<p>19:46 <i>Saying to them- </i>The Lord several times quoted an Old Testament passage which if quoted further would have made a telling point. Thus here He quoted Is. 56:7: &ldquo;My house shall be called a house of prayer&rdquo;, leaving His hearers to continue: &ldquo;...for&nbsp;<i>all</i>&nbsp;people&rdquo;. He recited Ps. 8:2: &ldquo;Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise&rdquo;, leaving them to complete: &ldquo;...that you might still through their witness the enemy and the avenger&rdquo;. For the Bible minded, these things ought to have taught them. There is reason to think, in the subsequent response of a Jewish minority after Pentecost, that at least some did make these connections. They made use of the spiritual potential they had been given.</p><p><i>It is written</i>- The Lord quotes from Is. 56:7, but the surrounding context of the quotation is relevant to the Jewish leadership who were present and deeply critical of the Lord's actions. Is. 56:10,11 condemns Israel's elders as &quot;blind watchmen... dumb dogs... greedy dogs which can never have enough, shepherds that cannot understand, every one looking for gain&quot;. &quot;Dogs&quot; was understood as a reference to the Gentiles- and the Lord is saying that they are effectively Gentiles. Significantly, Is. 56:6 has spoken of &quot;the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord... taking hold of His covenant&quot;. This is often how God works- for those who are sensitive to His word, the quotations given speak far more deeply. The potential for greater understanding is thereby given to those familiar with His word. This is one reason why I encourage perseverance in reading the Bible even if at the point of reading we feel we are not understanding much and simply building up a familiarity with the text. That familiarity can be a basis for later revelation to us.</p><p><i>My house</i>- Just as the &quot;feasts&nbsp;<i>of the Lord</i>&quot; are described as &quot;feasts&nbsp;<i>of the Jews</i>&quot;,&nbsp;<i>God's</i>&nbsp;house becomes &quot;<i>your</i>&nbsp;house&quot; (Mt. 23:38). They had hijacked God's religion for their own ends, just as so many do today.</p><p><i>Shall be a house of prayer</i>- Luke uses the present tense, implying &quot;<i>is</i>&nbsp;called&quot;. The Lord surely said both, His point being that prophecies of the future Kingdom are to be lived out by us in essence today.&nbsp;</p><p><i>But you have made it a den of thieves</i>- The Kingdom prophecy of Zech. 14:21 that there will no longer be a trafficker in the Lord's house was fulfilled by the Lord's casting out the traders from the temple. Many of the Kingdom prophecies of healing were it seems consciously fulfilled in the Lord&rsquo;s healings: Is. 35:6 LXX the stammerer healed = Mk. 7:32-35; Is. 35:3 = Mk. 2:3-12; 3:1-6; Is. 35:8,10 = Mk. 11:1 Bartimaeus following on the Jerusalem road. This doesn&rsquo;t mean that these passages will not have a glorious future fulfilment. But in the person of Jesus and in the record of His life we see the &ldquo;Kingdom come nigh&rdquo;, as He Himself said it did. We can so focus on the future fulfilment that we can forget that He was the Kingdom in the midst of men; the essence of our eternal future, of the coming political Kingdom of God, was and is to seen in Him. Satan fell from Heaven during His ministry ((Lk. 10:18), as it will at the second coming (Rev. 12).</p><p>This invites us to see the thieves who robbed the man in the Samaritan parable as the Jewish leadership, whose priests and Levites refused to help people after the damage they themselves had caused (Lk. 10:30). The thieves &quot;stripped him of His clothing&quot; just as they later did to the Lord Jesus. The Lord uses the same figure of thieves for the Jewish leadership in Jn. 10:1,8. The Lord quotes here from Jer. 7:11, which speaks of the temple being profaned by adultery and Baal worship, resulting in the Babylonian invasion. He is saying that Israel's hypocritical piety in His day was none less than Baal worship, and therefore the Gentiles would come and destroy that place.</p>