Tax Collectors

Tax collectors appear in the New Testament as Jewish men who bought or held the right to collect tolls and duties on behalf of Rome. Because they worked for the occupying power and could profit from whatever they gathered above the assessed rate, the Gospels regularly pair them with sinners as a single despised category (Matthew 9:10-11). John the Baptist did not tell the tax collectors who came to him to abandon the work; he told them to collect no more than they were authorised to collect (Luke 3:12-13), which indicates that the offence attached to the abuse of the office rather than to the office itself.

Two named tax collectors have profiles here. Matthew, also called Levi, was sitting at the tax booth in Capernaum when Jesus called him, and he rose and followed (Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:14). Zacchaeus is described as a chief tax collector and wealthy, a man of Jericho who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus pass and afterwards pledged half his goods to the poor and fourfold restitution to anyone he had defrauded (Luke 19:1-10). A third figure is unnamed: the tax collector in Jesus' parable who stood far off, would not lift his eyes, and asked God for mercy, and who Jesus said went home justified rather than the Pharisee beside him (Luke 18:9-14).

The pattern across all three is consistent. Scripture does not soften what the work involved, and it does not treat the trade as beyond reach. Jesus ate in their houses (Luke 5:29-32), was accused of being a friend of tax collectors (Matthew 11:19), and drew one of the Twelve out of the tax booth.