(3) There is the common answer, that He spoke ambiguously and allowed them to be deceived, because they were unworthy of plainer speech. They were not, however, necessarily deceived, for ναός (a temple) was used frequently in reference to the human body (see, _e.g._, 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17; vi. 19; 2 Cor. vi. 16), and our Lord’s language might have given them some reason for suspecting that it was of His body He spoke. For the two verbs, which he used λύσατε and ἐγερῶ though they could be understood in reference to the temple of stone, applied more appropriately to His body; the former signifying the breaking up or _loosing_ of the union between His soul and body; the latter, the raising of the body to life, as so often in St. Paul. See, _e.g._, 1 Cor. xv. 4, 12, 14, &c. *Destroy this temple*, is not, of course, a command to put Him to death, but a permission like what He said to Judas: _That which thou dost, do quickly_ (John xiii. 27). It was usual with the Prophets to announce their predictions in the form of a command; as, for instance, Isaias (xlvii. 1): “Come down, sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon.” 20. Dixerunt ergo Iudaei: 20. The Jews then said: Six Quadraginta et sex annis and forty years was this aedificatum est templum hoc, temple in building, and wilt et tu in tribus diebus thou raise it up in three excitabis illud? days? 20. The rebuilding of the temple by Herod the Great is said by Josephus, in Antiq. xv. 11, 1, to have been begun in the eighteenth year of his reign; in B. Jud. i. 21, 1, in the fifteenth; the difference arising from the fact that in one case Josephus counts from the death of Antigonus, in the other from Herod’s appointment by the Romans. (See Antiq. xvii. 8, 1.) Reckoning from the latter, we have twenty years till the birth of Christ, and thirty years since that event, making fifty, from which, however, four must be subtracted, because our era is four years too late. This gives forty‐six years. The mere building of the temple took only nine years and a half, but during the remainder of the time it was decorated. These decorations were still going on, and were not completed till 64 A.D., so that the Greek verb ought to get its proper sense: _has been_ in building. 21. Ille autem dicebat de 21. But he spoke of the temple templo corporis sui. of his body. 21. The inspired Evangelist here tells us that it was of His body Christ spoke. He adds the explanation to show, perhaps, how utterly devoid of all foundation in fact was the distorted testimony of the false witnesses, who on the night before His death charged our Lord with having threatened to destroy the temple _made with hands_ (Matt. xxvi. 61; Mark xiv. 58).