If a Bible reader had to single out some group in the Bible who seemed particularly despised, I doubt many would name anyone other than the tax collectors. In fact, they are singled out for scorn directly or indirectly over 30 times in the synoptic gospels.
Are we surprised? Everyone “hates” the taxman, don’t they? He’s so nefarious that we don’t just “hate” a taxman or merely “hate” taxmen, we “hate” THE TAXMAN. Well, I don’t… but normal people do.
I’m one of those weirdoes who understands that government is a necessary evil and that even the best government needs funds to do its job. It takes money to elect people who hire and organize others to defend the natural rights of the citizenry. Even the most limited government must have funds to promote the infrastructure necessary for a stable and prosperous nation.
In order to collect these funds, given most people’s reluctance to part with their hard earned cash for general rather than specific services, a powerful, fearsome, and aggressive body of people are needed to form a tax collecting agency. Again, a necessary evil, but still an unwelcome presence in the lives of the citizenry.
So we might readily understand distaste, discomfort, or anxiety when forced to interact with THE TAXMAN, but what’s the deal with the Jewish people in the New Testament? Their hatred for tax collectors is beyond the pale; it is palpable. They really despise these men, and they do not respond well when Jesus embraces them as followers and even makes one, repentant or no, His close disciple. There is something to be learned here, but first we must answer a basic question.
Question: Why do the Jews feel a raw and palpable animosity for THE TAXMAN in the Gospels?
Follow up Question: Are the Jewish people of Jesus’ day anti-government in principle?
Quick Answer: No, not by a longshot.
Follow up Question: Are taxes regarded as unbiblical by the Jewish people of Jesus’ day?
Quick Answer: No… though nobody likes paying them. Everyone thinks it should be some other element of society who pays for all the services that government provides.
Follow up Question: Is something else going on that is about more than money?
Quick Answer: Boy howdy, yes! Let’s explore.
In democratic societies where government is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people, the tax collector plays an important, but annoying, role in sustaining a system of ultimate benefit for the citizenry. The tax collector in the gospels, however, does not, in the Jewish mind, play such a role.
The Jewish self-consciousness is intimately bound up with the glory days of the Davidic kings. David, himself, established as free of a society as one might hope for in the ancient world. It was like a proto-constitutional republic, where the people covenanted with the house of David to be kings, and where the sons of David were called upon to rule by Torah and shepherd leadership principles as spiritual equals before Yahweh in whose image every member of society was made. Given the corruptive nature of power, it didn’t always work out so well, but they were always ruled by brothers and not foreigners, and fed spiritually on the promises of a reestablished Messianic rule by David’s future son who would restore all things to proper working order forever.
When their sin becomes too great for Yahweh to ignore, the people of Israel and then Judah are conquered and dragged away to foreign lands. In the days of Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah they are permitted to return to their homeland, but they remain under foreign control as the Assyrians fall to the Babylonians and the Babylonians fall to the Persians and the Persians fall to the Greeks, who struggle amongst themselves and fight for control over David’s old territory for centuries.
Life is not too terrible when these rulers leave the Jewish people to their own devices in exchange for peaceable relationships and tribute in the form of taxes, but during the days of Antiochus Epiphanies things take an ugly turn. Antiochus hates the Jews and determines to crush them and eradicate them through various means, like seducing Jewish youths to the dark side of Hellenistic life, banning Torah, interfering in Jewish religious practices, and defiling their sacred sites.
This leads to two things. First, war breaks out when a band of brothers, called the Maccabees, rallies the Jewish people to throw off foreign oppression. When blood is shed, the disaffected youth return home spiritually with a vengeance. So, the second thing that happens is that Judaism takes on a deep anti-gentile flavor.
The Maccabees are victorious and win freedom from foreign leaders for the first time since the days before the exile. This is no Davidic reign, but it does seem an important step in that direction. The youngest of the brothers Maccabee establishes a temporary kingdom structure, the Hasmoneans, replete with dynastic inheritance and non-levitical high priesthood, with the understanding that all power would, of course, be turned over to Messiah when he should arise.
Not surprising it gets messy and some 60 years before Jesus’ birth the Roman General Pompeii takes control on behalf of Rome and works with present Jewish leadership for a time.
Even so, the Jewish people find themselves under foreign rule again, and the level of Roman control and interference grows as the decades pass. Herod the Great, a pseudo-Jewish Roman representative proves despotic in psychotic ways. Upon his death, Rome divides power between Herod’s surviving heirs, and, eventually, appoints purely Roman prefects over various parts of old Davidic territory.
Dreams of Messiah never seemed less likely, and were, for that very reason, most pronounced. If ever the Jewish people needed Yahweh to fulfill His Messianic promises, it was then.
But as would happen later in the days of the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, many Jewish people, for a variety of reasons, threw in their lot with the oppressor and played the role of betrayer of their own people. The common Jewish person might not be able to say much about their leaders whose power and wealth were largely dependent on continued Roman support of their leadership, but another class of betrayer was ready at hand for their ire—THE TAXMAN.
The Taxman, when Jewish, was the worst of all people. They were often low men enjoying a sense of power over those who despised them. They were liable to Rome for a certain amount of funds, but had a free hand beyond that to exact whatever they wished. They grew rich. They sniffed out hidden wealth. They skulked to find new sources of tax income. They were the greedy, sneering, mocking ubiquitous face of Roman oppression worn by Jewish men who, but for their abandonment of faith in the promises of God, would have been brothers in arms.
When they come to Jesus, like fatted-prodigal sons, languishing in their souls, Jesus accepts their repentance and rejoices with the angels that no class of sinner is beyond the reach of the Holy Spirit’s conviction or the Father’s forgiveness.
And that is good news for you.
