⚡WEB · Mark 11:17
What does Mark 11:17 mean?
"He taught, saying to them, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers!”"
— Mark 11:17 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Jesus told it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” and his disciples heard it.
They came to Jerusalem, and Jesus entered into the temple, and began to throw out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and overthrew the money changers’ tables, and the seats of those who sold the doves.
He would not allow anyone to carry a container through the temple.
He taught, saying to them, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers!”
The chief priests and the scribes heard it, and sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.
When evening came, he went out of the city.
As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away from the roots.
Explanation
Mark 11:17 records what Jesus said immediately after he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves in the Temple courts in Jerusalem. In plain language, Jesus is quoting Scripture to condemn what he found happening in the Temple. He asks a rhetorical question—essentially, "You know the Scriptures say this place is meant to be a house of prayer, don't you?"—and then declares that instead it has become "a den of robbers," a place of corruption and exploitation rather than worship.
The context is crucial here. This event, often called the "cleansing of the Temple," takes place during the final week of Jesus's earthly ministry, just after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Mark, writing his Gospel likely for a Roman or Gentile Christian audience, presents Jesus as boldly confronting the religious establishment in the very heart of Jewish worship. The Temple courts, particularly the Court of the Gentiles, were meant to be a place where people from all nations could come to pray and seek God. Instead, that space had been turned into a marketplace, where merchants sold animals for sacrifice and money changers exchanged foreign currency for Temple coinage—often at exploitative rates, and in a way that crowded out the very purpose the space was meant to serve.
Jesus's statement is actually a combination of two Old Testament texts. The phrase "a house of prayer for all nations" comes from Isaiah 56:7, part of a passage emphasizing that God's house was meant to welcome outsiders and fo
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