In Jeremiah 7 God ordered Jeremiah to stand at the gate of the temple and warn the people: God will destroy the temple because of their sins. God appeals to his people: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place
(Jeremiah 7:3). Let the people not think they are safe in the temple because it is God’s house. In the past God has destroyed the tabernacle in Shiloh because of the wickedness of the people (Jeremiah 7:14), if the people do not return to the Lord and do righteousness, he will also destroy the temple. 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
(Mark 11:11).
God dwells in his temple but rejects to join it with robbers—also in the time of Jesus. The leaders are robbers: not only do they love money (Luke 16:14) and do they do injustice (Mark 12:40), but they also rob God (see the parable of the tenants who refuse to give the owner of the vineyard what belongs to him, Mark 12:1–12). They are robbers and murderers who will kill the Son of God. The Greek word for robbers also means rebel: the leaders rebel against God.
17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”