Money-changer

Money-changers were traders who set up tables in the outer courts of the Jerusalem temple to exchange foreign currency for the Jewish or Tyrian shekel required for payment of the annual half-shekel temple tax (Ex. 30:13–15; Matt. 17:24). Since the Mosaic law stipulated this offering in a specific coinage, pilgrims arriving from throughout the diaspora needed to convert their Roman, Greek, Egyptian, or other currencies, and the money-changers charged a premium for the exchange. Jesus twice drove out the money-changers from the temple courts (at the beginning of his ministry in John 2:13–17, and at the end in Matt. 21:12–13 and parallels), overturning their tables and accusing them of making the house of prayer into "a den of thieves" — citing Jeremiah 7:11 and Isaiah 56:7. The episode reflects both Jesus' zeal for the sanctity of temple worship and his prophetic indictment of commercial exploitation of pilgrims in the sacred precinct.