What does it mean that Jesus has interrupted the temple’s perfectly legitimate sacrificial and fiscal activities? It means that Jesus has shut down the temple. But it is a symbolic rather than a literal “shutdown.” It is a prophetic action that intends in macrocosm what it effects in microcosm. It is the same as pouring blood on draft files in one single office during the Vietnam War. The Pentagon is not “shut down” literally, but it is “shut down” symbolically.
