John 2:13–25

Verse 15. He drove them all out of the temple. According to Saint John Chrysostom (hom. lxvii in Matt.) this casting out was different from that which is there related, chapter 21 verse 12. Witham.—How could the Son of the carpenter, Joseph, whose divinity was yet unknown to the people, succeed in expelling so great a multitude from the temple! There was undoubtedly something divine in his whole conduct and appearance, which deterred all from making resistance. The evangelist seems to insinuate this by putting these words: “The house of my Father,” into our Saviour’s mouth, which was making himself immediately the Son of God. This made Origen consider this miracle, in overcoming the unruly dispositions of so many, as a superior manifestation of power to what he had shewn in changing the nature of water at Cana. A.—Jesus Christ here shews the respect he requires should be shewn to the temple of God; and Saint Paul, speaking of the profaners of God’s Church, saith: If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy. 1 Corinthians 3:17. Which in a spiritual sense may be understood of the soul of man, which is the living temple of the living God. A.

Verse 20. Six and forty years, and so forth 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, and so forth

Verse 24. Trust himself to them. The Fathers generally understand these words, to them, to refer to those who believed in him, mentioned in the preceding verse. Though they believed in him, he did not trust himself to them, because he knew them. He knew their weakness, their inconstancy, their unsteadiness. He knew they would abandon him on the first occasion; and that his passion, his cross, his doctrines, would be a subject of scandal. Saint Augustine compares these first believers to catechumens. They believe in Christ, confess his name, and sign their foreheads with his cross: but Jesus Christ does not trust himself to them; he does not trust to them the knowledge of his mysteries; he does not reveal to them the secrets of his religion. Calmet.—The catechumens were not allowed to be present at the holy mysteries of the sacrifice of the mass, but went out after the instruction of the gospel; whence the first part of the mass was frequently called the mass of the catechumens.