Mark 11

Mark 11 begins the Jerusalem section of the gospel. The entry (11:1-11) is both royal and anticlimactic. The preparations for the colt are given in detail that emphasises divine foreknowledge and human obedience; the crowd spreads garments and leafy branches on the road; the hosanna in the highest is a liturgical cry from Psalm 118 associated with pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem for the Passover. But Jesus arrives at the temple, looks around at everything, and goes out because it is late. The gospel pauses him at the threshold. The sandwiching technique that follows is among the most studied in Mark: the fig tree cursed (11:12-14), the temple cleared (11:15-19), the fig tree found withered (11:20-25). The connection is not explicit in the text; the reader is invited to make it.

The temple action (11:15-17) has been interpreted variously: as a symbolic act of prophetic judgement against the temple establishment, as an action directed at the commercialisation of the pilgrimage system, as an act against the barrier between Gentiles and the inner courts, or as a combination of these. The citation of Isaiah 56:7 — a house of prayer for all nations — and Jeremiah 7:11 — a den of robbers — links the action to the Jeremiah tradition of prophetic critique of the temple cult as a cover for injustice. The chief priests and scribes hear and begin seeking how to destroy him (11:18) — the same verb used of the Pharisees and Herodians in 3:6. The authority challenge (11:27-33) is answered with the counter-question about John's baptism, which traps the questioners: if they say from heaven, Jesus will ask why they did not believe; if they say from human authority, they fear the crowd who regard John as a prophet. They cannot answer, and Jesus does not answer them.