43. For a time is coming upon you when your enemies will throw up a bank [with pointed stakes] about you and surround you and shut you in on every side. [Isa. 29:3; Jer. 6:6; Ezek. 4:2.]
44. And they will dash you down to the ground, you [Jerusalem] and your children within you; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, [all] because you did not come progressively to recognize and know and understand [from observation and experience] the time of your visitation [that is, when God was visiting you, the time in which God showed Himself gracious toward you and offered you salvation through Christ].
45. Then He went into the temple [enclosure] and began to drive out those who were selling,
46. Telling them, It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer; but you have made it a cave of robbers. [Isa. 56:7; Jer. 7:11.]
47. And He continued to teach day after day in the temple [porches and courts]. The chief priests and scribes and the leading men of the people were seeking to put Him to death,
48. But they did not discover anything they could do, for all the people hung upon His words and stuck by Him.