The Temple in the Bible

Herod's Temple: The House Jesus Knew

The temple standing in Jesus' day was the second temple as vastly enlarged and rebuilt by Herod the Great, begun around 20 before Christ. It was one of the wonders of the ancient world, its courts covering a huge platform in Jerusalem, ringed by colonnades, with a great outer Court of the Gentiles where the nations could come. This was the temple Jesus was presented in as a baby, questioned the teachers in as a boy, cleansed, and taught in daily. It was the house He loved and the house whose fall He foretold.

As a boy of twelve, found in the temple, Jesus gave His first recorded words:

And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?Luke 2:49 (KJV)

Herod's great rebuilding

The modest second temple stood for nearly five centuries, but by the time of Jesus it had been transformed. Herod the Great, the client king appointed by Rome, undertook a massive rebuilding and expansion beginning around 20 before Christ, partly out of genuine ambition to glorify Jerusalem and partly to win the favour of his people. He doubled the size of the temple mount, building enormous retaining walls to support a vast platform, one section of which survives today as the Western Wall.

The result was breathtaking. The sanctuary itself was faced with white stone and gold that blazed in the sun. Josephus, the Jewish historian of the age, wrote that a stranger seeing it from a distance thought it a mountain covered with snow. When Jesus' disciples marvelled at the great stones and buildings, they were admiring one of the architectural wonders of the Roman world. The work was still going on during Jesus' ministry; when He spoke of the temple, His hearers said it had been forty and six years in building.

The courts and the Court of the Gentiles

Herod's temple was arranged in a series of courts, each holier and more restricted than the last. The outermost and largest was the Court of the Gentiles, a great open space where anyone, Jew or Gentile, could come. Beyond it a low barrier with warning inscriptions marked the boundary past which no Gentile could go on pain of death. Within were the Court of the Women, the Court of Israel where Jewish men could come, and the Court of the Priests around the great altar, and then the sanctuary itself with its holy place and the empty holy of holies.

The Court of the Gentiles matters greatly to the Gospel story. It was meant to be the place where the nations could draw near to the God of Israel, in keeping with the promise that His house would be a house of prayer for all people. Yet by Jesus' day it had been turned into a noisy marketplace for changing money and selling sacrificial animals, crowding out the very people it was built to welcome. This is the setting for Jesus' anger when He cleansed the temple.

The temple at the centre of Jewish life

For the Jews of Jesus' day the temple was the beating heart of national and religious life. It was the one place of sacrifice, the goal of pilgrimage at the great feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, when Jerusalem swelled with hundreds of thousands of worshipers. It was the seat of the priesthood and the meeting place of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council. Its daily rhythm of morning and evening sacrifice ordered the life of the people.

The devout loved it. Simeon and Anna waited in it for the consolation of Israel and there recognised the infant Jesus. The apostles, after the resurrection, still went up to the temple at the hour of prayer. To be cut off from the temple was to be cut off from the centre of worship, and to draw near to it was, for the faithful, to draw near to God.

The temple Jesus knew

The Gospels place Jesus in this temple again and again. He was brought there as an infant to be presented and there met by Simeon and Anna. At twelve He was found there among the teachers, both hearing them and asking them questions, and gave His first recorded words: wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? He was taken to a pinnacle of the temple in the temptation. He cleansed it at the beginning and again near the end of His ministry. He taught in its courts daily in the last week of His life, and it was there that many of His sharpest confrontations and deepest teachings took place.

He also wept over it. Looking on Jerusalem and its temple, He foretold that not one stone would be left upon another, a prophecy fulfilled in 70 after Christ when the Romans, crushing the Jewish revolt, burned and demolished Herod's temple. It has never been rebuilt. The house Jesus knew is gone, and only its great foundation walls remain.

The daily worship of the house

To picture the temple Jesus knew, we must hear it as well as see it. From before dawn the priests were at work. The morning sacrifice was offered as the gates opened, and the evening sacrifice closed the day, with a lamb laid on the great altar, incense burning in the holy place, and the Levites singing the psalms to the sound of harps and cymbals. It was said that a person who had never seen the temple in its beauty had never seen a glorious thing. Pilgrims came from across the Roman world, and at Passover the city and its courts overflowed with hundreds of thousands of worshipers and the blood of countless lambs.

This was the living, breathing institution in which the Gospels unfold. It was here that Zechariah was serving at the altar of incense when the angel announced the birth of John the Baptist. It was here that the infant Jesus was presented and Simeon took Him in his arms. It was here that the boy Jesus sat among the teachers, and here that the grown Jesus overturned the tables, healed the blind and the lame in its courts, and taught the crowds day after day in the last week of His life. The temple was not a backdrop; it was the very centre of the world Jesus entered, the house whose whole daily rhythm of sacrifice and prayer He had come to fulfil. And it was from within these courts, echoing with worship, that its leaders would move to deliver Him up.

How it points to Christ

Herod's temple is the stage on which Jesus revealed that He was greater than the temple itself. Standing in its very courts He said, in this place is one greater than the temple. He called it His Father's house and grieved over what it had become. And He announced that the true temple was His own body, which would be destroyed and raised in three days.

There is a solemn honesty in the story. The most magnificent temple Israel ever built was the one from which its leaders would deliver Jesus to be crucified, and it was the one Jesus said would be torn down. God was moving the centre of worship from a building of stone to a person, and then to a people. The glory of Herod's temple, real as it was, was passing; the glory of Christ, who walked its courts, remains for ever.

It is a striking thing that the most magnificent temple in Israel's history stood for less than a century before it fell, while the true temple it housed for a few short years still stands and always will. Herod built for his own name and to secure his throne, and his stones are rubble; Jesus came to seek and to save, and His kingdom has no end. The house of white stone and gold has vanished from the earth, but the one who was presented in it as a baby, taught in it as a man, and grieved over it as its Lord is alive for evermore. What Herod could not know is that the real glory of his temple walked in through its gates and out again toward a cross.

A note for all traditions: the history above (the temples, their building, their destruction, and the rebuilding) is told as Scripture and the record present it. Where the New Testament states plainly that the temple is fulfilled in Christ, that is named as fulfilment; where a connection is a reflection rather than a direct statement, it is offered as such. The one Lord of the whole story, from Solomon to the new Jerusalem, is Jesus Christ, and every believer is called to draw near to God through him.

Read on: The destruction and the second temple · Jesus and the temple · The torn veil · The Temple in the Bible