36-28. The Stater in the Fish's Mouth

28. The Stater in the Fish’s Mouth

Mat 17:24-27 No other Evangelist records this miracle but St. Matthew; and before we have closed our examination of it, it will, I think, be abundantly clear why we meet it, if in one only, then in that Gospel which is eminently the Gospel of the kingdom, of the King, and of the King’s Son. But the. true depth and significance of it have not been always seized. They are quite lost and let go, and the entire transaction emptied of its higher meaning, robbed of all deeper lessons, when it is assumed that the “tribute” which is here demanded of the Lord was a civil impost, owing, like the penny of a later occasion (Mat 22:19), to the Roman emperor, instead of what it truly was, a national and theocratic payment, due to the temple and the temple’s God. “Tribute”^[1] in our translation is in all respects an unhappy rendering, upholds, and indeed suggests such an error. If many expositors, ancient and modern, and some of high authority, have fallen into it, they have, done so oftener, I am persuaded, from not having the right interpretation, which carries conviction with it, before them, than from a deliberate preference of the wrong. Thus Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, and Jerome; who all understand a civil payment; the two last finding here the same lesson as at Rom 13:1-7 : “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.... Render therefore to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute is due, “—the lesson of a willing obedience on the part of the faithful to the civil power.^[2] But none of these reject, they seem rather unaware of, the deeper interpretation of the miracle. Not so Maldonatus, here for once at one with Calvin, the great object of his polemical hatred. The last, however, has a glimpse of, though he does not grasp, the truth. He accounts the money claimed to have been indeed due to the temple and the temple’s God; but to have been already alienated by the Romans for the service of the Imperial treasury.^[3] This, however, as will be seen, is historically incorrect; such alienation found place, but not till a later time.^[4] The arguments for the other interpretation, both external and internal, are quite overpowering. For, in the first place, this “didrachm”^[5] which the collectors here demand, was exactly the ransom of souls, appointed (Exo 30:11-16) 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.^[6] It must be allowed that it does not there appear as an annual payment, but only as payable on the occasions, not frequently recurring, of the numbering of the people. But it became annual, whether this had been the real intention of the ordinance from the first, or out of a later custom which arose only after the Babylonian Captivity. Some have thought that they found traces, indeed distinct notices, of this payment before that time, at 2Ki 12:4; 2Ch 24:5-6; 2Ch 24:9; and all the circumstances of what is there described as the collection which “Moses the servant of God laid upon Israel in the wilderness,” make this probable.^[7] At a later day, it is the third part of a shekel, and not the half, which the Jews impose upon themselves (Nehem. 10:32). This might suggest a doubt whether the same contribution is there intended; as they would scarcely have ventured to alter the amount of a divinely instituted payment. Yet the fact that it was yearly, and expressly for the service of God’s house, will not allow us to suppose it any other; and they may have found in their present poverty and distress an excuse for the diminution of the charge. Josephus^[8] mentions that it was an annual payment in his time; Philo does the same, and attests the conscientious and ungrudging accuracy with which it was paid by the Jews of the Dispersion, so that in almost every city of the Empire, and in cities too beyond its limits, there was a sacred chest for the collection of these dues: the sum of which at stated times sacred messengers were selected from among the worthiest to bear to Jerusalem.^[9] It was Vespasian who diverted this capitation tax into the imperial fisc, but only after the city and the temple had been destroyed. Josephus is very distinct on this point; whose words it may be worth while to quote, as the only argument in favour of a secular and not a theocratic payment is, that before our Lord’s time, and as early as Pompeius, these moneys were turned from their original destination, and made payable to the Roman treasury. Of Vespasian he writes: “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.”^[10] But of Pompeius he merely affirms, that “he made Jerusalem tributary to the Romans,”^[11] with no mention of this tax at all. We have already seen that abundant evidence exists of its having continued long after his time to be rendered to the temple. Titus alludes to this fact, when, upbraiding the Jews with the unprovoked character of their revolt, he reminds the revolters that the Romans had permitted them to collect their own sacred imposts.^[12]

It may be noted further that it is not “publicans” who demand this tribute, as the collectors would certainly have been called, had they been the ordinary tax-gatherers, and this the ordinary tax. As little is the tone of the demand, “Doth not your Master pay the didrachm?”^[13] that of a rude Roman tax-gatherer, who had detected one in the act of evading, as he supposed, the tax; but is perfectly natural, when the duty of paying was one of imperfect obligation, one which if any chose to decline, the payment could scarcely have been compelled.^[14] But the most prevailing argument of all, in proof that this “tribute” was God’s money, which should be rendered to God, and not Caesar’s, which should be rendered to Caesar, remains behind; this namely, that otherwise there would be no force whatever in the Lord’s conclusion, “Then are the children free,” as giving this immunity to Him. As a Son in his own house, He affirmed his own exemption from payments due to God. How could He on this ground, on the ground, that is, of being the Son of him on whose behalf the tax was levied, have claimed immunity from a payment due to Caesar? He was no son of Caesar. He might, indeed, have asserted his freedom 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 actually does put forward, only holds good on the assumption that the payment is one made to God. They who deny this are driven to say that it is his royal Davidical descent, in right of which He asserts this immunity. But this cannot stand: for the conclusion then would be, that Jesus being one King’s Son, He therefore is exempted from the tribute owing to another king, and that other, one of a hostile dynasty,—in itself an argument most futile, and certainly not that of the sacred text.^[15]

We may presume, then, that our Lord, with Peter and other of his disciples, was now returning to “his city,” that is, Capernaum, after one of his usual absences.^[16] He may have passed without question; the collectors not venturing to address Him. But they detain Peter, who had lingered perhaps a little behind his Lord; and of him they ask, “Doth not your Master pay tribute?” or “pay the didrachm?” This question sounds to Chrysostom a rude one: “Does your Master count Himself exempt from the payment of the ordinary dues? we know the freedom which He claims; does He propose to exercise it here?” It may be so; but it may be, as Theophylact suggests, the reverse. Having seen or heard of the wonderful works which Christ did, they may have been really uncertain in what light to regard Him, whether to claim from Him the money or not, and this doubt may utter itself in their question. But after all, we want what the history has not given, the tone and manner in which the question was put, to determine this.

Peter at once replies in the affirmative; “He saith, Yes.” Zealous for his Master’s honour, sure’ that his piety will make Him prompt in whatever God’s ordinance required, he pledges Him without hesitation to the payment. He was over-hasty in this. It was not in this spirit that he exclaimed a little while before: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mat 16:16). For the time at least he had lost sight of his Lord’s true position and prerogative, that He was a Son over his own house,. and not a servant in another’s; the Head of the theocracy, not one of its subordinate members,—so that it was to Him in his Father that offerings were to be made, not from Him to be received.^[17] It was not for Him who was “greater than the temple,” and Himself the true temple (John 2:21), identical with it according to its spiritual significance, and in whom the Shechinah glory dwelt, to pay dues for the support of that other temple built with hands, whose glory was vanishing away, now that in his flesh the true tabernacle was set up, which the Lord had pitched and not man.

He who was to give Himself a ransom for all other souls could not properly pay a ransom for his own; and it disturbed the true relation between Him and all other men that He should seem to pay it. Willing therefore to bring back Peter, and in him the other disciples, to the true recognition of Himself, from which they had in part fallen, the Lord puts to him the question which follows; even as with the same intention, being engaged, through Peter’s hasty imprudence, to the rendering of the didrachm, which now He could scarcely recede from, He yet does it in the remarkable way of this present miracle—a miracle which should testify that all things served Him, from the greatest to the least, even to the fishes that wandered through the paths of the sea,—that He was Lord over nature, and, having nothing, yet, in his Father’s care for Him, was truly possessed of all things.^[18] For here, as so often in the life of our Lord, the depth of his poverty and humiliation is lighted up by a gleam of his glory; while, by the manner of the payment, He reasserts the true dignity of his person, which else by the payment itself was in danger of being obscured and compromised in the eyes of some. The miracle, then, was to supply a real need,—slight, indeed, as an outward need, for the money could assuredly have been in some other and more ordinary way procured; but as an inner need, most real: in this, then, differing in its essence from the apocryphal miracles, which are so often mere sports and freaks of power, having no ethical motive or meaning whatever.

We may trace this purpose in all which follows. The Lord does not wait for Peter to inform Him what he had answered, and to what engaged Him; but “when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him,” anticipated his communication, showed Himself a discerner of the thoughts of the heart, and, though He had not been present, perfectly aware of all which had passed.^[19] “What thinkest thou, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth” (with an emphasis on these last words, for there is a silent contrasting of these with the King of heaven, as at Psa 2:2) “take custom or tribute?^[20] of their own children, or of strangers?” On what principle has he been promising this? is not all the analogy of things earthly against it? These earthly things, it is true, cannot prove the heavenly, yet are they shadows of the true, and divinely appointed helps for the better understanding of them. When Peter confesses that not of their own children, but “of strangers,”^[21] then at once He brings him to the conclusion whither He was leading him, that “the children,” or as it would be better, “the sons,” were “free.”^[22] But this plural, ”the sons” rather than a singular, “the son,” has perplexed some, who have asked, How could the Lord thus speak, if indeed He had Himself alone, as the only-begotten Son of God, in his eye? The explanation is easy. In making a general statement of the worldly relations from which He borrows his analogy, and by which He assists the understanding of his disciples, as there are many “kings of the earth” or as any one king might have many sons, He naturally throws his speech into a plural form; and it is just as natural, when we come to the heavenly order of things which is there shadowed forth, to restrain it to the singular, to the one Son; seeing that to the King of heaven there is but One, the only-begotten of the Father.^[23] But if the plural here need cause us no misgiving, as little can there be drawn from it the conclusion, that the Lord intended to include in this liberty not Himself only, but all his people, all that in this secondary sense are the “sons of God.” This plainly is not true concerning dues owing to God; there are none so bound to render them as his “sons;” were the payment in question a civil one, it would be equally untrue; however such an interpretation might be welcome to Anabaptists;^[24] however some extreme Romish canonists draw hence an argument for the exemption of the clergy from payments to the state, although others among themselves justly remark that the words, if ’they include any of the faithful, include all.^[25] Not thus, not as one of many, not as the first among many sons, but as the true and only Son of God, He challenges this liberty for Himself; and we may observe, by the way, that the reasoning itself is a strong and convincing testimony to the proper Sonship, and in the capacity of Son to the proper relationship of Jesus Christ to the Father, which those who deny that relationship will not easily evade or impugn. “^[26] There is in these words the same implicit assertion that Christ’s relation to God is a different one from that of other men, which runs through the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, in the distinction which is so markedly drawn between the son of the householder and his servants (Mark 12:6): nor are there any testimonies to the dignity and the prerogatives of the Son more convincing than these, which, not contained in single isolated expressions, not lying on the surface of Scripture, are bedded deeply in it, and rather assume his preëminence than declare it. It is true that for those determined not to be convinced, there is always a loophole of escape, as from other declarations, so also from these; in the present instance, the plural “sons” affords, for those who seek it, the desired opportunity of evasion.

Under this protest Christ will pay the money; “notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up;^[27] and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for Me and thee.” He will put no stumbling-block in the way of any. Were He now to refuse this payment, it might seem to those who knew not the transcendant secret of his birth that He was using a false liberty,^[28] was come not to fulfil the law, but to destroy it. He will provide things honest in the sight of all. There was no need, only a becomingness, in the payment; as there was no necessity for his baptism; it was that whereto of his own choice He willingly submitted; nor yet for the circumcision which He received in his flesh; but He took on Him the humiliations of the law, that He might in due time deliver from under the law. And here comes out the deeper meaning of the Lord not paying for Himself only, but also for Peter, the representative of all the faithful. He came under the same yoke with men, that they might enter into the same freedom with Him.^[29] “That take, and give unto them for Me and thee.”^[30] He says not “for us” but “for Me and thee;” just as elsewhere, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John 20:17); for, while He makes common part with his brethren, yet He does this by an act of condescension, not by a necessity of nature; and for them it greatly imports that they should understand this; nor at anytime lose sight of the fact that here is a delivered and a Deliverer, a ransomed and a Ransomer, however to the natural eye there might seem two who are ransomed alike. And, as on other occasions, at his presentation in the temple (Luk 2:22-24), and again at his baptism, there was something more than common which should hinder the misunderstanding of that which was done; at the presentation, in Simeon’s song and Anna’s thanksgiving; at the baptism, first in John’s reluctance to baptize Him, and then in the opened heaven and the voice from thence;—so also is there here a protest of Christ’s immunity from the present payment, first in his own declaration, ”Then are the children free;” and next in the novel method by which He supplies the necessity which Peter has made for Him.^[31] It is remarkable, and is a solitary instance of the kind, that the issue of this bidding is not told us: but we are, of course, meant to understand that at his Lord’s command Peter went to the neighbouring lake, cast in his hook, and in the mouth of the first fish that rose to it, found, according to his Lord’s word, the money that was needed.

Here, as little as on a former occasion (Luk 5:4; Luk 5:6), does the miraculous in the miracle consist in a mere foreknowledge on the Lord’s part that the first fish which came up should bear this coin in its mouth; but He Himself, by the mysterious potency of his will which ran through all nature, drew such a fish to that spot at that moment, and ordained that it should swallow the hook. We may compare Jon 1:17, “The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. “We see thus the sphere of animal life unconsciously obedient to his will; that also is not out of God, but moves in Him, as does every other creature (1Ki 13:24; 1Ki 20:36; Amo 9:3).

All attempts to exhaust this miracle of its miraculous element, to make the Evangelist to be telling, and meaning to tell, an ordinary transaction,—as that of the rationalist Paulus, who will have it that the Lord bade Peter go and catch as many fish as would sell for the required sum, and maintains that this actually lies in the words,^[32]—are hopelessly absurd. Yet, on the other hand, we multiply miracles without a warrant when we assume that the stater was created for the occasion;^[33] nay more, we step altogether out of the region of miracle into that of absolute creation; for in the miracle, as distinguished from the act of pure creation, there is always a nature-basis to which the divine power which works the wonder more or less closely links itself. That divine power which dwelt in Christ, restored, as in the case of the sick, the halt, the blind; it multiplied, as the bread in the wilderness; it changed into a nobler substance, as the water at Cana; it quickened and revived, as Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus; it brought together, as here, by wonderful coincidences, the already existing; but, as far as our records reach, it formed no new limbs; it made no bread, no wine, out of nothing; it created no new men: never passed over on any one occasion into the region of absolute creation.^[34] The allegorical interpretations, or rather uses, of this miracle, for they are seldom intended for more, have not in them much to attract, neither that of Clement of Alexandria^[35] that each skilful “fisher of men” will, like Peter, remove the coin of pride and avarice and luxury, from the mouth of them whom he has drawn up by the hook of the Gospel from the waste waters of the world; nor yet that which St. Ambrose brings forward, wherein the stater plays altogether a different, indeed an opposite, part;^[36] nor has Augustine’s^[37] more to draw forth our assent. It is superfluous to press further a miracle already so rich in meaning as this approves itself to be.

Footnotes [1] In the original, τὰ δίδραχμα.

[2] De Catechiz. Bud. 21: Ipse Dominus ut nobis hujus sanae doctrinae praeberet exemplum, pro capite hominis, quo erat indutus, tributum solvere non dedignatus est; and Clement (Paedag. 2, Potter’s ed. vol. i. p. 172): Τὸν στατῆρα τοῖς τελώναις δοὺς‚ τὰ Καίσαρος ἀποδοὺς τῷ Καίσαρι.

[3] Ita quasi alienati essent Judæi a Dei imperio, profanis tyrannis solvebant sacrum censum in lege indictum.

[4] Add to these Wolf (Curae, in loc), who has the wrong interpretation; and Petitus (Crit. Sac. ix. 2566); Corn, a Lapide; and recentty, after any further mistake seemed impossible, Wieseler (Chronol. Synopse, p. 265, seq.) has returned to the old error. The true meaning has been perfectly seized by Hilary (Comm. in Matt, in loc.); by Ambrose (Up. vii. Ad Justum, 12); in the main by Chrysostom (In Matt. Horn, liv.) and Theophylact, who have yet both gone astray upon Num 3:40-51; and in later times by Cameron (Crit. Sac. in loc.); by Freher (Crit. Sac. in loc. vol. ix. p. 3633); by Hammond, who has altogether a true insight into the matter; Grotius, Lightfoot, Bengel, Michaëlis; and last of all by Olshausen, Stier, Greswell (Dissert, vol. ii. p. 376), and Alford.

[5] It is true that in the Septuagint (Exo 30:13) it is ἥμισυ τοῦ διδράχμου. But this arises from their expressing themselves, as naturally they would, according to the Alexandrian drachm, which was twice the value of the Attic (see Hammond, in loc).

[6] The sum there named is a half shekel. Before the Babylonian exile, the shekel was only a certain weight of silver, not a coined money: in the time, however, of the Maccabees (1Ma 15:6) 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 δίδραχμον 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. iii. 8, 2): Ὁ δὲ σίκλος‚ νόμισμα Ἐβραίων ὢν‚ Ἀττικὰς δέχεται δραχμὰς τέσσαρας. As the produce of the miracle was to pay for two persons, the sum required was four drachms, or a whole shekel, and the στατήρ found in the mouth of the fish is just that sum. It indeed often bore the name of τετράδραχμος. 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 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 Diet, of Or. and Rom. Antt. s. vv. Drachma and Stater; and Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Sekel). It is curious that Theophylact should be ignorant of what this stater is. Some think it, he says, a precious stone which is found in Syria.

[7] So Dathe; Michaelis (Mos. Recht, vol. iii. p. 202) questions or denies it.

[8] Antt. xviii. 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 Avon 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.

[9] De Monarch, 2:3: 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; cf. his Leg. ad Cai. 4:31. We find from Cicero’s oration, Pro Flacco (28), that one accusation made against Flaccus was that he prevented the transmission of these temple-dues to Jerusalem; incidentally he bears witness to the wide extent of the practice: Cum aurum, Judæorum nomine, quotannis ex Italia et ex omnibus vestris provinciis Hierosolymam exportari soleret, Flaccus sanxit edicto, ne ex Asia exportari liceret.

[10] Bell Jud. vii. 6, 6.

[11] Antt. xiv. 4, 4: Τὰ μὲν Ἱεροσόλυμαὑποτελῆ ϕόρου Ῥωμαίοις ἐποίησεν.

[12] Δασμολογεῖν ὑμῖν ἐπὶ τῷ Θεῷ ἐπιτρέψαμεν.

[13] Τὰ δίδραχμα, 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.

[14] Kuinoel (in loc), who may be numbered among the right interpreters of this passage, observes this: Exactores Romani acerbius haud dubie exegissent tributum Cæsari solvendum. And in the Rabbinical treatise especially relating to the manner of collecting these dues, it is said: Placide a quovis semisiclum expetierunt. Grotius: Credibile est multos, quia non cogebantur, id onus detrectâsse.

[15] Augustine (Quaest. Evang. i. qu. 23) helps it out in another way: In omni regno terreno intelligendum est liberos esse regni filios.... Multo ergo magis liberi esse debent in quolibet regno terreno filii regni illius, sub quo sunt omnia regna terrena.

[16] See Greswell, Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 374 sq.

[17] Ambrose (Ep. vii. 12, Ad Justum): Hoc est igitur didrachma, quod exigebatur secundum legem: sed non debebat illud filius regis, sed alienus. Quid enim se Christus redimeret ab hoc mundo, qui venerat ut tolleret peccatum mundi? Quid se a peccato redimeret, qui descenderat, ut omnibus peccatum dimitteret?.... Quid se redimeret a morte, qui carnem susceperat, ut morte suâ, omnibus resurrectionem adquireret? Cf. Enarr. in Psa 48:14.

[18] Djeleladdin’s grand poem, winch Tholuck has translated (Blüthensainm. aus der Morgenl. Myst. p. 148), tells exactly the same story, namely, that all nature waits on him who is the friend. of God, so that all things are his, and his seeming poverty is but another side of his true riches; only that what there is but in idea, is here clothed in the flesh and blood of an actual fact. I can give but a most inadequate extract:
Adham Ibrahim sass einst am Meeresstrand,
Nahte dort als Bettler sich sein Mönchgewand.
Plötzlich tritt ein Emir mit Gefolg’ ihn an,
Der vormals dem Seelenkönig unterthan,
Küsst den Fuss ihm, und wird alsobald verwirrt,
Da den Scheich er in der Kutt’ ansichtig wird.
Den, dem einst gehorcht’ ein weites Landgebiet,
Staunend er jetzt seine Kutte nahen sieht.
* * *
Drauf der Scheich die Nadel plötzlich wirft in’s Meer,
Ruft dann laut: Ihr Fische, bringt die Nadel her!
Alsbald ragen hunderttausend Köpf’ hervor,
Jeder Fisch bringt eine goldne Nadel vor.
Nun der Scheich mit Ernst sich zu dem Emir kehrt:
Wunderst du dich noch, dass ich die Kutt’ begehrt ?

[19] Jerome: Antequam Petrus suggeret, Dominus interrogate ne scandalizenturdiscipuli ad postulationem tributi, quum videant eum nosse quse absente se gesta sunt.

[20] Κῆνσος, the capitation tax; τέλη, customs or tolls on goods.

[21] There is no doubt a difficulty in finding exactly the right translation for ἀλλοτρίων. For it is not so strong as our “strangers,” or the alieni of the Vulgate, or Luther’s, von Fremden. It means to express no more than those that are not the υἱοί, that stand not in this nearest and most immediate relation to the king (qui non pertinent ad familiarn regis: Kuinoel). So Hammond, “other folk,” and De Wette, von ihren Söhnen [which is better than Luther’s, von ihren Kindern], oder von den andern Leuten: compare for this use of ἀλλότριος; Sir 40:29. Gfrörer (Die heil. Sage, vol. ii. p. 56), stumbling at the whole account, finds fault with this interpretation, because, forsooth, the Jews were not ἀλλότριοι,—as though they were not so in comparison with Christ; and, again, because they too were υἱοὶ Θεοῦ,—as though they were so in any such sense as He was. It is most true that for him and for all like him, to whom there is nothing in Christ different from another man, the narrative does, in his own words, “suffer under incurable difficulties.”

[22] With a play on the words, which is probably much more than a mere play, and rests upon a true etymology, so witnessing for the very truth which Christ is asserting here, we might say in Latin, Liberi sunt liberi (liberi, the children, so called in opposition to the household, the send: Freund, Lat. Worterbuch, s. v. liber). Those very words do occur in the noble Easter hymn beginning, Cedant justi signi luctus.

[23] Grotius observes rightly that it is the locus communis, which is to account for the plural: Plurali numero utitur, non quod ad alios earn extendat libertatem, sed quod comparatio id exigebat, sumta non ab unius sed ab omnium Regum more ac consuetudine. The best defence of the cleaving to the plural in the application of the words is that made by Cocceius: Christus ostendit nec se, qui Filius Dei est, obligari ad didrachma solvenduin, tanquam λύτρον animæ suæ, nec suos discipulos, qui ab ipso hæreditant libertatem, et non argento redimuntur (Es. 52:3), sed pretioso ipsius sanguine (1Pe 1:18-19), et facti sunt filii Dei vivi (Hos 1:10), amplius teneri ad servitutem figurae. Olshausen follows him in this.

[24] The Anabaptist conclusions which might be drawn from an abuse of the passage are met on right general grounds by Aquinas (Sum. Theol. 2^a 2^ae, 104, art. 6), though he has not any very precise insight into the meaning of this history. Milton (Defence of the People of England, 3) makes exceedingly unfair use of this passage.

[25] Tirinus: Nam pari jure omnes justi, immo omnes Christiani exempti essent. Michaelis affirms that others have pushed these words to the asserting of the same liberty; for he tells a story (Mos. Recht, vol. iii. p. 210) of having himself,, in travelling, seen a Pietist cheat the revenue before his eyes: on asking him how he could find conscience to do so, the other defended himself with these words, “Then are the children free.” The story is, unhappily, only too welcome to him.

[26] Greswell, Dissert, vol. ii. p. 736. Chrysostom uses the same argument. I know not whether any use was made of this passage in the Arian controversy by those who were upholding the Catholic faith; but Hilary, a confessor and standard-bearer for the truth in that great conflict, does distinctly bring out how the Godhead of Christ is involved in this argument (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Didrachma tamquam ab homine poscebatur a Christo. Sed ut ostenderet legi se non esse subjectum, ut in se paterae dignitatis gloriam contestaretur, terreni privilegii posuit exemplum: censu aut tributis regum filios non teneri, potiusque se Redemtorem animae nostrae corporisque esse quam in redemptionem sui aliquid postulandum; quia Regis Filium extra communionem oporteret esse reliquorum.

[27] This does not mean, the first that he drew up with his line, but the first that ascended from the deeper waters to his hook.

[28] Chrysostom (Horn, lxiv. in Joh.) understands in a remarkably different way these words, “Lest we should offend them;” lest, when this secret of our heavenly birth, and our consequent exemption from tribute, is told them, they should be unable to receive it; lest we should thus put a stumbling block in their way, revealing to them something which they were altogether unable to receive.

[29] Ambrose (Ep. 7:18, Ad Justum): Ideo didrachmum solvi jubet pro se et Petro, quia uterque sub lege generati. Jubet ergo secundum legem solvi, ut eos qui sub lege erant redimeret. And Augustine, on the words which he found Psa 137:8 : Domine, retribues pro me, adduces this. history, saying, Nihil debebat: pro se non reddidit, sed pro nobis reddidit; and again (Serm. civ. 7): Mysterium latebat: Christus tamen tributum non debitum persolvebat. Sic persolvit et mortem; non debebat, et persolvebat. Ille nisi inde-bitum solveret, nunquam nos a debito liberaret. Jerome (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Ut ostenderetur similitudo carnis, dum eodein et servus et Dominus pretio liberatur.

[30] Moule (Heraldry of Fish) gives the natural mythology connected with this miracle: “A popular idea assigns the dark marks on the shoulders of the haddock to the impression left by St. Peter with his finger and thumb, when he took the tribute-money out of the fish’s mouth at Capernaum; but the haddock certainly does not now exist in the seas of the country where the miracle was performed.... The dory, called St. Peter’s fish in several countries of Europe, contends with the haddock the honour of bearing the marks of the Apostle’s fingers, an impression transmitted to posterity as a perpetual memorial of the miracle. The name of the dory. is hence asserted to be derived from the French adore, worshipped. “—Let us observe here the ἀντὶ ἐμοῦ καὶ σοῦ (cf. Mat 20:28; and Winer, Gramm. § 51, 5. a.)—another proof that we have here to do with the ransom for persons, a price given in their stead, with a reference to the original institution of this payment, and so another argument, if that were needed, for the correctness of the interpretation maintained at the outset.

[31] Bengel: In medio actu submissionis emicat majestas. And Clarius: Reddit ergo censum, sed ex ore piscis acceptum, ut agnoscatur majestas. So too Origen (Comm. in Matt, in loc.) recognizes a saving of the Lord’s dignity in the mode of the payment. Of course, when we speak of this saving of his dignity, it is of a saving, not for his own sake, but for men’s, since it is most important for them that they think not unworthily of Him. In other cases, where misapprehension was possible, we find a like care for this (John 11:41-42).

[32] His honesty and his Greek keep admirable company. Πρῶτον ἰχθῦν he takes collectively, primum quemque piscem, ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ solvens earn ab hamo, εὑρήσεις στατῆρα vendendo piscem statera tibi comparabis. This has not even the merit of novelty; for see Kocher, Analeota, in loc, 1766: Piscem capies quern pro statere vendere poteris. In a later work, however, Paulus desires to amend his plea, and ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα is no longer opening the fish’s mouth to take out the hook, but, opening thine own mouth, i. e. crying the fish for sale, αὐτοὐ there, εὑρήσεις στατῆρα thou wilt earn a stater. Another of the same school (see Kuinoel, in loc.) will have the whole speech a playful irony on the Lord’s part, who would show Peter the impossible payment to which he has pledged Him, when money they had none in hand; as though He had said, “The next thing which you had better do is to go and catch us a fish, and find in it the piece of money which is to pay this tax. for which you have engaged, “—not that he should actually do this, but as a slight and kindly rebuke. It was reserved for the more modern or mythic school of interpreters to find other difficulties here, besides the general one of there being a miracle at all. “How,” exclaims Strauss (Leben Jesu, vol. ii. p. 195), “could the fish retain the stater in its mouth? the coin must needs have dropt out while it was opening its jaws to swallow the hook; and, moreover, it is not in the mouths, but in the bellies, of fishes that precious things are found. “He might have urged that a Christian poet, Juvencus, conscious of this difficulty, attempts to evade it, giving the ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα with this variation: Hujus pandantur scissi penetralia ventris. Such is the objection against which this history is to prove too weak to stand! It can only be matched with the objection which another makes to the historic truth of Daniel in the lions’ den; namely, that if a stone was laid at the mouth of the den (Dan 6:17), the lions must needs have been suffocated,—so that nothing will satisfy him but that the den’s mouth must have been by this stone hermetically sealed!

[33] So does Seb. Schmidt (Fascic. Diss. p. 796). Chrysostom (Horn. lxxxvii. in Joh.) accounts in like manner for the fish which the disciples find ready upon the shore (John 21:9); and some will have that Christ not merely gave sight to, but made organs of vision for, the man who was born blind (John ix.).

[34] The accounts are numerous of precious things found in the bellies of fishes. The story of Polycrates’ ring is well known (Herodotus, iii. 42); and in Jewish legend Solomon, having lost his ring of power, recovered it in the same unexpected way (Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. vol. i. p. 360). Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8) records a like incident in his own day, in which he sees a providential dealing of God to answer the prayer, and supply the need, of one of his servants.

[35] Paedag,. ii. vol. i. p. 172, Potter’s ed.; cf. Origen, Comm. in Matt. for the same.

[36] Hexaëm. v. 6: Ideo misit retia, et complexus est Stephanum, qui de Evangelio primus ascendit [τὸν ἀναβάντα πρῶτον] habens in ore suo staterem justitiae. Unde confessione constanti clamavit, dicens: Ecce video coelos apertos, et Filium hominis stantem ad dexteram Dei. So Hilary, Comm. in Matt, in loc.

[37] Enarr. in Ps. 87:8: Primum surgentem de mari, primogenitum a mortuis; for by Him, he says, with the error which runs through his whole interpretation, ab exactione hujus seculi liberamur.