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Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Why do you test me? Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?” They answered, “Caesar’s.”
He said to them, “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Luke 20:22-25 sits inside this longer paragraph.
The chief priests and the scribes sought to lay hands on him that very hour, but they feared the people—for they knew he had spoken this parable against them. They watched him and sent out spies, who pretended to be righteous, that they might trap him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the power and authority of the governor. They asked him, “Teacher, we know that you say and teach what is right, and aren’t partial to anyone, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Why do you test me? Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?” They answered, “Caesar’s.”
He said to them, “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Why do you test me?
Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?” They answered, “Caesar’s.”
He said to them, “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Ys it laufull for vs to geve Cesar tribute or no?
He perceaved their craftynes and sayde vnto them: why tept ye me?
Shewe me a peny. Whose ymage and superscripcion hath it? They answered and sayde: Cesars.
And he sayde vnto them: Geve then vnto Cesar that which belongeth vnto Cesar: and to God that which pertayneth to God.
Is it lawfull for vs to giue Cesar tribute or no?
But he perceiued their craftines, and sayd vnto them, Why tempt ye me?
Shew me a penie. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered, and sayd, Cesars.
Then he sayd vnto them, Giue then vnto Cesar the things which are Cesars, and to God those which are Gods.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v23 Craftiness is a certain diligence and witness to do…
Craftiness is a certain diligence and witness to do evil, gotten by much use and great practice in matters.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv22–25 And he said unto them, render therefore unto Caesar…
And he said unto them, render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's,.... The Arabic version renders it, "give to the king what is the king's"; the tribute that was due to him; since they were under his government, and were protected by him, and traded with his money; the currency of which among them was an acknowledgment of him as their sovereign:
and unto God the things which be God's; which relate to his worship, honour, interest, and kingdom; See Gill on Mat 22:21.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v24 Show me a penny - A Roman penny, which…
Show me a penny - A Roman penny, which was the money that was usually paid on that occasion.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On v22 Verse 22. Is it lawful for us to give…
Verse 22. Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar] See this insidious but important question considered at large on Mt 22:16-22.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v22 If our divine Saviour had returned them for answer,…
If our divine Saviour had returned them for answer, that they ought to give tribute to Cæsar, they would have accused him of being an enemy to the law; but if, on the contrary, he said it was not lawful, they would have accused him to Pilate as an enemy of the state. (Theophylactus) --- For there was then a great misunderstanding among the Jews: some, who wished to keep peace with the Romans, said that it was lawful; but the Pharisees denied it, and said: "The people of God ought to be exempt from such a tax. They were bound by the law to give tithes and first-fruits to God; therefore they ought not to be bound by human laws to give likewise tax to men who were heathens." (St. Jerome)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv22, 25 tribute--(See on Mat 17:24).
tribute--(See on Mat 17:24).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv22–25 22. is it lawful for us to give tribute…
22. is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Cesar, or no?] The question was devised with so superlative a craft that it seemed impossible for our Lord to escape. If He said ‘It is lawful,’ the Pharisees hoped at once to undermine His popularity with the multitude. If He said ‘It is not lawful’ (Deu_17:15), the Herodians could at once hand Him over, as a traitor, to the secular power. For ‘tribute’ each Evangelist uses a different word—epikephalaion, ‘poll-tax’ (Mark in D); the Latin kenson ‘census’ (Matt.); and the classical phoron here and Luk_23:2. It was a capitation-tax, the legality of which was indignantly disputed by scrupulous legalists.
craftiness] panourgian, a classical word only found in St Paul and St Luke, 2Co_4:2; 2Co_11:3, &c.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On v23 (23) Their craftiness.—The Greek noun does not appear in…
(23) Their craftiness.—The Greek noun does not appear in the other Gospels, but is used four times by St. Paul, as in 2Co_4:2; Eph_4:14.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv24–25 Show me a penny; literally, a denarius, a coin…
Show me a penny; literally, a denarius, a coin of the value of 7.5 d., but really representing a larger sum in our money. It seems probable, from the language of Mar_12:15, 16, that his interrogators had to borrow the Roman coin in question from some of the neighbouring money-changers. These Jews would scarcely carry any but Jewish coins in their girdles. That the Roman denarius, however, was evidently a coin in common circulation in those days, we gather from the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar"s. "On one side would be the once beautiful but now depraved features of Tiberius; the title "Pontifex Maximus" was probably inscribed on the obverse" (Farrar).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v24
Luke
WHOSE IMAGE AND SUPERSCRIPTION?
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Luk 20:24.
It is no unusual thing for antagonists to join forces in order to crush a third person obnoxious to both. So in this incident we have an unnatural alliance of the two parties in Jewish politics who were at daggers drawn. The representatives of the narrow conservative Judaism, which loathed a foreign yoke, in the person of the Pharisees and Scribes, and the Herodians, the partisans of a foreigner and a usurper, lay their heads together to propose a question to Christ which they think will discredit or destroy Him. They would have answered their own question in opposite ways. One would have said, ‘It is lawful to give tribute to Caesar’; the other would have said, ‘It is not.’ But that is a small matter when malice prompts. They calculate, ‘If He says, No! we will denounce Him to Pilate as a rebel. If He says, Yes! we will go to the people and say, Here is a pretty Messiah for you, that has no objection to the foreign yoke. Either way we shall end Him.’
Jesus Christ serenely walks through the cobwebs, and lays His hand upon the fact. ‘Let Me see a silver penny!’-which, by the bye, was the amount of the tribute-’Whose head is that?’ The currency of the country proclaims the monarch of the country. To stamp his image on the coin is an act of sovereignty. ‘Caesar’s head declares that you are Caesar’s subjects, whether you like it or not, and it is too late to ask questions about tribute when you pay your bills in his money.’ ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’
Does not the other side of Christ’s answer-’to God the things that are God’s’-rest upon a similar fact? Does not the parallelism require that we should suppose that the destiny of things to be devoted to God is stamped upon them, whatever they are, at least as plainly as the right of Caesar to exact tribute was inferred from the fact that his money was the currency of the country? The thought widens out in a great many directions, but I want to confine it to one special line of contemplation, and to take it as suggesting to each of us this great truth, that the very make of men shows that they belong to God, and are bound to yield themselves to Him. If the answer to the question be plain, and the conclusion irresistible, about the penny with the image of Tiberius, the answer is no less plain, nor the conclusion less irresistible, when we turn the interrogation within, and, looking at our own being, say to ourselves, ‘Whose image and superscription hath it? ‘
I. First, then, note the image stamped upon man, and the consequent obligation.
We can very often tell what a thing is for by noticing its make. The instructed eye of an anatomist will, from a bone, divine the sphere in which the creature to whom it belonged was intended to live. Just as plainly as gills or lungs, fins or wings, or legs and arms, declare the element in which the creature that possesses them is intended to move, so plainly stamped upon all our natures is this, that God is our Lord since we are made in a true sense in His image, and that only in Him can we find rest.
I need not remind you, I suppose, of the old word, ‘Let us make man in our own image.’ Nor need I, I suppose, insist at any length upon the truth that though, by the fact of man’s sin, the whole glory and splendour of the divine image in which he was made is marred and defaced, there still remain such solemn, blessed, and awful resemblances between man and God that there can be no mistake as to which beings in the universe are the most kindred; nor any misunderstanding as to who it is after whose likeness we are formed, and in whose love and life alone we can be blessed.
I am not going to weary you with thoughts for which, perhaps, the pulpit is not the proper place; but let me just remind you of one or two points. Is there any other being on this earth that can say of itself ‘I am’? God says ‘I am that I am’. You and I cannot say that, but we alone, in this order of things, possess that solemn and awful gift, the consciousness of our personal being. And, brethren, whoever is able to say to himself ‘I am’ will never know rest until he can turn to God and say ‘Thou art,’ and then, laying his hand in the Great Father’s hand, venture to say ‘We are.’ We are made in His image, in that profoundest of all senses.
But to come to something less recondite. We are like God in that we can love; we are like Him in that we can perceive the right, and that the right is supreme; we are like Him in that we have the power to say ‘I will.’ And these great capacities demand that the creature who thus knows himself to be, who thus knows the right, who thus can love, who thus can purpose, resolve, and act, should find his home and his refuge in fellowship with God.
But if you take a coin, and compare it with the die from which it has been struck, you will find that wherever in the die there is a relief, in the coin there is a sunken place; and conversely. So there are not only resemblances in man to the divine nature, which bear upon them the manifest marks of his destiny, but there are correspondences, wants, on our side, being met by gifts upon His; hollow emptinesses in us being filled, when we are brought into contact with Him, by the abundance of His outstanding supplies and gifts. So the poorest, narrowest, meanest life has in it a depth of desire, an ardour, and sometimes a pain and a madness of yearning and longing which nothing but God can fill. Though we often misunderstand the voice, and so make ourselves miserable by vain efforts, our ‘heart and our flesh,’ in every fibre of our being, ‘cry out for the living God.’ And what we all want is some one Pearl of great price into which all the dispersed preciousness and fragmentary brilliances that dazzle the eye shall be gathered. We want a Person, a living Person, a present Person, a sufficient Person, who shall satisfy our hearts, our whole hearts, and that at one and the same time, or else we shall never be at rest.
Because, then, we are made dependent, because we possess these wild desires, because immortal thirst attaches to our nature, because we have consciences that need illuminating, wills that are only free when they are absolutely submissive, hearts that are dissatisfied, and left yearning, after all the sweetnesses of limited, transient, and creatural affections, we bear on our very fronts the image of God; and any man that wisely looks at himself can answer the question, ‘Whose image and superscription hath it?’ in but one way. ‘In the image of God created He him.’
Therefore by loving fellowship, by lowly trust, by ardour of love, by submissiveness of obedience, by continuity of contemplation, by the sacrifice of self, we must yield ourselves to God if we would pay the tribute manifestly owing to the Emperor by the fact that His image and superscription are upon the coin.
II. And so let me ask you to look, in the next place, at the defacement of the image and the wrong expenditure of the coin.
You sometimes get into your hands money on which there has been stamped, by mischief, or for some selfish purpose, the name of some one else than the king’s or queen’s which surrounds the head upon it. And in like manner our nature has gone through the stamping-press again, and another likeness has been deeply imprinted upon it. The image of God, which every man has, is in some senses and aspects ineffaceable by any course of conduct of theirs. But in another aspect it is not like the permanent similitude stamped upon the solid metal of the penny, but like the reflection, rather, that falls upon some polished plate, or that is cast upon the white sheet from a lantern. If the polished plate be rusty and stained, the image is faint and indistinct; if it be turned away from the light the image passes. And that is what some of you are doing. By living to yourselves, by living day in and day out without ever remembering God, by yielding to passions, lusts, ambitions, low desires, and the like, you are doing your very best to erase the likeness which still lingers in your nature. Is there any one here that has yielded to some lust of the flesh, some appetite, drunkenness, gluttony, impurity, or the like, and has so sold himself to it, as that that part of the divine image, the power of saying ‘I will,’ has pretty nearly gone? I am afraid there must be some who, by long submission to passion, have lost the control that reason and conscience and a firm steady purpose ought to give. Is there any man here who, by long course of utter neglect of the divine love, has ceased to feel that there is a heart at the centre of the universe, or that He has anything to do with it? Brethren, the awful power that is given to men of degrading themselves till, lineament by lineament, the likeness in which they are made vanishes, is the saddest and most tragical thing in the world. ‘Like the beasts that perish,’ says one of the psalms, the men become who, by the acids and the files of worldliness and sensuality and passion, have so rubbed away the likeness of God that it is scarcely perceptible in them. Do I speak to some such now? If there is nothing else left there is this, a hunger for absolute good and for the satisfaction of your desires. That is part of the proof that you are made for God, and that only in Him can you find rest.
All occupations of heart and mind and will and active life with other things to the exclusion of supreme devotion to God are, then, sacrilege and rebellion. The emperor’s head was the token of sovereignty and carried with it the obligation to pay tribute. Every fibre in your nature protests against the prostitution of itself to anything short of God. You remember the story in the Old Testament about that saturnalia of debauchery, the night when Babylon fell, when Bel-shazzar, in the very wantonness of godless insolence, could not be satisfied with drinking his wine out of anything less sacred than the vessels that had been brought from the Temple at Jerusalem. That is what many of us are doing, taking the sacred cup which is meant to be filled with the wine of the kingdom and pouring into it the foaming but poisonous beverages which steal away our brains and make us drunk, the moment before our empire totters to its fall and we to our ruin. ‘All the consecrated things of the house of the Lord they dedicated to Baal,’ says one of the narratives in the Book of Chronicles. That is what some of us are doing, taking the soul that is meant to be consecrated to God and find its blessedness there, and offering it to false gods in whose service there is no blessedness.
For, dear friends, I beseech you, lay this to heart that you cannot thus use the Godlike being that you possess without bringing down upon your heads miseries and unrest. The raven, that black bird of evil omen, went out from the ark, and flew homeless over the weltering ocean. The souls that seek not God fly thus, strangers and restless, through a drowned and lifeless world. The dove came back with an olive branch in its beak. Souls that are wise and have made their nests in the sanctuary can there fold their wings and be at peace. As the ancient saint said, ‘We are made for God, and only in God have we rest.’ ‘Oh, that thou hadst hearkened to me, then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.’ Cannot you see the blessed, gentle gliding of the full stream through the meadows with the sunshine upon its ripples? Such is the heart that has yielded itself to God. In solemn contrast to that lovely image, the same prophet has for a repeated refrain in his book, ‘The wicked is like the troubled sea which cannot rest,’ but goes moaning round the world, and breaking in idle foam upon every shore, and still is unquiet for evermore. Brethren, only when we render to God the thing that is God’s-our hearts and ourselves-have we repose.
III. Now, lastly, notice the restoration and perfecting of the defaced image.
Because man is like God, it is possible for God to become like man. The possibility of Revelation and of Redemption by an incarnate Saviour depend upon the reality of the fact that man is made in the image of God. Thus there comes to us that divine Christ, who lays ‘His hands upon both’ and being on the one hand the express image of His person, so that He can say, ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,’ on the other hand ‘was in all points made like unto His brethren,’ with only the exception that the defacement which had obliterated the divine image in them left it clear, untarnished, and sharply cut in Him.
Therefore, because Jesus Christ has come, our Brother, ‘bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh,’ made like unto us, and in our likeness presenting to us the very image of God and eradiation of His light, therefore no defacement that it is possible for men or devils to make on this poor humanity of ours need be irrevocable and final. All the stains may be blotted out, all the usurping superscriptions may be removed and the original imprint restored. The dints may be elevated, the too lofty points may be lowered, the tarnish and the rust may be rubbed off, and, fairer than before, the likeness of God may be stamped on every one of us, ‘after the image of Him that created us,’ if only we will turn ourselves to that dear Lord, and cast our souls upon Him. Christ hath become like us that we might become like Him, and therein be partakers of the divine nature. ‘We all, reflecting as a glass does the glory of the Lord, may be changed into the same image from glory to glory.’
Nor do the possibilities stop there, for we look forward to a time when, if I might pursue the metaphor of my text, the coinage shall be called in and reminted, in new forms of nobleness and of likeness. We have before us this great prospect, that ‘we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is’; and in all the glories of that heaven we shall partake, for all that is Christ’s is ours, and ‘we that have borne the image of the earthly shall also bear the image of the heavenly.’
I come to you, then, with this old question: ‘Whose image and superscription hath it?’ and the old exhortation founded thereupon: ‘Render therefore to God the thing that is God’s’; and yield yourselves to Him. Another question I would ask, and pray that you may lay it to heart, ‘To what purpose is this waste?’ What are you doing with the silver penny of your own soul? Wherefore do ye ‘spend it for that which is not bread?’ Give yourselves to God; trust yourselves to the Christ who is like you, and like Him. And, resting upon His great love you will be saved from the prostitution of capacities, and the vain attempts to satisfy your souls with the husks of earth; and whilst you remain here will be made partakers of Christ’s life, and growingly of His likeness, and when you remove yonder, your body, soul, and spirit will be conformed to His image, and transformed into the likeness of His glory, ‘according to the mighty working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v23 The answer of Jesus:
The answer of Jesus:
v. 23. But He perceived their craftiness and said unto them, Why tempt ye Me?
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v. 24. Show Me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s.
v. 25. And He said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.
v. 26. And they could not take hold of His words before the people; and they marveled at His answer, and held their peace.
Jesus, the omniscient Son of God, noticed their craft, their sly cunning, even before they started to make their request. And He is not wanting in the frankness which they have just praised in telling them what He thought of them. He plainly told them that He knew their thoughts in trying to tempt Him. He then asked for a denarius, the coin in which the imperial tax was usually paid (value, about 17 cents). Then He demanded information as to the picture and the inscription stamped upon the coin. Note: Instead of explaining to them at once what He told them afterwards, He made them give the information, making it appear that they had led Him to the conclusion, in order to confound them and win the people. Since the coin bore the emperor’s picture, it presented irrefutable evidence that the emperor was the ruler of the land, for the coins of a strange country are not legal tender in the homeland. And so the conclusion of Jesus seemed the only one that was justified under the circumstances, to give the things of Caesar to Caesar and the things of God to God. That is what God demands. The people of God, the Christians, will, above all, give due honor and obedience to God. In matters which pertain to God, the Word of God, Christian worship, faith, and conscience, they are obedient only to God, and reject all interference of men. But in temporal things, in matters which concern this world only, such as money, goods, life, Christians are obedient to the government of the country in which they are living. The State is not to interfere in the matters of the Church, and the Church is not to meddle in the business and affairs of the State. This answer of Jesus, while it satisfied the people, completely baffled the questioners. They could find no point at which they might take hold of, and attack, the Lord. At the same time, they could not repress a grudging, reluctant admiration for the clear distinction made by the Lord, and so they quietly withdrew.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv23, 25 But Jesus understood their craftiness
But Jesus understood their craftiness
"But Jesus understood how tricky they were" or "But Jesus saw that they were trying to trap him." The word "their" refers to the spies.
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a denarius
This is a Roman silver coin worth a day's wages. (See: Biblical Money)
Whose image and name is on it?
Jesus uses a question to respond to those who were trying to trick him. (See: Rhetorical Question)
image and name
"picture and name"
translationWords
Caesar
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv22, 24, 25 20:22 is it right for us to pay taxes…
20:22 is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? If Jesus said yes, he would make the people angry, because they hated the burden of Roman taxation. If he said no, he would be accused of rebellion against the Roman authorities.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.