“A house of prayer for all the nations”
Is it not written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.' (Mark 11:17 BSB)
What it sounds like today
The temple-cleansing quote, one clause longer.
The cultural key
Mark alone keeps the ending of the Isaiah 56:7 quotation: 'for all the nations.' The clause is the indictment's second barrel. The market operated in the Court of the Gentiles, the one precinct of the temple where the nations could come to pray; commerce had colonized precisely the space Isaiah promised them. Matthew and Luke, writing closer to Jewish concerns, keep the den-of-robbers charge; Mark, writing for Gentiles, keeps the clause that names his own readers as the injured party.
Recovered meaning
In Mark the cleansing is not only about corruption but about crowding out: the nations' one appointed place of welcome had been turned into a currency exchange. Gentile readers heard their own standing-room defended by the whip of cords.