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Joh_2:17. Ἐμνήσθησαν ] At the very time of the occurrence, and not (as Olshausen asserts) after the resurrection, a circumstance which has to be stated in Joh_2:22 (comp. Joh_12:16).
The text quoted is Psa_69:10; the theocratic sufferer in this psalm, a psalm written during the exile, is a type of the Messiah; see Joh_15:25, Joh_19:28 ff. Comp. Rom_15:3; Rom_11:9; Act_1:20
καταφάγεταί με ] will devour or consume me, is to be understood of a power which wears one out internally, Psa_119:139, not to be referred to the death of Jesus (Bengel, Olshausen, Hofmann, Weissag. u. Erf. p. 111; Luthardt, comp. Brückner), for the disciples could at that time have thought of anything but His death; comp. Joh_2:22. In this wrathful zeal, which they saw had taken hold of Jesus, they thought they saw the Messianic fulfilment of that word in the psalm, wherein the speaker declares his great zeal for God’s house, which was yet to wear him out. The fulfilment relates to the ὁ ζῆλος τοῦ οἴκου σου , whereof the καταφάγεται indicates only the violence and permanence; and there is therefore no ground for imagining already any gloomy forebodings on the part of the disciples (Lange). For ἐσθίειν and ἔδειν , used of consuming emotions (as in Aristophanes, Vesp. 287), see Jacobs, ad Anthol. VI. 280; Del. epigr. p. 257. As to the future φάγομαι , which belongs to the LXX. and Apocrypha, see Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 327; like the classical ἔδομαι , it never stands as present (against Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Godet, and others).
Note.
If there was but one cleansing of the temple, then either John or the Synoptics have given an erroneous narrative. But if it happened twice,[140] first at the beginning, and then at the end of the Messianic ministry of Jesus,—a supposition which in itself corresponds too well to the significance of the act (in so far as its repetition was occasioned by the state of disorder remaining unchanged after so long an interval had elapsed) to be inconceivable (as has been asserted by some), or even merely to pass the limits of probability,—it is then, on the one hand, conceivable that the Synoptics do not contain the first cleansing, because Christ’s early labours in Jerusalem do not belong to the range of events which they generally narrate; and, on the other hand, that John passes over the second cleansing, because he had already recorded the Messianic ΣΗΜΕῖΟΝ of the same kind. We are not therefore to suppose that the one account is true, and the other false, but to assume that the act was repeated. See on Mat_21:12-13. So the Fathers and most subsequent writers; also Schleiermacher, Tholuck, Olshausen, B. Crusius, Maier, Ebrard, Luthardt, Riggenbach, Lange, Baumgarten, Hengstenberg, Godet, etc. Others, on the contrary, admitting only one temple-cleansing, decide in favour, some of the synoptical account (Strauss, Weisse, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Scholten, Schenkel[141]), and some in favour of John’s (Lücke, De Wette, Ammon, Krabbe, Brückner, Ewald, Weizsäcker, and many others; Bäumlein hesitatingly). The latter would be the correct view, because John was an eye-witness; although we are not to suppose, as Baur, in keeping with his view of the fourth Gospel, thinks, that John derived the facts from the Synoptics, but fixed the time of the transaction independently, in consistency with the idea of reformatory procedure. See also Hilgenfeld, who traces here the “idiosyncrasy of John,” who, with reference at least to the knowledge of the disciples and the relations of Jesus to the Jews, begins where the Synoptics leave off; and thus his narrative is merely a peculiar development of synoptical materials. Besides, upon the supposition of two distinct cleansings of the temple, any essential difference between the two acts themselves is not to be discovered. Luthardt, indeed, following Hofmann (comp. Lichtenstein, p. 156), thinks that, in the synoptical account, Jesus as prophet protects the place of divine worship, but that in John’s He as Son exercises His authority over the house; but the ὁ οἶκός μου of the Synoptics, as the declaration of God, exactly corresponds with ΤῸΝ ΟἾΚΟΝ ΤΟῦ ΠΑΤΡΌς ΜΟΥ in John as the word of Christ. The distinction, moreover, that the first cleansing was the announcement of reformation, and the second that of judgment (Hengstenberg), cannot be made good, separates what is clearly connected, and attaches too much importance to collateral minutiae. This remark in answer to Godet, who regards the first cleansing as “un appel,” the second as “une protestation.” The essential element of difference in John’s account lies in the very striking declaration of Jesus about the temple of His body, Joh_2:19, of which the Synoptics have not a word, and which possesses great prophetic significance as uttered at the very outset of His Messianic ministry, but has no special fitness at the end of it. Jesus accordingly did not utter it again at the second cleansing, but only at the first, though upon that second cleansing also, occasion was given for so doing (Mat_21:23). It is this very declaration, however, which marks unmistakeably the Messianic character of the appearance of Jesus in Jerusalem from the very first (against Weizsäcker, Evang. Gesch. p. 260). Chap. Joh_7:3 is not the first place which treats of that Messianic appearance.
[140] “Whether it took place before or after, once or twice, it takes nothing from our faith.”—LUTHER.
[141] Comp. also Luther: “It seems to me that John here skips over the three first years.”