Luke 5:27,28

1 st. Luke 5:27-28. The Call. This fact occupies an important place in the development of the work of Jesus, not only as the complement of the call of the first disciples (Luke 5:1 et seq.), but especially as a continuation of the conflict already entered into with the old order of things.

The publicans of the Gospels are ordinarily regarded as Jewish sub-collectors in the service of Roman knights, to whom the tolls of Palestine had been let out at Rome. Wieseler, in his recent work, corrects this view. He proves, by an edict of Caesar, quoted in Josephus (Antiq. 14.10. 5), that the tolls in Judaea were remitted direct to the Jewish or heathen collectors, without passing through the hands of the Roman financiers. The publicans, especially such as, like Matthew, were of Jewish origin, were hated and despised by their fellow-countrymen more even than the heathen themselves. They were excommunicated, and deprived of the right of tendering an oath before the Jewish authorities. Their conduct, which was too often marked by extortion and fraud, generally justified the opprobrium which public opinion cast upon them. Capernaum was on the road leading from Damascus to the Mediterranean, which terminated at Ptolemais (St. Jean d'Acre). It was the commercial highway from the interior of Asia. In this city, therefore, there must have been a tax-office of considerable importance. This office was probably situated outside the city, and near the sea. This explains the expression, He went out (Luke); He went forth in order to go to the sea-side (Mark). In the three Syn. this call immediately follows the healing of the paralytic (Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:13 et seq.).

Jesus must have had some very important reason for calling a man from the class of the publicans to join the circle of His disciples; for by this step He set Himself at open variance with the theocratic notions of decorum. Was it His deliberate intention to throw down the gauntlet to the numerous Pharisees who had come from a distance to watch Him, and to show them how completely He set Himself above their judgment? Or was it simply convenient to have among His disciples a man accustomed to the use of the pen? This is quite possible; but there is something so abrupt, so spontaneous, and so strange in this call, that it is impossible to doubt that Jesus spoke to him in obedience to a direct impulse from on high. The higher nature of the call appears also in the decision and promptness with which it was accepted. Between Jesus and this man there must have been, as it were, a flash of divine sympathy. The relation between Jesus and His first apostles was formed in this way (John 1). The name Levi not occurring in any of the lists of apostles, it is impossible to identify it with Lebbaeus, which has a different meaning and etymology, it might be thought that this Levi never belonged to the number of the twelve. But in this case why should his call be so particularly related? Then the expression, having left all, he followed Him (Luke 5:28), forbids our thinking that Levi ever resumed his profession as a tollcollector, and puts him in the same rank as the four older disciples (Luke 5:11). We must therefore look for him among the apostles. In the catalogue of the first Gospel (Luke 10:3), the Apostle Matthew is called the publican; and in the same Gospel (Luke 9:9) the call of Matthew the publican is related, with details identical with those of our narrative. Must we admit two different but similar incidents? This was the supposition of the Gnostic Heracleon and of Clement of Alexandria. Sieffert, Ewald, and Keim prefer to admit that our first Gospel applies by mistake to the apostle and older publican Matthew, the calling of another less known publican, who should be called Levi (Mark and Luke). This opinion naturally implies that the first Gospel is unauthentic. But is it not much simpler to suppose that the former name of this man was Levi, and that Jesus, perceiving the direct hand of God in this event, gave him the surname of Matthew, gift of God, just as He gave Simon, at His first meeting with him, the surname of Peter? This name, which Matthew habitually bore in the Church, was naturally that under which he figured afterwards in the catalogues of the apostles. Were Luke and Mark unaware that the apostle so named was the publican whom they had designated by the name of Levi? Or have they neglected to mention this identity in their lists of the apostles, because they have given these just as they found them in their documents? We do not know. We are continually struck by seeing how the evangelical tradition has left in the shade the secondary personages of this great drama, in order to bestow exclusive attention on the principal actor. ᾿Εθεάσατο does not signify merely He saw, but He fixed His eyes upon him. This was the moment when something peculiar and inexplicable took place between Jesus and the publican.

The expression καθήμενον ἐπὶ τὸ τελώνιον cannot signify seated in the office; ἐπὶ or ἐν τῷ τελωνιῷ would be necessary. As the accusative after ἐπί, the word toll might mean, seated at his work of toll-collecting; but this sense of τελώνιον is unexampled. Might not the prep. ἐπί have the sense here in which it is sometimes employed in the classics, in Herodotus, for example, when he says of Aristides that he kept ἐπὶ τὸ συνέδριον in front of the place where the chiefs were assembled (8.79)? Levi must have been seated in front of his office, observing what was passing. How, indeed, if he had been seated in the office, could his glance have met that of Jesus?

Without even re-entering, he follows Him, forsaking all.