7Q

7Q

Yeshua grew angered to see the outer court was a teeming market place. Animals acceptable for sacrifice  were sold  at a  huge markup, and Roman coins  were changed, again  for a  steep fee, into special  'temple  money' conveniently  acceptable  to  the priests for the temple tax. Yeshua produced one of the silver disks that had been minted by Antipas, with no image whatsoever, but the money changers  said even that  was not  acceptable. So Yeshua found some rope and began to prepare it  as a whip while telling his disciples to  prepare to  be bouncers. Yeshua then ripped through the Court  of the  Gentiles flipping  tables. He shouted, 'The house of  my Father  is a  place for  worship and prayer, but you have turned it into a place to turn a profit!"

None of his disciples had  ever seen  him act that  way before. Yudah of Kerioth could squint  his eyes  and the Yeshua  he saw whipping people in the temple courtyard before him almost looked like the one he thought he signed up to follow, the one foreseen by Yohanan  to come  after  him  who  would settle  all  Jewish accounts with the Romans. The Sadducees came down  to confront this rabble-rouser, the one the Herodians had described in their epistles to them, as now he was attacking their very livelihood. A portion of the profits made in the temple were kicked upstairs to them. They took up stones to strike him.

Still, they could not kill Yeshua for fear of the crowd and the disciples who closed around their master. But Yeshua wasn't done playing with his food. He said, "Behold the land owning priests who crave  approval from the  Romans, and  to be seen  in purple robes, to have loud salutations  in the marketplace, and a place of honor  at the feasts.  Truly, they have their  reward!" After this the Sadducess  departed to  avoid further  humiliation and Yeshua stood down as well, disapppointing Yudah of Kerioth.

The Sadducees racked their brains trying  to think of a  way to put the man to death, but they could think of nothing until they were approached by Yudah. For a year and more Yudah had believed the words of  the prophet  Malachi were  being fulfilled  which said, 'But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.' He could not deny the sick were being made well  at the  touch of  Yeshua. But Yudah knew Malachi had also gone on to write, 'Then you will trample on the wicked, and they will be ashes under the soles  of your feet on the day when I  act, says the God of Israel,'  but over the last year Yeshua made not the  slightest move  to make that  come to pass. So Yudah felt  very much  the same  as  the scribes  and Sadducees and  Herodians  who  had frequently  run  up  against Yeshua's well-practiced rhetoric, which is to say he realized he had been played for a fool.