Small Ropes
Day 29
337 remaining after today.
. . . 15 He made a whip from small ropes . . . [source]
Perhaps without supporting Text those few words are not enough to set the scene for you. He used small ropes to make a whip. Immediately I thought of another whip.
It has nine straps, probably some kind of leather, attached and/or embedded in these leather straps are sharp objects such as iron and bone. The whip’s purpose: [source] This instrument was designed to lacerate. The weighed thongs struck the skin so violently that it broke open. The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea recounts with vivid, horrible detail a scene of scourging. He says, “For they say that the bystanders were struck with amazement when they saw them lacerated with scourges even to the innermost veins and arteries, so that the hidden inward parts of the body, both their bowels and their members, were exposed to view” (Ecclesiastical History, Book 4, chap. 15). [end]
This whip is often referenced Cat of Nine Tails, also known as a Roman flagellum or a flagrum. It is this instrument that was used on YESHUA during the trials and prior to His Execution.
But that is not the whip noted in John 2:15. Small ropes it says.
The Flagellum is set to exact pain, to punish the offender. To punish to the point of death.
Not so with JESUS. YESHUA’s whip contained no bone, no iron embeds. He was not out for their blood; He would soon be shedding His own for them (for us),
No. YESHUA’s whip was to clean the Temple, to drive out evil, to correct what was wrong there, to make pure, to make it again a House of Prayer.
Do you see it?
Today. You and I. We are Temples. Temples of HIS SPIRIT (if we are in CHRIST see Romans 8:9) and when we have dirtied up the temple with disobedience, we too will hear the crack of those small ropes plaited together. May it be that just the sound is enough to correct us. May just the sound be enough to clean the temple and bring us to prayer – a prayer of repentance in the House of Prayer.
12 For whom the Lord loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. [source] Proverbs 3:12
