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§5 The First Passover (John 2:13–25)

Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem, like each of his subsequent visits, takes place in connection with one of the Jewish feasts. He comes as a pilgrim, to keep the Passover Feast. In particular, the wording of verse 13 corresponds closely to that of 11:55, which signals the last Passover and the beginning of Jesus’ Passion. When the notice here in chapter 2 is followed by an account of the temple cleansing, an event associated in the other Gospels with the Passion week, it appears that this first Passover is indeed the last and that the events of Jesus’ Passion are about to start. The impression has been created because the Gospel writer has transferred the temple cleansing almost to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. This is more likely than supposing that Jesus actually cleansed the temple twice. John’s Gospel has taken the symbolic acts with which Passion week begins in the synoptic Gospels (i.e., the triumphal entry and the temple cleansing) and separated them, so that each serves as a heading for its own version of the Passion drama: the book of Judgment (2:13–11:54) and the book of Glory (11:55–21:25; see Introduction).

The note of judgment is struck almost immediately in the temple cleansing. Fashioning a cat-o’-nine-tails out of cords, Jesus drove from the temple area all the sacrificial animals—sheep and oxen—that he found being sold for profit. He scattered the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. Though he did not release the pigeons (the sacrifices of the poor), he commanded those selling them, Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market! (v. 16). At the historical level, this “attack” of Jesus on the temple has essentially the same meaning as in the synoptic Gospels. It is an act of radical reform. The changing of money and the selling of animals “on the spot” for sacrificial use were apparently a way of making temple sacrifice more convenient for worshipers, while at the same time enriching the temple treasury. In the spirit of an Amos or a Jeremiah, Jesus brought this practice to an abrupt (if temporary) end. But the Gospel writer is less interested in Jesus’ reforms than in what these reforms would cost him, and what his future would be. The Jewish leaders immediately demanded from him a sign from heaven as evidence of his messianic authority (v. 18). His answer is a riddle: Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days (v. 19). It is a riddle they cannot solve. How can a magnificent structure that has taken forty-six years to build be rebuilt in three days? Why should it be destroyed in the first place?

Here, as in the Cana story, the disciples are the vehicle for the concerns of the Gospel writer. The things they “remember” punctuate the narrative as a kind of chorus (vv. 17, 22). In connection with the driving out of the moneychangers, they remembered a verse of scripture: Zeal for your house will consume me (v. 17; cf. Ps. 69:9). In connection with the ensuing dispute with the Jewish authorities, they remembered his riddle about the temple and realized that he meant his own body (vv. 21–22). The narrator then links the two notices by commenting that the disciples believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken (v. 22). The same emphasis on the postresurrection faith of the disciples reappears in the account of the triumphal entry: “At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him” (12:16). In 2:22, the reference to the disciples’ faith becomes a sequel to 2:11: they “put their faith in him” at Cana, but they believed and understood more deeply “after he was raised from the dead.” The faith of 2:11 is preparatory to the postresurrection faith of 2:22, the faith of the Gospel writer and his readers. Christian belief is incomplete until it fixes itself on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The link between verses 17 and 22 suggests that the remembering of the passage in Psalm 69, no less than the remembering of Jesus’ riddle, is postresurrection and has in view Jesus’ Passion. This is seen by the future tense of the verb: Zeal for the house of God will consume Jesus, that is, it will bring about his death at the hands of the temple authorities. Only after his Passion could his disciples “remember” the passage in this way. Similarly, the riddle about the temple can only be solved by one who knows that “the Son of Man … must be killed, and after three days rise again” (cf. Mark 8:31). That such knowledge was “after the fact” is stated explicitly in verse 22. Before the fact, there seemed to be no alternative to taking the prophecy literally, and the temple authorities did just that (v. 20). The charge that Jesus was actually planning to destroy the temple comes to the surface in the synoptic accounts of his trial (Mark 14:58; Matt. 26:61), based apparently on a garbled version of this Johannine utterance. For the writer of the fourth Gospel, misunderstanding serves as a foil for correct understanding, in this case the postresurrection knowledge shared by author and readers that the temple he had spoken of was his body (v. 21).

The fact that temple and body are both New Testament metaphors for the church has led some commentators to find corporate implications here: The body-temple that Jesus will raise up is the Christian church (cf. Matt. 16:18). But though it is true that the church is built on Jesus’ resurrection (cf. Eph. 1:20–23), there is no evidence that the Gospel writer has more in mind here than the raising of one man from the dead after three days. It is the resurrection of Jesus, and of him alone, that gives him authority over the temple and his disciples a sure foundation for their faith.

The account of Jesus’ first Passover continues. Even though the temple cleansing itself took place at the end of his ministry, there is no reason to doubt that he did pay an early visit to Jerusalem and to the temple. Such a visit (involving a demand for a sign!) is mentioned in Luke 4:9–13. John’s Gospel speaks generally of the miraculous signs he was doing at the Passover (v. 23), but these are not enumerated. When challenged to give a miraculous sign (2:18), Jesus had granted the Jewish authorities only a riddle, yet the writer assumes that some miracles (probably akin to those described later in the Gospel) did take place. Nicodemus mentions these signs in 3:2, and the Galileans who welcomed Jesus back from Samaria (4:45) are said to have seen “all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast.”

On the basis of these miracles many … believed in his name (v. 23). The situation seems, on the face of it, closely parallel to 2:11: More and more disciples are coming to faith. But the parallel is a false one. Something is wrong with the faith of those who “believed” in Jesus at this Passover feast. Playing on the word for “believe” or “trust” (Gr.: pisteuein), the narrator remarks that even though these people “trusted” in Jesus, he did not trust himself to them. He did not accept their faith as genuine. What is not clear is the ground for his suspicion. Did he disclaim their belief because it rested on a mere fascination with the miraculous for its own sake (cf. 4:48)? Or was it because he knew that out of fear they would fail to confess him publicly and put their faith into action (cf. 12:42)? Did he know that in their hearts they “loved praise from men more than praise from God” (12:43)?

The fact that the Gospel writer has no problem in 2:11 with a faith based on miracles suggests that this in itself is not the problem in verse 24. The problem is, rather, one of cowardice. Those who believe but hide their faith from the world have not believed at all. They do not stand in the tradition of John the Baptist or of Nathanael. Jesus knows such people’s hearts just as surely as he knew that Simon would be a “rock” or that Nathanael was a “true Israelite.” He unmasks their unbelief in a later confrontation: “I do not accept praise from men, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts” (5:41, 42). Jesus knew that the “faith” of many at this first Passover in Jerusalem was mere “human praise” and not faith that gains eternal life.