Vincent Word Studies - Matthew 17:24 - 17:24

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com

Vincent Word Studies - Matthew 17:24 - 17:24


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

They that received tribute-money (οἱ τὰ δίδαχμα λαμβάνοντες)

Rev., They that received the half-shekel. Every male Israelite of age, including proselytes and manumitted Jews, was expected to pay annually for the temple-service a half-shekel or didrachm, about thirty-five cents. This must be paid in the ancient money of Israel, the regular half-shekel of the treasury; and the money-changers, therefore, were in demand to change the current into the temple coin, which they did at a rate of discount fixed by law, between four and five cents on every half-shekel. The annual revenue to the money-changers from this source has been estimated at nearly forty-five thousand dollars; a very large sum in a country where a laborer received less than twenty cents for a day's work, and where the good Samaritan left about thirty-three cents at the inn for the keeping of the wounded man. Jesus attacked a very powerful interest when he overthrew the tables of the money-changers.