In Matthew 8:20, Jesus affirms that He had no home in this world. He should have though. More on that in a bit.

First, it is not controversial to state that our world isn’t right. Jesus knew that as well as anyone, only He also knew was the one to fix it. Jesus left his home, and came to tabernacle with us. He left his home so we could have a home in Him. But that being said, for the time being, the “birds have nests and the foxes have dens,” but Jesus had no permanent home. Perhaps His allusion to the birds and the foxes was hinting that its usually the eagles like Rome or the foxes like Herod who hoard the best land and build all the best palaces.

Matthew translates Jesus’ Aramaic for dwelling into the Greek word kataskénósis, combining the prefix kata– with skénóo which means a tent or a dwelling, or a tabernacle. This is the same Greek word John uses in his first chapter when he writes that Jesus “dwelt among us.” This is meant to hearken the reader back to the portable tent temple, called the tabernacle that moved with the people of Israel throughout the length and breadth of the wilderness. And when God told Moses how to shape His tabernacle, He again made it clear that had no permanent home in this world, not yet. But the tabernacle was just His tent, His skénóo. And of course in the next millennium and a half of Jewish history that tabernacle transformed into the temple on Mount Zion.

Therefore, a son, by any legal reading, should have been given full occupancy and rights to his father’s house, the temple. Even at 12, Jesus knows the Jerusalem Temple is his rightful home, but he willingly cedes his right to live there at the request of his parents. Years later, Jesus would again yield all his rights to his rightful home.

However, Jesus knew the law, and according to Exodus 22:2, he had every legal right to kill any invaders who were squatting in his father’s home. But rather than kill these money changers, Jesus graciously acted out a warning. He engaged in dramatic prophetic reenactment, just as so many prophets of old had done. Jesus first demonstrated his right of ownership by chasing out the squatters with a non-lethal weapon, a whip – not a sword or a spear – then He cited a warning from Jeremiah. Everyone in earshot would have known the full context of the verse Jesus quoted from Jeremiah, it warned that a corrupt temple would soon be demolished. Choosing this verse was an unmistakable warning from Jesus…

Yet after His prophetic pantomime, which also clearly demonstrated that Jesus knew He had every right of legal ownership to His father’s house, He allowed the illegal squatters to return back into His home.

One day Jesus will return to rule the Earth in person and the prophets hint, especially Zechariah and Ezekiel, that His headquarters will very likely be another temple on that exact mount that He expelled the money changers from, but until that coming day Jesus has a different priority. He is firstly dedicated to making an overture of salvation to all His enemies.

I like to think that Jesus knew that at least a few of the money changers would be struck by His dramatic pantomime of whips and scattered coins, and these men, just like Matthew, would change their allegiances to serve the true owner of the house they were squatting in.

Matthew 8:20 – Αἱ ἀλώπεκες φωλεοὺς ἔχουσιν καὶ τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατασκηνώσεις