NOTES for Luk 19:45-48
Each of the evangelists, in keeping with the logic and particular features of his narrative, gives us an account of the cleansing of the Temple. The point is that for the Jews who saw the Lord Jesus driving the sellers out of the Temple, this was a sign that He truly was the Savior of the world, the Christ. The prophet Haggai says of this Second Temple that its glory would be greater than the glory of Solomon's Temple, because the Deliverer would come into it. And now Christ drives out of the Temple the bustle unworthy of the holy place and then, as the evangelist Luke writes, He teaches every day in the Temple. Day after day, again and again, Christ proclaims the Father's love and calls people to repentance.
It is important for us to notice how the evangelist Luke speaks about His listeners. The Synodal translation offers the words: "...all the people listened to Him intently"; in the Greek original, however, the evangelist uses a very vivid word: "...all the people hung upon Him, listening." This kind of persistence, when we literally hang in clusters upon Christ, catching every word of His, is what prevented the chief priests and scribes from immediately carrying out their treacherous plans. They wanted to destroy Him, but they could not, says the evangelist, because all the people were literally hanging upon Him. The world's enmity against Christ, the resistance of the forces of evil to His saving action, proved powerless when people listened to His word in this way.
The resemblance between this image and the words of Christ quoted by the apostle John in chapter 15 of his Gospel draws attention to itself: "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me." It is characteristic that here the evangelist Luke uses not his usual word "ochlos," crowd, but "laos," people - the word that later came to refer to the laity in the Church.