Matthew 21:12–14

There was in the temple a crowd of merchants — money-changers, or small-coin dealers — and with them sellers of oxen and sheep, and people selling turtledoves and pigeons. These things were useful for the sacrifices of worship under the law. But it was already time for the shadow to cease and for the truth in Christ to shine. So Christ, the Truth, rightly honored with his own Father in the temple that is his, commanded the sacrifices and smoke under the law to be curtailed, and showed the temple to be a house of prayer. For to rebuke the merchants and drive from the sacred precincts those selling what is useful for sacrifice is exactly that and nothing else.

Another evangelist says Jesus also “made a whip of cords,” threatened blows, and raised it against them. Those who honor legal worship needed to know, after the truth was shown, that having a “spirit of slavery” and refusing to be freed, they will be under scourges and subject to slavish punishment. He also sets Isaiah against them as accuser — for so the evangelist says.