But a Pharisee turned to Me and said: ‘How can you, as a true Jew, remain silent when such a wretched heathen, to whom you had done good, most insolently dares to revile the holy teaching of our fathers so shamefully here!?’
I say: ‘But he reviled neither Moses nor the prophets, only you and your new ordinances, and left Me alone. What rebuke should I give him?! He singled you out and thus sinned only against you; so it is now your business alone to come to terms with him! If he has nothing against Me, what should I have against him? See for yourselves how you settle matters with him! So far I am still entirely on good terms with him.’
The Pharisees and scribes say: ‘Yes, yes, of course he had not reviled you, but us; and we think you have now become our friend, and since we now know only too well what power you have in your word and will, you could at least have said a couple of words to this heathen, out of friendship for us and for the people’s sake, so that he would have been silent! But you let him speak and bring us to shame before the people; and look, that was by no means praiseworthy of you! We will not hate you for it; but neither can we be favorably disposed towards you!’
I say: ‘Be as you wish, and I too will be as it seems good to Me to be. Besides, it is truly very strange of you to withdraw your friendship from Me now, when in fact you have never shown Me any; yet I, who would really be fully entitled to withdraw My friendship from you, since earlier you truly harbored no praiseworthy thoughts about Me in your hearts, nevertheless do not do so?!
‘What can I lose in your friendship? I tell you: truly, nothing! But if you no longer have My friendship, who will raise your dead children to life in My place?
‘But if you consider the young man’s speech, with even a little true understanding you must openly confess within yourselves that the man has spoken the pure truth in the fullest ground of the ground!? He knows Scripture and knows Moses and the prophets! But ask yourselves whether even a trace of Moses and all the other prophets can still be found in the temple now!?
‘I Myself was in Jerusalem this year and have seen, to My great indignation, how God’s house of prayer has been turned into an utter den of murderers!
‘The entrance halls are full of livestock for slaughter offered for sale, and of other unclean animals too, so that people cannot reach the temple proper without the greatest danger to their lives. In the outer temple, slaughtering goes on on one side as at the slaughtering benches, and the meat is sold; on the other side stand brokers’ tables and money-changing booths, and there is such noise and shouting that scarcely anyone can hear his own words.
‘Then, when one enters the main temple proper, one cannot move for dealers in doves and all kinds of other fowl and shouting people offering things for sale. And into the Holy of Holies, which by God’s ordinance only the chief of the priests was permitted to enter once a year, now even any heathen is led in return for payment, which they still call an offering—of course entirely in secret, under the seal of silence towards the Jews. But in Rome they know the Holy of Holies just as well as the high priest in Jerusalem! And so, for money, all the temple’s secrets are revealed to foreigners; but if a poor Jew dared step behind the curtain, he is immediately stoned as a blasphemer and Sacrilegus behind the temple wall, at the accursed place! And not a week passes in which at least one is not stoned and a couple have to drink the accursed water!
‘But what sort of arrangement is this now, in which strangers are initiated, while one’s own children are killed?!
‘Tell yourselves whether Moses and all the prophets commanded such things, and whether Solomon, in his great wisdom, when he had completed the temple, consecrated the great house of prayer to the purpose it now serves?! In brief, God’s house of prayer has become an utter den of murderers, and Jehovah’s Spirit no longer dwells in the form of the pillar of fire above the old Ark of the Covenant!’
Here the Pharisees and scribes grow disconcerted and say to Me: ‘But you have been in and around Nazareth; how can you know all this? Who betrayed the temple to you?!’
I say: ‘Oh, the great foolishness of your question! If I can know your most secret thoughts, how should I not know what is in the temple and what happens there?! But it is not only I alone who know this: by now every person knows it!
‘You yourselves, however, are the actual betrayers of all this, and your great greed for money has led you to it! For money you initiate foreigners into the temple’s secrets; they have then loudly proclaimed them to the Jews in the streets—and you ask Me who has betrayed the temple to Me?
‘But if you know as well as I and many thousands of people how matters stand in the temple now, and also know, in contrast, what Moses and all the prophets taught, who were most truly filled with the purest and truest Spirit of God, and that Spirit alone spoke through their mouths—what kind of faith in God do you have, that you so lightly reject God’s word and, in the most insolent and proud conceit, proclaim your own evil ordinances to the poor blind people as proceeding from the Spirit of God, and with all the terrors of death compel them to observe and worship your ordinances?!’