refuseth to give them any sign, but…
Our Saviour refuseth to give them any sign, but that of his resurrection the third day from the dead. This was the sign to which he afterwards refers the Pharisees, Mat 12:39; Luk 11:29. Our Saviour’s words must not be understood as commanding or licensing them to destroy him, but as foretelling what they would do. It is in Scripture very ordinary to use the imperative mood for the future tense of the indicative; see Gen 42:18; Deu 32:50; Isa 8:9,10; 54:1; Joh 13:27.
Destroy, is as much as, I know you will destroy, or, If you do destroy this temple, I will build it up in three days. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is ordinarily in Scripture attributed to the Father; but here Christ saith he would do it; and the Spirit, by whom he is said to have been quickened, equally proceedeth both from the Father and the Son. Nor is this the only text where it is attributed to Christ; see Joh 20:17,18. It was the work of the Trinity, out of itself, and so the work of all the three Persons. These words were three years after this made a great charge against Christ, Mat 26:61; but they reported them thus, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days. He said only, this temple, meaning his body.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv19–22 Jesus answered and said unto them,.... In a dark…
Jesus answered and said unto them,.... In a dark and enigmaticai way, though very properly and pertinently; since it was with respect to the temple, and his power over it, and right to purge it, that a sign was required of him:
destroy this temple; pointing, as it were, with his finger to his body; for of that he spake, as appears from Joh 2:21, the dissolution of which, by death he means, the separation of his soul from his body, though not of either from his divine person: and it is to be understood, not as a command, or a grant, or as an exhortation, and advice to them, to kill his body; but rather as a prophecy of what they would do; or as putting the case, that should they, as he knew they would, destroy his body, then says he, as a sign of having a power to do what I have done,
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in three days I will raise it again; by which he would appear to be the Son of God, with power, that had power of laying down his life, and taking it up again; and is the very sign, namely, his resurrection from the dead on the third day, he gives the Jews, when they sought one of him at another time, and upon another occasion.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv19, 20, 22 This temple - Doubtless pointing, while he spoke, to…
This temple - Doubtless pointing, while he spoke, to his body, the temple and habitation of the Godhead.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv19–22 Verse 19. Destroy this temple] τον ναον τουτον, This…
Verse 19. Destroy this temple] τον ναον τουτον, This very temple; perhaps pointing to his body at the same time.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv19, 20, 22 Destroy this temple - The evangelist informs us Joh…
Destroy this temple - The evangelist informs us Joh 2:21 that by “temple,” here, he meant his body. It is not improbable that he pointed with his finger to his body as he spoke. The word “destroy,” used here in the “imperative,” has rather the force of the “future.” Its meaning may thus be expressed: “You are now profaners of the temple of God. You have defiled the sanctuary; you have made it a place of traffic. You have also despised my authority, and been unmoved by the miracles which I have already performed. But your wickedness will not end here. You will oppose me more and more; you will reject and despise me, until in your wickedness you will take my life and ‘destroy’ my body.” Here was therefore a distinct prediction both of his death and the cause of it. The word “temple,” or “dwelling,” was not unfrequently used by the Jews to denote the “body” as being the residence of the spirit, 2Co 5:1. Christians are not unfrequently called the temple of God, as being those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells on earth, 1Co 3:16-17; 1Co 6:19; 2Co 6:16. Our Saviour called his body a temple in accordance with the common use of language, and more particularly because “in him the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily,” Col 2:9. The temple at Jerusalem was the appropriate dwelling-place of God. His visible presence was there especially manifested, 2Ch 36:15; Psa 76:2. As the Lord Jesus was divine - as the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him so his body might be called a “temple.”
In three days I will raise it up - The Jews had asked a “miracle” of him in proof of his authority that is, a proof that he was the Messiah. He tells them that a full and decided proof of that would be his “resurrection from the dead.” Though they would not be satisfied by any other miracle, yet by this they ought to be convinced that he came from heaven, and was the long-expected Messiah. To the same evidence that he was the Christ he refers them on other occasions. See Mat 12:38-39. Thus early did he foretell his death and resurrection, for at the beginning of his work he had a clear foresight of all that was to take place. This knowledge shows clearly that he came from heaven, and it evinces, also, the extent of his love that he was “willing” to come to save us, knowing clearly what it would cost him. Had he come “without” such an expectation of suffering, his love might have been far less; but when he fully knew all that was before him, when he saw that it would involve him in contempt and death, it shows compassion “worthy of a God” that he was willing to endure the load of all our sorrows, and die to save us from death everlasting. When Jesus says, “‘I’ will raise it up,” it is proof, also, of divine power. A mere “man” could not say this. No deceased “man” can have such power over his body; and there must have been, therefore, in the person of Jesus a nature superior to human to which the term “I” could be applied, and which had power to raise the dead - that is, which was divine.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v20 Six and forty years, &c. This many understand of…
Six and forty years, &c. This many understand of the time the second temple was building, from the edict of Cyrus to the sixth year of Darius Hystaspes. Others, of the enlarging and beautifying the temple, which was begun by Herod the great, forty-six years before the Jews spoke this to our Saviour. (Witham) --- Interpreters are much embarrassed by these words; as the building of the temple, which then existed, had been finished in much less than 46 years. Herod renewed the temple from the foundations, and spent in that work only nine years and a half. It was begun 46 years before the first Pasch at which our Saviour appeared. (Usher, ad an. Mundi 3987.) --- But this prince, according to Josephus, continued to make new building and embellishments to the very time in which the Jews uttered these words: it is now 46 years, &c.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv19–22 Destroy this temple, &c.--(See on Mar 14:58-59).
Destroy this temple, &c.--(See on Mar 14:58-59).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv19–22 19. Destroy this temple—Our Lord gives them a sign,…
19. Destroy this temple—Our Lord gives them a sign, and at the same time a test. They are welcome to try the experiment. It was a suitable sign too; for as his mastery over the temple was the very point in question, he tells them he can rebuild the temple in a much shorter time than they can destroy it. Herein he asserts, as the eternal Son of God, his absolute omnipotence. It is this they understand; and they are so deeply impressed with the utterance that it meets him afterwards as a charge, namely, at his trial before their tribunal! That this was a true but not the only meaning will soon appear.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv19–22 19. Destroy this temple] It is S. Matthew (Mat_26:61)…
19. Destroy this temple] It is S. Matthew (Mat_26:61) and S. Mark (Mar_14:58, see notes) who tell us that this saying was twisted into a charge against Christ, but they do not record the saying. S. John, who does record the saying, does not mention the charge. Such coincidence can scarcely be designed, and is therefore evidence of the truth of both statements. See on Joh_18:11. The word used in these three verses for ‘temple’ means the central sacred building (naos), whereas that used in Joh_2:14 means the whole sacred enclosure (hieron). The latter is never used figuratively.
raise it up] In the charge His accusers turn this into build, a word not appropriate to raising a dead body. There is no contradiction between Christ’s declaration and the ordinary N.T. theology, that the Son was raised by the Father. The expression is figurative throughout; and ‘I and My Father are one.’ Comp. Joh_10:18. This throwing out seeds of thought for the future, which could not bear fruit at the time, is one of the characteristics of Christ’s teaching.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv19–22 (19) Here, as in Mat_12:38, a sign is given…
(19) Here, as in Mat_12:38, a sign is given referring to His resurrection. The sign is in its nature an enigma, meaningless to him who does not seek to understand it, but full of meaning for him who earnestly examines into the thing signified, and in such a form as impresses itself on the memory and educates the moral powers. We have had an example of this enigmatic teaching in Joh_1:15; Joh_1:27; Joh_1:30. We shall meet with others. (Comp. John 4, 6; Joh_16:25.) The enigma turns in the present case upon the double sense of the word “temple.” It meant the sacred shrine of the Deity, the Holy and Most Holy place, as distinct from the wider Temple area. But the true shrine of the Deity was the body of the Incarnate Word. The Temple of wood and stone was but the representative of the Divine Presence. That Presence was then actually in their midst. They had no reverence for the one; for, like its outer courts, it had become a house of merchandise, and was fast becoming a den of thieves. This very demand for an outward sign, while all around them feel a spiritual power, shows they have as little reverence for the other. They will destroy the real shrine; the shrine of wood and stone even will not be left to represent a Presence no longer among them. He will raise up the temple of His body the third day, and in that resurrection will be the foundation stone of the spiritual temple for the world. The use of the word “temple” by the Jews in this double sense is attested by their interpretation of the Old Testament. We have an example of the use of “tabernacle” in a parallel sense in Joh_1:14 (comp. 2Pe_1:13-14), and the full idea of a spiritual worship and presence in Joh_4:21-24. The sign may have been suggested by the double thought then present—the Jews destroying the sanctity of the material Temple, the disciples seeing in Him one consumed by zeal for it. (Comp. 1Co_3:16-17.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv20, 22 Vers. 20, 21. The immediate reference of the words…
Vers. 20, 21. The immediate reference of the words to the building before them was only one of a thousand misapplications of the words of Jesus. The seeds of truth which his words contain would take root in after days. Meanwhile the Jews answered and said taking the obvious and literal sense of the words, and treating them with an ill-concealed irony, if not scoff, to which our Lord made no replyIn forty and six years was this temple built as we see it today. This is one of the most important chronological data for the life of our Lord. Herod the Great, according to Josephus ("Ant.," 15:11 1), commenced the rebuilding of the second temple in the autumn of the eighteenth year of his reign. We find that his first year reckoned from Nisan, A.U.C. 717-718. Consequently, the eighteenth year must have commenced between Nisan, A.U.C. 734-735 and 735-736. The forty-sixth year after this would make the. Passover at which this speech was delivered the spring of A.U.C. 781 (Wieseler, "Chronicles Synopsis of the Four Gospels," translation; and Herzog, "Encyc.," 21:546. The fact that Josephus, in his "Bell. Jud:," 1:21, gives the fifteenth year of Herod"s reign instead of the eighteenth, is shown by Wieseler to be an error of the transcriber, see p. 152, note), which, if we compare with the other hints, is a fixed point from which to reckon the birth year and death year of our Lord. The "about thirty years old" of the Lord at his baptism throws us to about A.U.C. 751, B.C. 2, for the year of his birth, and if there be only one Passover mentioned in John"s Gospel between this and the last Passover, it gives A.U.C. 783 for the year of his death. This date is at least coincident with the date derived from the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, as that of the commencement of the mission of John (see my examination of these dates in appendix to "John the Baptist"). The temple which Herod began to repair in the eighteenth year of his reign was not completed until A.D. 64, under Herod Agrippa II, a very short period before its utter destruction. The irony and scorn are manifest: Wilt thou raise it up in three days? John shows, in ver. 21, that, in the deep sense in which our Lord used the words, he abundantly justified his promise. But he ekeinov , the Lord, not the people, not the disciplesspake of the temple of his body. This is the reflection which was made upon the word of Jesus by the evangelists in after days. Even Mark (Mar_14:58) reveals the presence of a spiritual interpretation of the words by some of his unsympathetic listeners. It must not be forgotten that, in the synoptists, we find the presence of the idea that his service was a temple service, and that he was greater than the temple. (Mat_12:6; cf. also Heb_3:6 1Co_12:12, 27 6:15 Rom_12:5 Eph_4:12 Eph_1:22, Eph_1:23; with Eph_2:19-22) Nor must it be forgotten that the Logos itself was, in the figurative language of Philo, spoken of as the house, or temple, of God. Later rabbinical representations also describe "the body of man as the temple in which the Shechinah operates" (Wunsche). A difficulty arises from the Lord"s having claimed in these words to be on the point of raising himself from the dead, whereas elsewhere his resurrection is referred to the mighty power of God, as in ver. 22; Act_2:24 Act_3:15 Act_4:10 Rom_4:24 Gal_1:1 Eph_1:20, etc. Without doubt, God and the Father, the Supreme Power, was thus seen in living activity; but the Divine nature of Christ not infrequently so steps forward into his consciousness that he can say, "I and the Father are one;" and (Joh_10:17, Joh_10:18) "I will lay down my life that I may take it again". (cf. Eph_4:8-10)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On v19 19–22. Destroy this temple. His own body. The sign…
19–22. Destroy this temple. His own body. The sign that he would give the Jewish nation was his Resurrection. The Jews did not understand him, nor his own disciples, until after he rose from the dead.
Forty and six years. It had been forty-six years since Herod the Great began the reconstruction of the temple, and it was not yet entirely completed. When Jesus was on trial before the Sanhedrim, these words were brought up as blasphemy.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v19
John
THE DESTROYERS AND THE RESTORER
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Joh 2:19.
This is our Lord’s answer to the Jewish request for a sign which should warrant His action in cleansing the Temple. There are two such cleansings recorded in the Gospels; this one His first public act, and another, omitted by John, but recorded in the other Gospels, which was almost His last public act.
It has been suggested that these are but two versions of one incident; and although there is no objection in principle to admitting the possibility of that explanation, yet in fact it appears to me insufficient and unnecessary. For each event is appropriate in its own place. In each there is a distinct difference in tone. The incident recorded in the present chapter has our Lord’s commentary, ‘Make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise’; in that recorded in the Synoptic Gospels the profanation is declared as greater, and the rebuke is more severe. The ‘house of merchandise’ has become, by their refusal to render to Him what was His, ‘a den of thieves.’ In the later incident there is a reference in our Lord’s quotation from the Old Testament to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Kingdom. There is no such reference here. In the other Gospels there is no record of this question which the Jews asked, nor of our Lord’s significant answer, whilst yet a caricatured and mistaken version of that answer was known to the other Evangelists, and is put by them into the mouths of the false witnesses at our Lord’s trial. They thus attest the accuracy of our narrative even while they seem not to have known of the incident.
All these things being taken into account, I think that we have to do with a double, of which there are several instances in the Gospels, the same event recurring under somewhat varied circumstances, and reflecting varied aspects of truth. But it is to our Lord’s words in vindication of His right to cleanse the Temple rather than to the incident on which they are based that I wish to turn your attention now: ‘Destroy this Temple,’ said our Lord, as His sufficient and only answer to the demand for a sign, ‘and in three days I will raise it up.’
Now these words, enigmatical as they are, seem to me to be very profound and significant; and I wish, on this Easter Sunday, to look at them as throwing a light upon the gladness of this day. They suggest to me three things: I find in them, first, an enigmatical forecast of our Lord’s own history; second, a prophetic warning of Israel’s; and last, a symbolical foreshadowing of His world-wide work as the Restorer of man’s destructions. ‘Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’
I. First then, I think, we see here an enigmatical forecast of our Lord’s own history.
Notice, first, that marvellous and unique consciousness of our Lord’s as to His own dignity and nature. ‘He spake of the temple of His body.’ Think that here is a man, apparently one of ourselves, walking amongst us, living the common life of humanity, who declares that in Him, in an altogether solitary and peculiar fashion, there abides the fulness of Deity. Think that there has been a Man who said, ‘In this place is One greater than the Temple.’ And people have believed Him, and do believe Him, and have found that the tremendous audacity of the words is simple verity, and that Christ is, in inmost reality, all which the Temple was but in the poorest symbol. In it there had dwelt, though there dwelt no longer at the time when He was speaking, a material and symbolical brightness, the expression of something which, for want of a better name, we call the ‘presence of God.’ But what was that flashing fire between the cherubim that brooded over the Mercy-seat, with a light that was lambent and lustrous as the light of love and of life-what was that to the glory, moulded in meekness and garbed in gentleness, the glory that shone, merciful and hospitable and inviting-a tempered flame on which the poorest, diseased, blind eyes could look, and not wince-from the face and from the character of Jesus Christ the Lord? He is greater than the Temple, for in Him, in no symbol but in reality, abode and abides the fulness of that unnameable Being whom we name Father and God. And not only does the fulness abide, but in Him that awful Remoteness becomes for us a merciful Presence; the infinite abyss and closed sea of the divine nature hath an outlet, and becomes a ‘river of water of life.’ And as the ancient name of that Temple was the ‘Tent of Meeting,’ the place where Israel and God, in symbolical and ceremonial form, met together, so, in inmost reality in Christ’s nature, Manhood and Divinity cohere and unite, and in Him all of us, the weak, the sinful, the alien, the rebellious, may meet our Father. ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ ‘In this place is One greater than the Temple.’
And so this Jewish Peasant, at the very beginning of His earthly career, stands up there, in the presence of the ancestral sanctities and immemorial ceremonials which had been consecrated by all these ages and commanded by God Himself, and with autocratic hand sweeps them all on one side, as one that should draw a curtain that the statue might be seen, and remains poised Himself in the vacant place, that all eyes may look upon Him, and on Him alone. ‘Destroy this Temple . . . . He spake of the temple of His body.’
Still further, notice how here we have, at the very beginning of our Lord’s career, His distinct prevision of how it was all going to end. People that are willing to honour Jesus Christ, and are not willing to recognise His death as the great purpose for which He came, tell us that, like as with other reformers and heroes and martyrs, His death was the result of the failure of His purpose. And some of them talk to us very glibly, in their so-called ‘Lives of Jesus Christ’ about the alteration in Christ’s plan which came when He saw that His message was not going to be received. I do not enter upon all the reasons why such a construction of Christ’s work cannot hold water, but here is one-for any one who believes this story before us-that at the very beginning, before He had gone half a dozen steps in His public career, when the issues of the experiment, if it was a man that was making the experiment, were all untried; when, if it were merely a martyr-enthusiast that was beginning his struggle, some flickering light of hope that He would be received of His brethren must have shone, or He would never have ventured upon the path-that then, with no mistake, with no illusion, with no expectation of a welcome and a Hosanna, but with the clearest certitude of what lay before Him, our Lord beheld and accepted His Cross. Its shadow fell upon His path from the beginning, because the Cross was the purpose for which He came. ‘To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world,’ said He-when the reality of it was almost within arm’s length of Him-’to bear witness to the Truth,’ and His bearing witness to the truth was perfected and accomplished on the Cross. Here, at the very commencement of His career, we have it distinctly set forth, ‘the Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many.’
And, brethren, that fact is important, not only because it helps us to understand that His death is the centre of His work, but also because it helps us to a loving and tender thought of Him, how all His life long, with that issue distinctly before Him, He journeyed towards it of His own loving will; how every step that He took on earth’s flinty roads, taken with bleeding and pure feet, He took knowing whither He was going. This Isaac climbs the mountain to the place of sacrifice, with no illusions as to what He is going up the mountain for. He knows that He goes up to be the lamb of the offering, and knowing it, He goes. Therefore let us love Him with love as persistent as was His own, who discerning the end from the beginning, willed to be born and to live because He had resolved to die, for you and me and every man.
And then, further, we have here our Lord’s claim to be Himself the Agent of His own resurrection. ‘I will raise it up in three days.’ Of course, in Scripture, we more frequently find the Resurrection treated as being the result of the power of God the Father. We more ordinarily read that Christ was raised; but sometimes we read, as here, that Christ rises, and we have solemn words of His own, ‘I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.’ Think of a man saying, ‘I am going to bring My own body from the dust of death,’ and think of the man who said that doing it. If that is true, if this prediction was uttered, and being uttered was fulfilled-what then? I do not need to answer the question. My brother, this day declares that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. ‘Destroy this Temple’-there is a challenge-’and in three days I will raise it up’; and He did it. And He is the Lord of the Temple as well as the Temple. Down on your knees before Him, with all your hearts and with all your confidence, and worship, and trust, and love for evermore ‘the Second Man,’ who ‘is the Lord from Heaven!’
II. Now let us turn to the other aspects of these words. I think we see here, in the next place, a prophetic warning of the history of the men to whom He was speaking.
There must be a connection between the interpretation of the words which our Evangelist assures us is the correct one, and the interpretation which would naturally have occurred to a listener, that by ‘this Temple’ our Lord really meant simply the literal building in which He spoke. There is such a connection, and though our Lord did not only mean the Temple, He did mean the Temple. To say so is not forcing double meanings in any fast and loose fashion upon Scripture, nor playing with ambiguities, nor indulging in any of the vices to which spiritualising interpretation of Scripture leads, but it is simply grasping the central idea of the words of my text. Rightly understood they lead us to this: ‘The death of Christ was the destruction of the Jewish Temple and polity, and the raising again of Christ from the dead on the third day was the raising again of that destroyed Theocracy and Temple in a new and nobler fashion.’ Let us then look for a moment, and it shall only be for a moment, at these two thoughts.
If any one had said to any of that howling mob that stood round Christ at the judgment-seat of the High Priest, and fancied themselves condemning Him to death, because He had blasphemed the Temple: ‘You, at this moment, are pulling down the holy and beautiful house in which your fathers praised; and what you are doing now is the destruction of your national worship and of yourselves,’ the words would have been received with incredulity; and yet they were simple truth. Christ’s death destroyed that outward Temple. The veil was ‘rent in twain from the top to the bottom’ at the moment He died; which was the declaration indeed that henceforward the Holiest of All was patent to the foot of every man, but was also the declaration that there was no more sanctity now within those courts, and that Temple, and priesthood, and sacrifice, and altar, and ceremonial and all, were antiquated. That ‘which was perfect having come,’ Christ’s death having realised all which Temple-worship symbolised, that which was the shadow was put away when the substance appeared.
And in another fashion, it is also true that the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, inflicted by Jewish hands, was the destruction of the Jewish worship, in the way of natural sequence and of divine chastisement. When the husbandmen rejected the Son who was sent ‘last of all,’ there was nothing more for it but that they should be ‘cast out of the vineyard,’ and the firebrand which the Roman soldier, forty years afterwards, tossed into the Holiest of All, and which burned the holy and beautiful house with fire, was lit on the day when Israel cried ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’
Oh, brethren! What a lesson it is to us all of how blind even so-called religious zeal may be; how often it is true that men in their madness and their ignorance destroy the very institutions which they are trying to conserve! How it warns us to beware lest we, unknowing what we are about, and thinking that we are fighting for the honour of God, may really all the while be but serving ourselves and rejecting His message and His Messenger!
And then let me remind you that another thing is also true, that just as the Jewish rejection of Christ was their own rejection as the people of God, and their attempted destruction of Christ the destruction of the Jewish Temple, so the other side of the truth is also here, viz. that His rising again is the restoration of the destroyed Temple in nobler and fairer form. Of course the one real Temple is the body of Jesus Christ, as we have said, where sacrifice is offered, where God dwells, where men meet with God. But in a secondary and derivative sense, in the place of the Jewish Temple has come the Christian Church, which is, in a far deeper and more inward fashion, what that ancient system aspired to be.
Christ has builded up the Church on His Resurrection. On His Resurrection, I say, for there is nothing else on which it could rest. If men ask me what is the great evidence of Christ’s Resurrection, my answer is-the existence in the world of a Church. Where did it come from? How is it possible to conceive that without the Resurrection of Jesus Christ such a structure as the Christian society should have been built upon a dead man’s grave? It would have gone to pieces, as all similar associations would have gone. What had happened after that moment of depression which scattered them every man to his own, and led some of them to say, with pathetic use of the past tense to describe their vanished expectations, ‘We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel’? What was the force that instead of driving them asunder drew them together? What was the power that, instead of quenching their almost dead hopes, caused them to flame up with renewed vigour heaven-high? How came it that that band of cowardly, dispirited Jewish peasants, who scattered in selfish fear and heart-sick disappointment, were in a few days found bearding all antagonism, and convinced that their hopes had only erred by being too faint and dim? The only answer is in their own message, which explained it all: ‘Him hath God raised from the dead, whereof we are all witnesses.’
The destroyed Temple disappears, and out of the dust and smoke of the vanishing ruins there rises, beautiful and serene, though incomplete and fragmentary and defaced with many a stain, the fairer reality, the Church of the living Christ. ‘Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’
III. Lastly, we have here a foreshadowing of our Lord’s world-wide work as the Restorer of man’s destructions.
Man’s folly, godlessness, worldliness, lust, sin, are ever working to the destruction of all that is sacred in humanity and in life, and to the desecrating of every shrine. We ourselves, in regard to our own hearts, which are made to be the temples of the ‘living God,’ are ever, by our sins, shortcomings, and selfishness, bringing pollution into the holiest of all; ‘breaking down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers,’ and setting up the abomination of desolation in the holy places of our hearts. We pollute them all-conscience, imagination, memory, will, intellect. How many a man listening to me now has his nature like the facade of some of our cathedrals, with the empty niches and broken statues proclaiming that wanton desecration and destruction have been busy there?
My brother! what have you done with your heart? ‘Destroy this temple.’ Christ spoke to men who did not know what they were doing; and He speaks to you. It is the inmost meaning of the life of many of you. Hour by hour, day by day, action by action, you are devastating and profaning the sanctities of your nature, and the sacred places there where God ought to live.
Listen to His confident promise. He knows that in me He is able to restore to more than pristine beauty all which I, by my sin, have destroyed; to reconsecrate all which I, by my profanity, have polluted; to cast out the evil deities that desecrate and deform the shrine; and to make my poor heart, if only I will let Him come in to the ruined chamber, a fairer temple and dwelling-place of God.
‘In three days,’ does He do it? In one sense-Yes! Thank God! the power that hallows and restores the desecrated and cast-down temple in a man’s heart, was lodged in the world in those three days of death and resurrection. The fact that He ‘died for our sins,’ the fact that He was ‘raised again for our justification,’ are the plastic and architectonic powers which will build up any character into a temple of God.
And yet more than ‘forty and six years’ will that temple have to be ‘in building.’ It is a lifelong task till the top-stone be brought forth. Only let us remember this: Christ, who is Architect and Builder, Foundation and Top-stone; ay! and Deity indwelling in the temple, and building it by His indwelling-this Christ is not one of those who ‘begin to build and are not able to finish.’ He realises all His plans. There are no ruined edifices in ‘the City’; nor any half-finished fanes of worship within the walls of that great Jerusalem whose builder and maker is Christ.
If you will put yourselves in His hands, and trust yourselves to Him, He will take away all your incompleteness, and will make you body, soul, and spirit, temples of the Lord God; as far above the loftiest beauty and whitest sanctity of any Christian character here on earth as is the building of God, ‘the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ above ‘the earthly house of this tabernacle.’
He will perfect this restoring work at the last, when His Word to His servant Death, as He points him to us, shall be ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v20 General Information:
General Information:
Verses 21 and 22 are not part of the main story line, but instead they comment on the story and tell about something that happens later. (See: End of Story)
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forty-six years ... three days
"46 years ... 3 days" (See: Numbers)
you will raise it up in three days?
This remark appears in the form of a question to show that the Jewish authorities understand that Jesus wants to tear down the temple and build it again in three days. "Raise" is an idiom for "establish." AT: "you will establish it in three days?" or "you cannot possibly rebuild it in three days!" (See: Rhetorical Question and Idiom)
believed
Here "believe" means to accept something or trust that it is true.
this statement
This refers back to Jesus' statement in John 2:19.
translationWords
believe
word of God
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv19, 22 2:19-21 Destroy this temple: Herod the Great began reconstructing…
2:19-21 Destroy this temple: Herod the Great began reconstructing the Temple’s magnificent structure in 20 BC, and work on it continued until AD 64. This explains why Jesus’ audience was amazed when he claimed he could destroy and rebuild it in a few days. However, Jesus spoke figuratively of his own body as the temple where God was present (see 1:14, 51)—his body was destroyed and restored in three days through the resurrection, rendering the Jerusalem Temple and its services obsolete. Later, at his trial, Jesus’ symbolic reference to destroying the Temple was used as evidence of blasphemy (Mark 14:58).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.