tax collectors

70:7.18These clubs were em­ployed by mer­chants to col­lect debts and by rulers to col­lect taxes. Tax­a­tion has been a long strug­gle, one of the ear­li­est forms be­ing the tithe, one tenth of the hunt or spoils. Taxes were orig­i­nally levied to keep up the king’s house, but it was found that they were eas­ier to col­lect when dis­guised as an of­fer­ing for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vice.

135:6.8John con­ducted classes for his dis­ci­ples, in the course of which he in­structed them in the de­tails of their new life and en­deav­ored to an­swer their many ques­tions. He coun­seled the teach­ers to in­struct in the spirit as well as the let­ter of the law. He in­structed the rich to feed the poor; to the tax gath­er­ers he said: “Ex­tort no more than that which is as­signed you.” To the sol­diers he said: “Do no vi­o­lence and ex­act noth­ing wrong­fully—be con­tent with your wages.” While he coun­seled all: “Make ready for the end of the age—the king­dom of heaven is at hand.”

126:5.5The pay of a com­mon day-la­bor­ing car­pen­ter was slowly di­min­ish­ing. By the end of this year Je­sus could earn, by work­ing early and late, only the equiv­a­lent of about twenty-five cents a day. By the next year they found it dif­fi­cult to pay the civil taxes, not to men­tion the syn­a­gogue as­sess­ments and the tem­ple tax of one-half shekel. Dur­ing this year the tax col­lec­tor tried to squeeze ex­tra rev­enue out of Je­sus, even threat­en­ing to take his harp.

126:5.6Fear­ing that the copy of the Greek scrip­tures might be dis­cov­ered and con­fis­cated by the tax col­lec­tors, Je­sus, on his fif­teenth birth­day, pre­sented it to the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue li­brary as his ma­tu­rity of­fer­ing to the Lord.

127:4.10This year Jude started to school, and it was nec­es­sary for Je­sus to sell his harp in or­der to de­fray these ex­penses. Thus dis­ap­peared the last of his recre­ational plea­sures. He much loved to play the harp when tired in mind and weary in body, but he com­forted him­self with the thought that at least the harp was safe from seizure by the tax col­lec­tor.

138:3.1The next day Je­sus and the six went to call upon Mat­thew, the cus­toms col­lec­tor. Mat­thew was await­ing them, hav­ing bal­anced his books and made ready to turn the af­fairs of his of­fice over to his brother. As they ap­proached the toll house, An­drew stepped for­ward with Je­sus, who, look­ing into Mat­thew’s face, said, “Fol­low me.” And he arose and went to his house with Je­sus and the apos­tles.

138:3.4They all re­turned to Mat­thew’s home, where they talked much about pol­i­tics and re­li­gion un­til the hour of the evening meal. The Levi fam­ily had long been en­gaged in busi­ness and tax gath­er­ing; there­fore many of the guests bid­den to this ban­quet by Mat­thew would have been de­nom­i­nated “pub­li­cans and sin­ners” by the Phar­isees.

181:2.14“Levi, I know much about your anx­i­eties, sac­ri­fices, and labors to keep the trea­sury re­plen­ished which your breth­ren do not know, and I am re­joiced that, though he who car­ried the bag is ab­sent, the pub­li­can am­bas­sador is here at my farewell gath­er­ing with the mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. I pray that you may dis­cern the mean­ing of my teach­ing with the eyes of the spirit. And when the new teacher comes into your heart, fol­low on as he will lead you and let your breth­ren see—even all the world—what the Fa­ther can do for a hated tax-gath­erer who dared to fol­low the Son of Man and to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. Even from the first, Levi, I loved you as I did these other Galileans. Know­ing then so well that nei­ther the Fa­ther nor the Son has re­spect of per­sons, see to it that you make no such dis­tinc­tions among those who be­come be­liev­ers in the gospel through your min­istry. And so, Mat­thew, ded­i­cate your whole fu­ture life ser­vice to show­ing all men that God is no re­specter of per­sons; that, in the sight of God and in the fel­low­ship of the king­dom, all men are equal, all be­liev­ers are the sons of God.”

157:1.1As Je­sus, with An­drew and Pe­ter, tar­ried by the lake near the boat­shop, a tem­ple-tax col­lec­tor came upon them and, rec­og­niz­ing Je­sus, called Pe­ter to one side and said: “Does not your Mas­ter pay the tem­ple tax?” Pe­ter was in­clined to show in­dig­na­tion at the sug­ges­tion that Je­sus should be ex­pected to con­tribute to the main­te­nance of the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of his sworn en­e­mies, but, not­ing a pe­cu­liar ex­pres­sion on the face of the tax col­lec­tor, he rightly sur­mised that it was the pur­pose to en­trap them in the act of re­fus­ing to pay the cus­tom­ary half shekel for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, Pe­ter replied: “Why of course the Mas­ter pays the tem­ple tax. You wait by the gate, and I will pres­ently re­turn with the tax.”

157:1.2Now Pe­ter had spo­ken hastily. Ju­das car­ried their funds, and he was across the lake. Nei­ther he, his brother, nor Je­sus had brought along any money. And know­ing that the Phar­isees were look­ing for them, they could not well go to Beth­saida to ob­tain money. When Pe­ter told Je­sus about the col­lec­tor and that he had prom­ised him the money, Je­sus said: “If you have prom­ised, then should you pay. But where­with will you re­deem your prom­ise? Will you again be­come a fish­er­man that you may honor your word? Nev­er­the­less, Pe­ter, it is well in the cir­cum­stances that we pay the tax. Let us give these men no oc­ca­sion for of­fense at our at­ti­tude. We will wait here while you go with the boat and cast for the fish, and when you have sold them at yon­der mar­ket, pay the col­lec­tor for all three of us.”

157:1.3All of this had been over­heard by the se­cret mes­sen­ger of David who stood near by, and who then sig­naled to an as­so­ciate, fish­ing near the shore, to come in quickly. When Pe­ter made ready to go out in the boat for a catch, this mes­sen­ger and his fish­er­man friend pre­sented him with sev­eral large bas­kets of fish and as­sisted him in car­ry­ing them to the fish mer­chant near by, who pur­chased the catch, pay­ing suf­fi­cient, with what was added by the mes­sen­ger of David, to meet the tem­ple tax for the three. The col­lec­tor ac­cepted the tax, for­go­ing the penalty for tardy pay­ment be­cause they had been for some time ab­sent from Gal­i­lee.

157:1.4It is not strange that you have a rec­ord of Pe­ter’s catch­ing a fish with a shekel in its mouth. In those days there were cur­rent many sto­ries about find­ing trea­sures in the mouths of fishes; such tales of near mir­a­cles were com­mon­place. So, as Pe­ter left them to go to­ward the boat, Je­sus re­marked, half-hu­mor­ously: “Strange that the sons of the king must pay trib­ute; usu­ally it is the stranger who is taxed for the up­keep of the court, but it be­hooves us to af­ford no stum­bling block for the au­thor­i­ties. Go hence! maybe you will catch the fish with the shekel in its mouth.” Je­sus hav­ing thus spo­ken, and Pe­ter so soon ap­pear­ing with the tem­ple tax, it is not sur­pris­ing that the episode be­came later ex­panded into a mir­a­cle as re­corded by the writer of Mat­thew’s Gospel.

157:1.5Je­sus, with An­drew and Pe­ter, waited by the seashore un­til nearly sun­down. Mes­sen­gers brought them word that Mary’s house was still un­der surveil­lance; there­fore, when it grew dark, the three wait­ing men en­tered their boat and slowly rowed away to­ward the east­ern shore of the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

171:6.1When the Mas­ter’s pro­ces­sion en­tered Jeri­cho, it was near­ing sun­down, and he was minded to abide there for the night. As Je­sus passed by the cus­toms house, Zac­cheus the chief pub­li­can, or tax col­lec­tor, hap­pened to be pres­ent, and he much de­sired to see Je­sus. This chief pub­li­can was very rich and had heard much about this prophet of Gal­i­lee. He had re­solved that he would see what sort of a man Je­sus was the next time he chanced to visit Jeri­cho; ac­cord­ingly, Zac­cheus sought to press through the crowd, but it was too great, and be­ing short of stature, he could not see over their heads. And so the chief pub­li­can fol­lowed on with the crowd un­til they came near the cen­ter of the city and not far from where he lived. When he saw that he would be un­able to pen­e­trate the crowd, and think­ing that Je­sus might be go­ing right on through the city with­out stop­ping, he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree whose spread­ing branches over­hung the road­way. He knew that in this way he could ob­tain a good view of the Mas­ter as he passed by. And he was not dis­ap­pointed, for, as Je­sus passed by, he stopped and, look­ing up at Zac­cheus, said: “Make haste, Zac­cheus, and come down, for tonight I must abide at your house.” And when Zac­cheus heard these as­ton­ish­ing words, he al­most fell out of the tree in his haste to get down, and go­ing up to Je­sus, he ex­pressed great joy that the Mas­ter should be will­ing to stop at his house.