And those passing by were insulting Him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who tear down the temple and build it in three days.
The mockery of the passersby shows how blind a person can be, standing before God’s greatest work and not recognizing it. They distort Christ’s word about the temple and turn it into an occasion for contempt (John 2:19). Shaking the head was a sign of scorn and recalls the psalm’s word about the suffering righteous one: “All who saw me despised me, moving their lips and shaking their heads” (Psalm 22:7). They thought the cross was proof of His inability, while it was precisely through the cross that Christ was opening a new and living way to God. He did not answer their mockery, because His saving work was higher than their blindness and ignorance.