I think this instance can be taken at face value.
Whatever our LORD’s beef with the temple establishment, the temple proper was His Father’s house, and He did not want to see it put to profane use.
Also, the courtyard was to be used for people to pray, not for leading animals around and counting money.
ICXC NIKA
When we say ‘place of worship’ today, we envision a quiet, tranquil area. But not so in the ancient world. The temple in Jerusalem was not out of the ordinary; just about every other temple in the ancient world was noisy, because prayer was vocal. And yes, there were animal sacrifices so there were the sound of animals and marketplaces too.
There are a number of possible reasons why Jesus drove the vendors out.
Some say that Jesus was protesting against the currency used in the temple market, the Tyrian shekel, which while was of enough and consistent silver content to be legally acceptable (compared to Roman coins) had pagan graven images - the god Melqart-Hercules and the eagle of Tyre - on it. In other words, Jesus was objecting to the presence of pagan images in the temple.
Others suggest that Jesus was objecting to the practice of the half-shekel tax paid by contemporary Jews
yearly to the temple, when the Torah said that the half-shekel tax in support of the tabernacle was required to be given only
once in a lifetime. In other words, Jesus was advocating not going beyond what the Law had said. Some will go further and say that Jesus was protesting against the temple establishment who levy these taxes on the already-oppressed and weary peasants. In other words, Jesus (in this idea) shows His concern for the poor and needy by advocating a literal interpretation of the Law (that the half-shekel tax be paid only once in a lifetime rather than on an annual basis).
You might notice that Jesus alludes to Jeremiah’s “den of robbers” prophecy: Jeremiah indicted the Jerusalem elite of his day:
Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
In one interpretation, it is not so much the vendors themselves whom Jesus was targeting - it was the elite who run the temple and who were using the vendors for their gain. Just like Jeremiah, Jesus was indicting the Jerusalem elites (the “robbers”) for acting unjustly and then using the temple as their hideout - their “den” - to cover up their sins.
Then there’s also this line of interpretation - which is closer to the original spirit of Jeremiah’s sermon - which puts more emphasis on “den” than “robbers:” Jesus is not so much accusing the buyers and sellers of “robbery,” but of hypocrisy: here they are trying to acting religiously and fulfill their temple duties - they, who outside the temple were living immoral lives. They were using the temple as their refuge, their excuse so that they could continue living in sin outside it. The issue is not that of “den robbers” but of a “robber den:” Jesus was not so much calling the people ‘robbers’ as He was calling the temple a ‘den’. (After all, the hideout is where robbers hide after the robbery and share the loot - it is not the place where they steal.) In other words, the people - the priests, the buyers and the sellers - were indicted for thinking that since they were fulfilling their religious duties in the sanctuary it is now okay for them to commit sin outside.
Still another interpretation gives the demonstration an apocalyptic bent, in keeping with the idea of Jesus as an eschatological, apocalyptic prophet who taught that the arrival of God’s kingdom was imminent. Jesus upset the temple market in anticipation of the echatological denouement when the temple will be destroyed. In other words, by causing a disturbance on the temple market He symbolically acts out God’s impending judgment on the Jerusalem temple (which was probably in His view corrupt and in need of renewal). This is close to the way the gospels - especially Mark - portray the event (they present it as a sort of symbolic judgment upon the temple, and Jerusalem in general): you would notice that Mark and Matthew pair the event with the cursing of the fig tree that bore no fruit.
I personally think that all three interpretations could each be ‘correct’ in a way.
In fact, films such as The Greatest Story Ever Told, the play Son of Man, and Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (aka The Gospel according to St. Matthew) stand out - and IMHO, are much more effective portrayals - because in those films, Jesus manages to clear out the temple without going into excessive berserk mode.
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