Doves in Cages ©WikiC

Back to our long-delayed series of “Jesus and Birds.” The last one, “Jesus and Birds – His Dedication was completed not long before everything changed. This Corvid-19 ordeal has left me a bit “discombobulated.” [Discombobulate is a fun, fancy word for “confuse.” If something has put you in a state where you don’t know up from down and you can’t spell your own name, you may be discombobulated.” – vocabulary.com] Anyway, thanks to Dr. Jim (J.J.S .Johnson) and William Wise for continuing to add articles for the blog.

When I first started looking into this cleansing of the Temple sellers, it appeared that there were two cleansings, yet there was a debate. Did Jesus cleanse the Temple once or twice? As you may remember, I am using a Harmony of the Gospels to trace the Lord Jesus’s reactions to birds while in His incarnated body. Here are some of the questions:

This first cleansing is only mentioned only by John.

“And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” (John 2:13-17 KJV)

The second cleansing is mentioned by the other three gospel writers, but not John.

Mathew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17, and Luke 19:45-46 [This will be covered in the 2nd Cleansing of Temple post.]

After checking many of the commentaries in the BibleGateway helps, even though Jesus spoke some of the same similar words, the belief is that there are two cleansings. I will cover more about this in the later post.

The main point is that when Christ entered the Temple area, sellers had set up for business. Worshipers needed animals and birds for sacrifices, but they were not supposed to be selling them inside the compound area. Had they been selling outside the area, there would not have been a problem.

In His disgust for what was going on, he threw over the tables, etc. and opened the cages of doves to let the go free.

Freedom – Bird leaving cage ©Pixabay

• Jesus and Birds – Introduction
• Jesus And Birds – His Dedication
• Jesus And Birds – His Baptism