Matthew 17:24 After they arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, “Your teacher pays the double drachma tax, doesn’t he?” 17:25 He said, “Yes.” When Peter came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do earthly kings collect tolls or taxes—from their sons or from foreigners?” 17:26 After he said, “From foreigners,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. 17:27 But so that we don’t offend them, go to the lake and throw out a hook. Take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth, you will find a four drachma coin. Take that and give it to them for me and you.”

Fortunately, the main point of this incident doesn’t seem too difficult to understand (although it might be difficult to obey).  The disciples of Jesus should not abuse their God-given freedom by refusing to pay their taxes.

What I want to explore here is the seeming oddness of the account.  Why did Jesus direct Peter to go to the lake, telling him to look in the mouth of the first fish he catches, and there he will find a coin, which he can use to pay the temple tax for the two of them?

Osborne agrees that this is ‘the strangest miracle in the Gospels’.

It is said that the musht fish was known to be attracted to foreign objects in the Sea of Galilee.  Indeed, it is this fish which has becomes known as ‘St. Peter’s Fish’.  But the musht feeds on plankton.  Accordingly to Wilkins, a more likely candidate is the voracious barbell.  In any case case, the real miracle (if the disciples did as Jesus instructed; we are not told that they did) was not the presence of a coin in its mouth, but Jesus’ prior knowledge of this.  Paul writes of such a ‘gift of knowledge’ in 1 Cor 12:8.  This is the interpretation adopted in the Holman Apologetics Commentary.

A number of commentators have pointed out that it is not recorded that Peter actually did as Jesus said.  France, for example (TNTC) thinks it ‘plausible’ that Jesus’ words were merely a playful comment on their lack of money.  But, in this case, the detail given by Jesus would be pointless, and main point of the incident (‘pay your taxes’) would be undermined.  Osborne rejects France’s interpretation on such grounds.

I might note here that New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg fell foul of the ‘heresy-hunting’ of Norman Geisler, who announced that ‘Blomberg denied the historicity of the fish with the coin in its mouth’.  In fact, what Blomberg did (in an article published in the mid-1980s) was to note that the text itself does not, strictly speaking, give any account of a miracle.  It records the command of Jesus (which may, as noted above, have entailed a ‘gift of knowledge’), but does not record whether Peter actually carried out the command.  (Nor, I might add, does the text describe this as a ‘miracle’, or ‘wonder’, or anything like that).  A brief account from Blomberg’s point of view can be found in his introduction to Defining Inerrancy, by J. P. Holding and Nick Peters.

N.T. Wright suggests that, by doing things in this way, Jesus was poking fun at the system of temple taxation.  Wright observes that Matthew does not tell us (as he might have done) that Peter went off and found the coins. just as Jesus had predicted.  Was it (Wright speculates) a sort of private joke, where Jesus’ meant Peter to catch a fish and sell it, using the proceeds for the tax?  What we can be surer of (argues Wright) is that Jesus is making light of – poking fun at, even – the whole system.  Jesus declines to pay the tax in the conventional way, but at the same time, he does not refuse to pay it.  His time has not yet come.  Only later, when he came to Jerusalem itself, would he speak and act plainly, overturning tables and driving out traders from the temple.

Bruner notes that, at first sight, the account seems ’embarrassing’.  Along with some other commentators, he refers to our Lord’s temptations, and his refusal to do miracles that would personally convenience him.

Barclay objects to any reading that involves ‘a bald and crude literalism’.  He raises the following objections:

1. God does not do for us what we are able to do for ourselves.  It should not require a miracle to raise the sum of two sheckels.
2. Jesus refused to used his miraculous power for his own ends, and to satisfy his own needs.
3. Read literally, the story is immoral: it suggests that we can by-pass ordinary human endeavour and meet our obligations in a lazy and effortless way.

Barclay’s supposition is that Jesus told this story with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye, and with the Eastern love of dramatic and vivid speaking.  He is telling Peter to go back to fishing for a day, and earn the money required to pay the tax.

I think that Barclay’s imagination has got the better of him.  He has succeeded, not in explaining the text, but in domesticating it.

It is true that the emphasis in the narrative does not fall of the miracle itself, but on the important lesson that it taught.  But, pace Barclay, this lesson is not about earning our keep, but about our freedoms and responsibilities as disciples of Christ.