Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Mark 11:17

"And he taught, and said unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? but ye have made it a den of robbers." — Mark 11:17 (ASV)

The first passage quoted by Jesus is Isa 56:7, a prediction that non-Jews who worship God would be allowed to worship in the temple. By allowing the Court of the Gentiles, the only place in the temple area where Gentiles could worship God, to become a noisy, smelly public market, the Jewish religious leaders were preventing Gentiles from exercising the spiritual privilege promised them. How could a Gentile pray amid all that noise and stench? The second quotation emphasizes that instead of allowing the temple to be what it was meant to be, a place of prayer, they had allowed it to become a robbers’ den. This is to be understood both in terms of the Jews’ dishonest dealing with the pilgrims and expecially in terms of using all their merchandising activities to rob the Gentiles of their rightful claim to worship Israel’s God.

Jesus’ concern that Gentiles receive equal privileges with Jews to worship God would have been particularly meaningful for Mark’s predominantly Gentile readers.