Tax collector

Taxes in the Bible lands were old: Solomon’s twelve districts fed his court, Persian governors paid fixed sums to the king, and empires demanded tribute. Under the Greek kings and then the Romans, the right to collect many taxes was sold to the highest bidder. He paid the authorities an agreed sum and kept whatever more he could collect, and his agents ran tolls and customs posts. Besides a tax on produce and a poll tax there were duties on ports, sales and inheritances. Every Jewish man from twenty up also paid a half-shekel a year to the temple — the “two-drachma tax” (Matthew 17:24).

Matthew, also called Levi, sat at a tax booth in Capernaum, on a trade road, and collected tolls for Herod Antipas (Matthew 9:9). Zacchaeus of Jericho, a town on a major trade route, was “a chief tax collector, who was very wealthy” (Luke 19:2). Because many collectors took more than was due and served the ruling power, they were despised, and people spoke of “tax collectors and sinners” in one breath. When tax collectors asked John the Baptist what to do, he told them, “Collect no more than you are authorized” (Luke 3:13).