In after days we shall find the Jews felt the boldness of this language, and made it their principal charge against Jesus that He dared to use it. On this occasion it seems to have fallen dead upon their ears. Their question is not, '_What sign shewest thou seeing_' thou sayest this, but '_seeing thou doest these things_?' They meant nothing more, I suppose, than, 'Why dost thou, a mere Galilæan stranger, take upon thee to drive out these oxen? A prophet might do it--perhaps even a zealot, if he was a Levite, and claimed the honours of his ancestor Phinehas, might do it--but what sign canst thou produce that such an office belongs to thee?' I do not find more in _their_ demand than this; but the answer of our Lord refers to His previous words as well as to theirs. He could not give them a sign that He had a right to cleanse the Temple, which would not also be a sign that He had a right, in the strictest sense, to call the Temple 'His Father's house.' You must recollect that this was the claim He had to make good, if you would understand Him when He says, '_Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up_.' The sentence was, of course, enigmatical. The Jews regarded it simply as the language of a fanatic or a madman. '_Forty and six years_,' they said, '_was this Temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?_' St. John evidently indicates that it was not much more intelligible to him and to his fellow-disciples, when they first heard it, than to their countrymen. But he says a time came when they did understand it. '_He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore He was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had said._'