No Free Lunch: Economics for a Fallen World: Third Edition, Revised

Chapter Eight: Market Structure: From competition to monopoly 178 JESUS’ CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE Exodus 30:11-15 11 The LORD also spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “When you take a census of the sons of Israel to number them, then each one of them shall give a ransom for himself to the LORD, when you number them, so that there will be no plague among them when you number them. 13 This is what everyone who is numbered shall give: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as a contribution to the LORD. 14 Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, shall give the contribution to the LORD. 15 The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than the half shekel, when you give the contribution to the LORD to make atonement for yourselves.” Matthew 21:12-13 12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER’; but you are making it a ROBBERS’ DEN.” Exodus 30 required every son of Israel that was numbered in the census to offer a half- shekel for atonement once a year. Christian scholarship on the cleansing of the temple suggests multiple reasons that God was displeased with the money changers in the temple. In fact, this is probably the second time that Jesus cleansed the temple (see The MacArthur Bible Commentary ; the account in John 2:14-16 was likely an earlier event). First, however legitimate the business activities were, mixing the secular with the sacred was an affront to the holiness of God. Second, the commercial activities were in the Court of the Gentiles, inhibiting foreigners’ access to the only part of the temple that they could enter. A final reason is important for our economic discussion. Note that Jesus said that they were making the temple a “robbers’ den.” While Jewish citizens were required to come from all over Israel to Jerusalem for their offering, the coinage used in Jesus’ day was not acceptable to offer to the temple, and therefore they had to exchange local commercial currency into a form acceptable to the temple leadership. The “robbers’ den” comment was likely due to exorbitant fees charged for the money exchange. While there is no biblical discussion of how a particular merchant was given a location within the temple to exchange currency, some believe the temple leadership allocated the positions to obtain a kickback, and the temple leadership only accepted offerings that came from those merchants. In effect, the temple leaders were establishing monopoly privilege for coin exchange to a few select dealers who were using that privilege to obtain exorbitant profits. God’s holy requirement was being exploited by the money changers (and possibly temple leadership), who took financial advantage of travelers who otherwise could not meet God’s requirement. We will see in this chapter some of the detriments of monopoly power , and how political power is usually the source of this privilege.