which we find mentioned Exod. xxx. 11—16, as the ransom of the soul, to be paid by every Israelite above twenty years old, to the service and current expenses of the tabernacle, or, as it afterwards would be, of the temple*. It is true that there it seems only to have been ordered to be paid on the occasions, which most probably were rare, of the numbering of the people. But whether from such having been the real intention of the divine Legislator, or from a later custom which arose only after the Babylonian captivity, it had grown into an annual payment. Some have thought they found traces of it earlier,

and, indeed, there seem distinct notices of it, 2 Kin. xii. 4; 2 Chron. xxiv. 5, 6, 9; and all the circumstances of what is there described as the collection which "Moses the servant of God laid upon Israel in the wilder

they would, according to the Alexandrian drachm, which was twice the value of the Attic. (See HAMMOND, in loc.)

* The sum there named is an half shekel. the shekel was only a certain weight of silver,

Before the Babylonian exile, not a coined money: in the

time, however, of the Maccabees, (1 Macc. xv. 6,) the Jews received the privilege, or won the right, from the kings of Syria of coining their own money, and the shekels, half shekels, and quarter shekels now found in the cabinets of collectors are to be referred to this period. These growing scarce, and not being coined any more, it became the custom to estimate the temple dues as two drachms, (the dispaɣuov here required,) a sum actually somewhat larger than the half shekel, as those that have compared together the weights of the existing specimens of each have found; thus Josephus (Antt., 1. 3. c. 8, § 2): Ὁ δὲ σίκλος, νόμισμα Εβραίων ὢν, Αττικὰς δέχεται δραχμὰς τέσσαρας. As the produce of the miracle was to pay for two persons, the sum required was four drachms, or an whole shekel, and the OTATIρ found in the mouth of the fish is just that sum. It indeed often bore the name of Teтрádраɣμos. Jerome: Siclus autem, id est stater, habet drachmas quatuor. It is almost needless to say that this stater is not the gold coin that more accurately bears that name, which would have been equal not to four, but to twenty, drachms; but rather, as is said above, the silver tetradrachm, which in later times of Greece came to be called a stater. That other stater, equal to the Persian daric, would have been worth something more than sixteen shillings of our money, this three shillings and three pence. (See the Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. vv. Drachma and Stater, and WINER'S Real Wörterbuch, s. v. Sekel.) It is curious that Theophylact should seem ignorant of what this stater is. Some think it, he says, a precious stone which is found in Syria.

ness," seem to make for the supposition*.

At Nehemiah x.

32, the circumstance that it is a third part of a shekel, and not a half, which they agree to pay, makes it more questionable, as they would scarcely have ventured to alter the amount of a divinely instituted payment; yet the fact that it was yearly, and that it was expressly for the service of the house of God, would lead us to think that it can be no other payment which is meant; and they may have found an excuse for the alteration in their present distress. Josephus + mentions that it was an annual payment in his time; and Philo, who tells us how conscientiously and ungrudgingly it was paid by the Jews of the Dispersion, as well as by the Jews of Palestine, so that in almost every city there was a sacred treasury for the collection of these dues, some of which came from cities beyond the limits of the Roman empire; and then at certain times there were sacred messengers selected from among the worthiest to bear the collected money to Jerusalem. It was only after the destruction of that city, that Vespasian caused this capitation tax to be henceforward paid into the imperial treasury, instead of the treasury of the temple, which now no longer existed.

The words of Josephus on this matter are as explicit as

* So Dathe; Michaelis (Mos. Recht, v. 3, p. 202,) questions or denies it. Antt., 1. 18, c. 9, § 1. The time appointed for the payment was between the 15th and 25th of the month Adar (March), that is, about the feast of the Passover. Yet no secure chronological conclusions in regard to our Lord's ministry can be won from this; as, through his absence from Capernaum, the money might have been for some time due. Indeed, in all probability, the feast of Tabernacles was now at hand.

+ De Monarch., 1. 2: Ἱεροπομποὶ τῶν χρημάτων, ἀριστίνδην ἐπικριθέντες. The whole passage reminds one much of the collection, and the manner of the transmission, of the gifts of the faithful in Achaia to Jerusalem by the hands of Paul. We find from Cicero's oration Pro Flacco, (c. 28,) that one accusation made against the latter was that he prevented the transmission of these temple dues to Jerusalem. He bears incidentally witness to the universality of the practice: Cùm aurum, Judæorum nomine, quotannis ex Italiâ et ex omnibus vestris provinciis Hierosolymam exportari soleret, Flaccus sanxi edicto, ne ex Asiâ exportari liceret.

can be; these words I will quote, as the only argument produced against this scheme is, that it was before the present time, and as early as Pompey, that these monies were diverted from their original destination, and made payable to the Roman treasury. Of Vespasian he says, "He imposed a tribute on the Jews wheresoever they lived, requiring each to pay yearly two drachms to the capitol, as before they were wont to pay them to the temple at Jerusalem." But of Pompey he merely says, that "he made Jerusalem tributary to the Romans†," without any mention whatever of his laying hands on this tax, of which we have already seen that abundant evidence exists that it continued long after his time to be rendered to the temple. Not otherwise indeed could Titus, when he was reproaching the Jews with the little provocation which they had for their revolt, have reminded the revolters how the Romans had permitted them to collect their own sacred imposts.

We may observe again that it is not the publicans that are said to come demanding this tribute, which would have been the natural appellation of the collectors, had they been the ordinary tax-gatherers, or this the ordinary tax. And the tone again of the demand, "Doth not your master pay the didrachm§?" is hardly the question of a rude Roman ̧ taxgatherer, who had detected any one in the act of evading, as he thought, the tax; but exactly in keeping, when the duty of paying was a moral one, which yet if any declined, there was scarcely at hand any power to compel the payment .

*Bell. Jud., 1. 7, c. 6, § 6.

+ Antt., 1. 14, c. 4, § 4. Τὰ μὲν Ἱεροσόλυμα ὑποτελῆ φόρου Ρωμαίοις ἐποίησεν.

* Δασμολογεῖν ὑμῖν ἐπὶ τῷ θεῷ ἐπιτρέψαμεν.

§ Ta diopaxua, with the article, as something perfectly well known: in the plural the first time, to mark the number of didrachms that were received, being one from each person; on the second, to mark the yearly repetition of the payment from each.

|| Kuinoel (in loc.,) who may be numbered among the right interpreters of this passage, observes this: Exactores Romani acerbiùs haud dubiè

But the most prevailing argument of all, that this was God's money which should be rendered to God, and not Cesar's which was to be rendered to Cesar, is, that there would be no force whatever in the Lord's conclusion, "Then are the children free," as giving him this exemption, unless it was from dues owing to God, and not to Cesar, that by the preceding process of argument he was claiming his freedom. As a Son in his own house, he affirmed his exemption from the first. How could he on this ground have claimed immunity from the last? on the ground, that is, of being the son of him on whose behalf the tax was claimed. For he was no

son of Cesar. He might indeed have asserted his immunity on other grounds, though that he would not, since he had come submitting himself during his earthly life to every ordinance of man. But this claim which he does put forward, only holds good on the supposition that the payment is one made to God. They who maintain the contrary interpretation are driven to say that it is his royal Davidical descent, on the score of which he claims this immunity. But neither can this stand for the argument then would be, that because Jesus is one king's son, therefore he is exempted from the tribute owing to another king, and that other, one of an hostile dynasty,-in itself a most insufficient argument, and certainly not that of the sacred text: "Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free*."

We may presume, then, that our Lord and Peter, with others also, it is most probable, of his disciples, were now

exegissent tributum Cæsari solvendum. And in the Rabbinical treatise especially relating to the manner of collecting these dues, it is said: Placidè à quovis semisiclum expetierunt. Grotius: Credibile est multos, quia non cogebantur, id onus detrectâsse.

* Augustine (Quæst. Evang., 1. 1, qu. 23,) helps it out in another way : In omni regno terreno intelligendum est liberos esse regni filios . . Multò ergo magis liberi esse debent in quolibet regno terreno filii regni illius, sub quo sunt omnia regna terrena.

returning to Capernaum, which was "his city," after one of their usual absences*. The Lord passed forward without question, but the collectors detained Peter, who, having lingered a little behind, was now following his Lord. Chrysostom suggests that their question may be a rude and illmannered one : "Does your Master count himself exempt from the payment of the ordinary dues? we know his freedom: does he mean to exercise it here?" Yet on the other hand it may have been, as I should suppose it was, the exact contrary. Having seen or heard of the wonderful works which Christ did, they may really have been uncertain in what light to regard him, whether to claim from him the money or not, and in this doubting and inquiring spirit, they may have put the question to Peter. This Theophylact suggests. But after all, we want that which the history has not given, the tone in which the question was put, to know whether it was a rude one or the contrary. To their demand Peter, over-hasty, as was so often the case, at once replied that his master would pay the money. No doubt zeal for his master's honour made him so quick to pledge his Lord: he was confident that his piety would make him prompt to every payment sanctioned and sanctified by God's Law.

Yet at the same time there was here on the part of the apostle a failing to recognize the higher dignity of his Lord: it was not in this spirit that he had said a little while before, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." He understood not, or at least for the time had lost sight of, his Lord's true position and dignity, that he was a Son over his own house, not a servant in another's house-that he was the Head of the theocracy, not one of its subordinate members, so that it was to him in his Father that payments were to be made, not from him to be received. This last had been out of all reason; for he who was to be a ransom for all other souls, could not properly give a ransom for his own†. It was

*See Mr. GRESWELL'S Dissertations, v. 2, p. 374, seq.

+ Ambrose (Ep. 7, c. 12, Ad Justum): Hoc est igitur didrachma, quod