You who say a man shouldn’t commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 22. Idols, and so forth The Jews, at the time of our Saviour, were free from idolatry, to which their ancestors had been so prone for so long a time. But to this evil had succeeded another, scarcely less heinous, that is sacrilege, and a profanation of holy things. The greater part of the high priests bought their office. The priests permitted in the temple itself a kind of traffic, which caused our Saviour to declare to them, that they had made the house of his Father a den of thieves. And to favour their own avarice, they taught that it was lawful to defraud their creditors, and refuse to their parents the necessary succour, in the case of vows to give to the temple. Saint Paul does not here reproach them for the profanations of the temple which they committed in the last siege of Jerusalem, for it had not then taken place; but he knew full will the dispositions of their hearts, and the little regard they had for the most sacred things. Calmet.