Perhaps as a result of Isaiah's words, the temple had been expanded to include a large outer court of the Gentiles. Yet it is in this court that we find the money lenders, buyers, and sellers. Although gentiles were not excluded from worship, the intrusion of a market in the court of the Gentiles was corrupting their worship. The inner courts for Jewish men and women did not have such activity. The Gentiles were being robbed of purity of worship.
Worship is attitude.
Their daily secular behavior contradicts their professed temple worship. The cleansing of the temple, then, was not so much the removal of a market as it was the removal of barriers to worship. Those barriers were wrong attitudes towards worship, particularly a presumption that worship in the temple was sufficient to cover up the sins outside the temple and an attitude of exclusion. Although the cleansing of the temple excluded a group of buyers and sellers, it led to further inclusions. Immediately afterwards, Jesus performs His only healing within the temple.