Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 21:14

"And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them." — Matthew 21:14 (ASV)

The blind and the lame—As we see from Acts 3:2 and probably from John 9:1, these people often gathered at the approaches to the Temple to ask for alms from the worshipers. Now, they followed the great Healer into the Temple itself and sought relief from Him for their ailments.

If we were to accept the Septuagint reading of the strange proverbial saying in 2 Samuel 5:8, “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house of the Lord,” it would seem that this was a departure from the usual regulations of the Temple. However, the words in italics are not in the original Hebrew.

Most commentators give an entirely different meaning to the proverb, and there is no evidence from Jewish writers that the blind and the lame were ever actually excluded from the Temple. All we can rightly infer from the two passages is the contrast between the hasty, passionate words of the conquering king and the tender compassion of the Son of David, to whom the blind and the lame were objects not of antipathy, but of pity.