No 8

(Matthew)

“And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him” Matthew 9:9. Matthew’s calling was simple enough – he just got up and followed Jesus. However, there is much more behind this than meets the eye; let’s look and see. Matthew is of course the author of the Gospel that bears his name and, surprisingly, very little is known of his personal life – his name is mentioned only twice in the whole Gospel; we do, however, know a lot about his profession – he was a tax collector, a publican.

They were the most despised people in Israel because they extorted more money than was actually required by Roman law. There were two kinds of tax collectors – Gabai and Mokhes. The Gabbai were the general tax collectors – property taxes, income taxes and poll taxes; these taxes went straight to the Romans so there was not much room for cheating. The Mokhes however collected a duty on imports, exports and anything that moved on the roads. They set tolls on bridges and roads; they taxed beasts of burden and whatever else they could find to tax. There were two kinds of Mokhes – the Great Mokhes and the Little Mokhes. Great Mokhes stayed behind the scene and let the Little Mokhes collect the actual taxes from the people. Zaccheus was apparently a Great Mokhes because the Bible calls him “a chief tax collector” Luke 19:2 and Matthew was evidently a Little Mokhes because he was in public place. Matthew was the worst of the worst.

His decision to follow Jesus was without hesitation, as we have seen, and it was also irreversible because his spot would’ve quickly been taken up by someone else looking to make a fast buck. This is all that we know about Matthew’s personal life and one thing is very clear – he believed in the true God because he realised that by placing his faith in Jesus and by following Him, he would obtain forgiveness for all his sins of impropriety.