The noise
in the Outer Court had now grown to a deafening roar. Cattle were
lowing and lambs bleating. Men shouted and cursed when an affrighted
animal broke its tether. The voices of other men were heard calling
their wares at shop entrances and booths, and the air was heavy with
the stench of goats and cattle dung. Making his way through the crowd
he found the niche between the pillars and again stepped into it to
look for a few moments upon the scene of uproar and confusion. There
was nothing to indicate a place of worship. Rather was it a great
bazaar of shops with competition so keen at times as to give promise of
the use of fists. In addition to the stalls of lambs and pigeons and
the booths of oil and wine and wheat required for the sacrifices, there
were stands for vase sellers, brass and copper dealers, dealers in
ovens, dishes and bottles, silk merchants and jewelers and traffickers
in imported goods.

The crowd was made up mostly of tradespeople and strangers with a
sprinkling of Temple Guards and here and there scribes and Pharisees.
The gleam of spear points of the Legion told that an extra guard had
been sent in from the Tower of Antonio, and Jesus noticed that this
guard was well established around the tables of the money-changers.
His eye turned again to the table directly in front of him and now for
the first time he saw its owner. He smiled at the memory of a startled
face looking at him in the dark from over a water-jar. But Zador Ben
Amon did not look his way now. He was busy passing on the value of
coins and in seeing that any who complained were well pushed out of the
way by soldiers, to be swallowed up by the crowd. For a time Jesus
watched the game. The last victim of the unscrupulous money-changer
was a Galilean peasant, whose travel-stained and shabby body covering,
bent shoulders and knotted hands bespoke poverty. When the change was
pressed into his hand he refused to accept it. There were words. The
peasant was ordered by Zador Ben Amon to move on. This he refused to
do. Guards were summoned and when the man, who had been robbed of his
one coin, still clamored for his money, he was cruelly beaten and
dragged away to the stocks.

The Galilean watching from the balustrade felt again the fierce anger
sweeping over him and he left his place of watching with his face
turned in the direction of the money-changers. As he crossed the court
he stopped at a goat pen. A dozen goat