Last week, we talked about how the phragellion (a loanword for the Roman flagrum) was a feared instrument of imperial state terror. Today, we’ll talk about how Jesus doesn’t adopt the methods of Caesar, but reveals a Messiah who reclaims power for holy purposes.
The Schoinion as Pastoral Subversion.
Luckily for us, the text of John doesn’t stop with use of the heavy, blood-soaked word phragellion. Instead, John adds a prepositional phrase that changes everything. It turns a weapon of war into something far more subversive. Jesus made a scourge—ek schoinion. "Out of cords."
The Greek word schoinion (a diminutive of schoinos) refers specifically to ropes made of rushes, reeds, or twisted grass. In the Septuagint, it describes the rigging of ships or the tethers used for animals. This material composition stands in diametric opposition to the leather and lead of the Roman flagrum.
Consider the physics of the flagrum of the Romans. The terror of the Roman scourge lay in its density. The leather thongs were weighted with metal and bones attached to it. These weights provided enough energy to wrap around a limb and crush muscle, or to catch on the skin and tear it away. A whip of rushes, on the other hand, is lightweight. It lacks the mass required to inflict deep tissue trauma. Without the lead weights, a grass whip operates on a completely different mechanical principle: noise and stinging. In an agricultural context, such whips are used to herd cattle. The "crack" startles the animal, driving it forward. If it makes contact, it stings the hide but does not injure the livestock, which would be counter-productive to the farmer’s economic interest.
This difference in material is what limits the violence. The text notes that Jesus "made" (poiesas) the whip, implying an act of improvisation using materials at hand. Standing in the Temple court, surrounded by the chaos of the market, the most readily available materials would have been the bedding from the floor or the twisted grass ropes used to bind the oxen. If he had intended to lead a violent insurrection or inflict physical harm, he could have seized a staff, a knife from the sacrifice tables, or a weapon from the Temple guards. Instead, he braided together bedding material to craft what was a "mock" whip. Because of this, I’ve always taught this passage as a miracle passage for Jesus. One simply does not fight a Roman cohort or clear a "Den of Robbers" of armed men using twisted grass unless the power being wielded is of a completely different, higher order.
Why, then, does the Gospel writer use the loanword phragellion (torture scourge) to describe a schoinion (rush whip)? The juxtaposition serves as a potent political and theological satire. In the Roman world, the flagrum was the symbol of the false suzerain (Caesar), who ruled through terror and the destruction of the body. Jesus, the True Suzerain, enters his Temple wielding a phragellion—but one made of "weak" rushes—to mock the Roman reliance on iron and lead. He demonstrates that his authority is so absolute that he can drive out the "armies" of commerce and the "vassals" of corruption with nothing more than the scraps of the shepherd’s field. This action aligns perfectly with the "Triumphal Entry" as a satire of the Roman Triumphus; just as Jesus rides a donkey (a beast of peace) to mock the war-horses of the conqueror, he wields a rush-whip to mock the lead-scourges of the oppressor. It is an assertion that the Kingdom of God functions on a different axis of power—authority inherent in the Person, not the weapon.
Who are the Animals, Anyway?
Finally, the schoinion whip reclaims the imagery of the Shepherd-King. In the Ancient Near East, the king was frequently depicted as the shepherd of his people, and the whip of cords functions as the shepherd’s tool to separate the flock. The grammatical construction of John 2:15 supports this reading. The phrase “drove them all out... with the sheep and the oxen” uses the Greek te...kai (both...and) to link the expulsion of the people closely to the animals. Jesus clears the Temple not by slaughtering the wicked (as a soldier might), but by driving the “livestock” out of the sanctuary. This was a stinging indictment of the merchants. By their profaning of the holy space, they had reduced themselves to the level of the livestock they sold. They were no longer worshippers; they were animals of the market.
Next time, we will move from the Material to the Legal. If the whip was the gavel, then the Temple was the courtroom. We’ll look at how the cleansing wasn’t a riot, but a formal lawsuit. It was “Prosecutorial Action” against a priesthood that had breached its contract.