Every Israelite man twenty years and older paid half a shekel a year for the sanctuary (Ex 30:13–14), the tax collectors put to Peter: “Doth not your teacher pay the half-shekel?” (Matt 17:24). The Mishnah preserves the calendar: the shekels were announced on the first of Adar, and money-changers’ tables were set up “on the fifteenth… in the provinces; on the twenty-fifth… in the Temple”, needed because the tax was paid in specific silver, so pilgrims’ coin had to be exchanged. Those are the tables Jesus overturned in the Temple courts. In the rabbinic reckoning the shekel of that period equaled four denarii, four days’ wages.
Daily life in Bible times
The half-shekel & the money-changers
Money & coins
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Every cited verse, in full. Tap any reference to open it in the reader.
- Exodus 30:13bsb
Everyone who crosses over to those counted must pay a half shekel, according to the sanctuary shekel, which weighs twenty gerahs. This half shekel is an offering to the LORD.
- Matthew 17:24bsb
After they had arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax came to Peter and asked, “Does your Teacher pay the two drachmas?”
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