The blind and the lame in the temple

Sight given by Jesus. Sight restored. Matthew 21:12-16.

What led up to it

Jesus has entered Jerusalem to shouts of "Hosanna." He goes into the temple courts and drives out those buying and selling.

What happens

With the tables overturned, the blind and the lame come to Him in the temple, and He heals them. Children shout His praise. The chief priests and scribes are indignant.

In their shoes

A thousand years earlier a saying had grown up in this same city: "The blind and the lame will never enter the palace" (2 Samuel 5:8). Here they come to Him inside the temple itself, and He receives them. Matthew sets the two groups side by side: those who had been kept at a distance come in, and those in charge are angry about it.

The place and the time

What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.

The outer court of Herod's Temple, the Court of the Gentiles, worked as a market. Edersheim describes the official money-changers who, for a fee, turned foreign coins into the coin the Temple accepted, and "that great mart for sacrificial animals." Herod had doubled the size of the Temple Mount, to about fourteen hectares, and its porches were where this business was done.

Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book II, chapter I; Wikipedia, "Second Temple," revision of 19 September 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

As the traders were driven out, Edersheim pictures the blind and the lame coming in "from porches and Temple-Mount" to be healed, and the children taking up the shout of Hosanna. He guesses the children may have been sons of the Levites who sang in the Temple.

Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book V, chapter II.

Matthew Henry set this scene against 2 Samuel 5:8: the blind and the lame had been shut out of David's palace, and here they were received in God's house. The Temple, he said, was profaned when made a market and honoured when made a hospital.

Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Matthew 21.

Under the Law a blind descendant of Aaron could not serve at the altar (Leviticus 21:18), though he was still fed from the holy offerings. The same Law commanded care for the blind and counted wrongs against them as breaches of the covenant. Both facts stand behind this scene of blind people healed inside the Temple courts.

Source: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Blindness"; Leviticus 19:14, 21:18-22; Deuteronomy 27:18.

The passage

Matthew 21:12-16

12 Then Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves.

13 And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

14 The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them.

15 But the chief priests and scribes were indignant when they saw the wonders He performed and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

16 “Do You hear what these children are saying?” they asked. “Yes,” Jesus answered. “Have you never read: ‘From the mouths of children and infants You have ordained praise’?”