Matthew 21:13
Matthew 21:1313And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Read as Jesus acting with the authority Jehovah gave him to cleanse his Father's house of commercial corruption — a demonstration of zeal for true worship. The Watchtower applies the cleansing theme to the purification of God's people in the modern era.
Notice the possessive and who is using it. Jesus quotes Isaiah — "my house will be called a house of prayer" — where the speaker is Jehovah, and he uses it as the warrant for acting in that house as its owner. He does not petition the priests or appeal to a commission. He clears the courts on his own authority and cites a verse in which God calls the temple his own. That connects directly to , where Jehovah says the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The word is "his." Malachi announces an owner arriving at his own house; Matthew records someone doing exactly that and quoting God's ownership as his ground. has the same possessive from Jesus as a boy, in the same building: did you not know that I must be in the house of my Father? Three passages, one temple, one claim. Ask a Witness who Malachi says comes to the temple, and then what Jesus did when he got there. Compare , , .