We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

We heard him saying, I will throw down this sanctuary made with hands, and by three days, another made without hands I will build;'

"We have heard him say, 'I will pull down this Sanctuary built by human hands, and three days afterwards I will erect another built without hands.'"

He said in our hearing, I will put an end to this Temple which is made with hands, and in three days I will make another without hands.

We heard him say,.... In a discourse of his, recorded in John 2:19,
I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands; which was a very false testimony; for Christ did not say be would destroy any temple at all, only put the Jews on doing it; much less did he point at, or design the temple of Jerusalem, but his own body; nor did he use the distinction of a temple, made with and without hands; nor did he affirm that he would build another; only said, he would raise up in three days, that which they should destroy. By this testimony these witnesses would suggest, that Christ had a design upon their temple to demolish it, and that he must be a sorcerer, or a magician, to pretend to build a temple without hands in three days time; See Gill on Matthew 26:61.

We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands--On this charge, observe, first, that eager as His enemies were to find criminal matter against our Lord, they had to go back to the outset of His ministry, His first visit to Jerusalem, more than three years before this. In all that He said and did after that, though ever increasing in boldness, they could find nothing. Next, that even then, they fix only on one speech, of two or three words, which they dared to adduce against Him. Further, they most manifestly pervert the speech of our Lord. We say not this because in Mark's form of it, it differs from the report of the words given by the Fourth Evangelist (John 2:18-22) --the only one of the Evangelists who reports it all, or mentions even any visit paid by our Lord to Jerusalem before His last--but because the one report bears truth, and the other falsehood, on its face. When our Lord said on that occasion, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," they might, for a moment, have understood Him to refer to the temple out of whose courts He had swept the buyers and sellers. But after they had expressed their astonishment at His words, in that sense of them, and reasoned upon the time it had taken to rear the temple as it then stood, since no answer to this appears to have been given by our Lord, it is hardly conceivable that they should continue in the persuasion that this was really His meaning. But finally, even if the more ignorant among them had done so, it is next to certain that the ecclesiastics, who were the prosecutors in this case, did not believe that this was His meaning. For in less than three days after this they went to Pilate, saying, "Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, after three days I will rise again" (Matthew 27:63). Now what utterance of Christ known to His enemies, could this refer to, if not to this very saying about destroying and rearing up the temple? And if so, it puts it beyond a doubt that by this time, at least, they were perfectly aware that our Lord's words referred to His death by their hands and His resurrection by His own. But this is confirmed by Mark 14:59.

We heard him say - It is observable, that the words which they thus misrepresented, were spoken by Christ at least three years before, John 2:19. Their going back so far to find matter for the charge, was a glorious, though silent attestation of the unexceptionable manner wherein he had behaved, through the whole course of his public ministry.