Did Jesus beat people with the whip in John 2, or only drive out the animals?
A viewer says someone insisted to them that in John 2 Jesus used the whip only to drive out the animals from the temple, and asks whether Jesus actually struck people.
Answer
We do not know for sure. The tip of that whip may have hit one or two of the money changers, and if so it was probably by happenstance, but Jesus knows that if you are wielding a whip to get everyone's attention, it may hit somebody. He is not doing it intentionally, but whose attention is he trying to get? Not the tables, but the human beings, the ones with conscious existence in that temple, to get them out of there, and he is quoting from Jeremiah 7 while he does it. So I would not say he is aiming the whip at their hearts, but he wants to get their attention to leave, and whatever comes, comes. If one of the money changers had stood in the corner and refused to leave, Jesus was angry enough that he probably would have used some force, or put the tip of the whip within three inches of his face, but he would get the message across.