SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/15/2021 10:27 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Positive Response”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
9:9-10
Message of the verses: “9 As Jesus went on
from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth;
and He said to him, "Follow Me!" And he got up and followed Him. 10 Then
it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house,
behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His
disciples.”
Tax
collectors in Jesus’ day were hated people as we have talked about. Many of them would accept bribes from the wealthy
to reduce and falsify their taxes and would then exact proportionately from the
middle and lower classes, and this made them even more hated. The tax-collectors of Jesus’ day became
wealthy, another reason why they were hated.
We
know that the Jews of Jesus’ day were living in land that was not controlled by
them, but by the Romans, and this caused many problems for them. When it came to taxes they felt that the only
taxes they should pay was what was spoken of in the Law of Moses and that the
taxes imposed on them from Rome were unholy, and this also caused much trouble.
Now
we get into the part of this SD that I promised that we would get to yesterday
and that is that I want to give various quotes from John MacArthur’s commentary
where he speaks of the noted Jewish scholar Alfred Edersheim. “Edersheim reports that a Jewish publican was barred from the synagogue
and was forbidden to have any religious or social contact with his fellow
Jews. He was ranked with the unclean
animals, which a devout Jew would not so much as touch. He was in the class of swine, and because he
was held to be a traitor and a congenital liar, he was ranked with robbers and
murders and was forbidden to give testimony in any Jewish court.”
We
go on with more comments from Edersheim who “states that there were two categories
of publican. The first, whom the Jews called gabbai, collected general taxes, which
included those on land and other property, those on income, and those referred
to as poll, or registration, taxes. The
basic land tax (the amount paid to Rome) was a tenth of one’s grain and a fifth
of one’s fruit and wine. Income tax
amounted to 1 percent of one’s earnings, and the amount of the poll tax varied.
“The
second type of tax collector was called a mokhes,
who collected a wide variety of use taxes—taxes similar to our import duties,
tollway fees, boat docking fees, business license fees, and the like. The mokhes
had almost unlimited latitude in their taxing powers and could attach a tax to
virtually any article or activity. They
could, for instance, levy a tax on a person’s boat; on the fish he caught with
it, and on the dock where he unloaded it.
They could tax a traveler’s donkey, his slaves and servants, and his
goods. They had authority to open
private letters to see if a taxable business of some sort might be related to
the correspondence.
“There
were two kinds of mokhes. One kind, called the treat mokhes, hired other men to collect taxes
for them, and by virtue of partial anonymity, protected at least some of their
reputation among their fellow countrymen.
The other kind, called small mokhes,
did their own assessing and collecting and therefore were in constant contact
with members of the community as well as with all travelers who passed their
way. The gabbai were despised, the great mokhes
were more despised, and the small mokhes
were despised most.” Now you by this
time have probably all figured out what class Matthew was in and we will look
more in detail about him in our next SD.
5/15/2021 10:51 AM
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