John 2:18Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

For this reason He does not give them a sign. So also earlier, when they approached and demanded a miracle, He answered them: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah" (Mt 16:4).

Then He answered them more clearly. Now He answers in a more enigmatic way. He does this because of their extreme insensibility. The One who anticipated those who did not ask and gave them signs would certainly not have refused those who demanded them, if He had not seen in them evil and wicked thoughts and a treacherous intention.

Notice how full of malice their very question is. They should have praised His zeal and fervor. They should have marveled at the care He showed for the house of God.

Instead, they accuse Him, asserting that tavern-keeping is allowed there, but stopping tavern-keeping is not allowed unless some sign is shown.

It is clear that the Lord, after being put to death, rose again after three days. This is now well known to all of us. If it is hidden from the Jews, it is because they stand outside the Church. But for us it is revealed, because we know in Whom we believe. We shall celebrate the destruction of this Temple and His raising up again in the yearly solemnities of the Resurrection of Christ. We exhort you to prepare for it. If any among you are catechumens, catechumeni, we hope that you will receive grace. The time has already come. Even now what will then be born is being brought to birth. So then, we know this.

But perhaps we shall be asked whether there is some mystery in the fact that the temple was built in forty-six years. Though much could be said about this, what we shall say now can be stated briefly and understood without difficulty.

Brethren, we have already said, if I am not mistaken, yesterday, that Adam was one man and that he himself was the whole human race. For, as we said before, if you remember, he was as though divided into parts. Now, though divided, he is being gathered together and, as it were, fused into one through spiritual communion and concord. The same Adam still groans as one wretched man (cf. Ps 34), but he is renewed in Christ. For Adam came without sin, so that Adam's sin might be destroyed in His flesh, and so that Adam might raise up in himself the image of God. Therefore from Adam came the flesh of Christ. From Adam came the temple which the Jews destroyed and which the Lord raised in three days. For He raised His own flesh.

Behold, for He was God, equal to the Father. My brethren, the Apostle says, "He raised Him from the dead." Of Whom does he speak? Of the Father: "He became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also raised Him from the dead and gave Him the name above every name" (cf. Phil 2:8-9). The Lord was raised and exalted. Who raised Him? The Father, to Whom He says in the psalm: "Raise Me up, and I will repay them" (Ps 40:11). Therefore the Father raised Him. Did He not raise Himself? But what does the Father do without the Word? What does the Father do without His Only Son? Hear that He Himself was God: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn 2:19). Did He say, "Destroy this temple, and the Father will raise it up in three days"? As when the Father raises, the Son raises, so when the Son raises, the Father raises. For the Son said, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30).

What, then, does the number forty-six mean? Yesterday you already heard that Adam extends over the whole circle of the earth. This is shown by the connection of four Greek letters and four Greek words. If you write one below another these four words, the names of the four parts of the world, east, west, north, and south, they embrace the whole world. Therefore the Lord says that, when He comes for judgment, He will gather His elect from the four winds (Mk 13:27). If you write those four names in Greek, ἀνατολή, that is, east, δύσις, that is, west, ἄρκτος, that is, north, and μεσημβρία, that is, south, anatole, dysis, arctos, mesembria, the first letters of the words contain the name "Adam."

Why, then, do we find the number forty-six there? Because the flesh of Christ came from Adam. The Greeks use letters for numbers. When we write the letter a, they put alpha, α, in their language, and by alpha they also name the number one. When they write beta, β, as a number, which among them means b, it is called the number two. When they write gamma, γ, as a number, it signifies three among them. When they write delta, δ, as a number, it expresses four among them. In this way all letters contain numbers. What we call m, and they write as mu, μ, means forty. For when they read mu as a number, they call it tessarakonta, τεσσαράκοντα. Now consider those letters which express numbers, and you will find there the forty-six years during which the temple was raised. For "Adam" contains alpha, α, which means one. It contains delta, δ, which means four, and you have five in sum. Then it again contains alpha, α, which means one, and you have six in sum. Finally, it contains mu, μ, which means forty, and you arrive at forty-six. This, my brethren, was said by our great predecessors, and this number forty-six was found by us in their writings.

Since our Lord Jesus Christ received a body from Adam, but did not take sin from Adam, He took from him the bodily temple. Yet He did not take the corruption which had to be driven out of the temple. The Jews crucified that very flesh which He received from Adam, for Mary was from Adam, and the Lord's flesh was from Mary. And He was going to raise in three days that very flesh which they intended to fasten to the cross. They destroyed the temple which had been raised for forty-six years, and He restored it in three days.

We glorify the Lord our God, Who has gathered us for spiritual joy. Let us remain always in humility of heart, and let our joy be in His hands. Let us not be exalted, whatever success we may attain in this world. Rather, let us know that happiness itself will come to us when these earthly things pass away. My brethren, let our joy be in hope. Let no one rejoice in present things, lest he stop along the way. Let all joy be in hope of the future, and let every desire be directed toward eternal life. Let every sigh be for Christ. Let Him alone, the most beautiful, be desired. He loved the deformed in order to make them beautiful. To Him alone must we hasten, and for Him alone must we sigh. And let those who desire peace for His servant say continually, "Let the Lord be magnified" (cf. Ps 34:27).

Then the Jews answered Him: "What sign do You show us, seeing that You do these things?"

By the name Jews, the Evangelist John means not the Hebrews in general, but exclusively the party of Jewish leaders hostile to Christ. These were the high priests, priests, elders, and members of the Sanhedrin generally.

Therefore, when the Evangelist John says that the Jews answered Him, this means that, among all present, only the Jewish leaders objected to Christ.

The testimony of John the Baptist was not enough for them. His assurance was not enough that he had seen the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus and had heard the voice from heaven: "This is My beloved Son."

They wanted a sign from Christ Himself. In reality, they imagined the Messiah in a form quite different from the form in which Jesus appeared.

They needed an invincible conquering leader who would subject the whole universe to the Jews. He would make them, the leaders of the Jewish people, kings over the conquered nations.

They saw that Jesus of Nazareth was not the kind of man to fulfill their ambitious dreams. Therefore they did not believe John's testimony.

They did not even believe their own eyes, which had seen the countless crowd of traders obey the irresistible authority of Jesus. They approached Him with temptation and began demanding from Him a sign from heaven.

This was to prove that He had authority to act in this way. The Lord refused the devil a sign when he said, "If You are the Son of God, cast Yourself down."

In the same way He refused a sign to the Jews who tempted Him. He said to them, "You ask for a sign. It will be given to you, but not now."

"Later, when you destroy this temple and I raise it up in three days, then this will serve you as a sign."

The learned Jews did not understand the words of Jesus. As the Evangelist explains, He was speaking of His body as a temple in which God dwells.

He was foretelling His death, the destruction of His body, and His Resurrection on the third day. But the Jews understood His words literally and tried to turn the people against Him.

They suggested to the people that Jesus was saying something impossible. They said He wanted to destroy the temple, the pride of the Jews, which had been built for forty-six years, and raise it again in three days.

Their efforts were vain. They did not stir up the people against Christ, and they themselves went away with hidden malice against Him.

Some interpreters of the Gospels say that the Lord, in anger, drove the merchants from the temple with a scourge of cords. This interpretation is incorrect.

The scourge of cords was made to drive the cattle being expelled from the temple, not to beat the merchants with it. The merchants submitted without objection to Jesus' mighty and authoritative look upon them.

They themselves went out after their cattle. The cattle, however, needed another kind of action.

Therefore the scourge of cords, since it was not intended for people, cannot be considered an instrument of anger. In the Evangelist's whole narrative of this event, one cannot find even a hint that Christ drove the merchants from the temple in anger.

In His words, "Take these things away from here" and "Do not make My Father's house a house of trade," one hears an authoritative and commanding tone. Yet it is also calm, and in no way angry.

In His refusal to give a sign, again one hears not anger, but sorrow that "this wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign" (Mt 16:4) in order to believe.

It had already received many signs and had believed none of them. The feast lasted eight days. The Evangelist John testifies that during these days Jesus Christ performed many miracles.

The Evangelist does not say what miracles these were. His silence may be explained by the fact that he wrote his Gospel when the first three Gospels had already been written.

In them, many miracles performed by Jesus Christ had already been described. If the Savior had beaten the sellers of oxen, and not the oxen themselves, He would also have beaten the sellers of birds.

But of them it is said: "And He said to those who sold doves, Take these things away" (Jn 2:16).

Therefore Christ rejected their demand. At the same time, He made it understood that the sign they demanded would be given to them in due time. "Destroy this temple," He said, "and in three days I will raise it up."

Since Moses, Elijah, and other extraordinary messengers of God sometimes proved their extraordinary mission by unusual deeds, by miracles, the Jews who now surrounded the Lord demanded from Him some unusual act. They wanted a miracle proving that He had authority to command in the temple as a prophet and even more than a prophet, as the Son of God.

"They say: Assure us by some miracle that You are the Son of God and that You have been sent by Him. For how is it evident that the Lord of this house is Your Father?" (Theophylact).

They overlooked the sign shown in the very act of cleansing the temple. This act was extraordinary and had so strong an influence on those defiling the holy place by trade. Yet they demanded from the Lord a miracle more striking to their spiritual blindness.

Therefore let Jesus provide a sign proving that He has the right to alter the arrangements of temple worship. So they did.

"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," was the Savior's answer. Philo, the prophets (Isa 38:12), and the Apostle Paul (1 Cor 3:16-17; 1 Cor 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16) called the body a temple or house of the soul.

This designation is common in all languages, except the Epicurean. Thus, when a sign is demanded of Him, the Savior points to the most important one, His resurrection from the dead. He points to this sign on another occasion as well (Mt 12:39).

Some take the Savior's answer as a promise to establish a new religion in place of the old sensory one, and not as the apostle explains it in verses 21 and 22. But everything said in defense of the new explanation does not defend it, but accuses it.

They say that if Jesus Christ had pointed with His finger to His body, the Jews would not have referred His words to the temple in Jerusalem. But many could very well have failed to notice what the Savior was pointing to when He spoke about the temple.

For this reason alone they could have referred His words to the temple. Others maliciously distorted the meaning of the Savior's clear words (Mt 26:61; 27:40).

They say that only after the resurrection did the disciples think, according to verse 22, that He was speaking of the resurrection of His body. But this is not entirely so.

Before the resurrection, the apostles did not trust the Lord's prophetic words about the resurrection, οὐκ ἐπίστευσαν τῷ λόγῳ. Likewise, they did not want to believe that their Lord would die a shameful death (Mt 16:21).

His word about the resurrection of the body lay in their soul as though buried, and it rose with His resurrection (Lk 24:45-46). Even if they had not understood the Savior's words before the resurrection, but understood them after the resurrection, we must follow the explanation of the God-illumined apostles and not invent our own interpretations.