Matthew 21:12–19

CLEANSING THE TEMPLE

¹²Jesus went into the temple^Cc and threw out all those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves.^{d 13}He said to them, “It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer,^D but you are making it a den of thieves!”^Ee

CHILDREN PRAISE JESUS

¹⁴The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. ¹⁵When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that he did and the children shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant ¹⁶and said to him, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”

Jesus replied, “Yes, have you never read:

You have prepared^F praise^f

from the mouths of infants and nursing babies?”^G

¹⁷Then he left them, went out of the city to Bethany,^g and spent the night there.

THE BARREN FIG TREE

¹⁸Early in the morning,^h as he was returning to the city, he was hungry. ¹⁹Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he went up to it and found nothing on it except leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” At once the fig tree withered.