The Tax Collector:

In Jewish Palestine of Jesus’ time there was probably no figure held in public contempt more than the tax collector.1 Typically a Jew himself,2 he was in the employ of Rome and was viewed as a traitor. He customarily augmented his pay by exacting a surcharge from the tax payers, most of whom were poor, thus adding corruption to his general noxiousness. At the same time, there were “collectors of the Temple tax,”3 failure to pay which would place a Jew outside the ban. Hence the appearance of “those who received the didrachmas” (Matthew 17:24) was hardly welcome. Obviously, because the Roman tax trumped the Temple tax, not only did the former offend Israel’s integrity as the people of God-that was a given-but its collector represented a personal assault on the individual’s religious identity itself.