Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Luke 3:12 - 3:12
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Also publicans (kai telōnai). We have had the word already in Matthew (Mat 5:46; Mat 9:10; Mat 11:19; Mat 18:17; Mat 21:31.) and Mark (Mar 11:15.). It is sometimes coupled with harlots and other sinners, the outcasts of society. The word is made up from telos, tax, and ōneomai, to buy, and is an old one. The renter or collector of taxes was not popular anywhere, but least of all when a Jew collected taxes for the Romans and did it by terrible graft and extortions.
Extort (prassete). The verb means only to do or practice, but early the tax-collectors learned how to “do” the public as regular “blood-suckers.” Lucian links them with crows and sycophants.