porque Ele vive
Home › All content
Open the full experience →listen, take notes and keep track on the site
Historical context

Money, work and economy

Denarii, debts and daily bread

A denarius paid for a day’s work in the fields; the widow gave two little bronze coins. Knowing first-century coins, wages and debts changes how we read the parables.

Three coin systems in one pocket

In first-century Judea and Galilee, coins from three origins circulated. There were Roman coins, such as the silver denarius bearing the emperor’s image, and the bronze as and quadrans. There were Greek and Phoenician silver coins, such as the drachma, the didrachma and the tetradrachm of Tyre, also called the Tyrian shekel, famous for the quality of its silver. And there were small local bronze coins, minted by Herod, his sons and the Roman prefects, which Jews called prutah and the New Testament calls lepton. Out of respect for the ban on images, these coins showed plants, cornucopias, anchors or objects, never a human face. The great exception was the tetrarch Philip, who ruled a largely non-Jewish population and put on his coins the faces of Augustus, of Tiberius and even his own. With so many different coins, money changers were indispensable, and they charged a small fee for each exchange.

A denarius a day

The parable of the vineyard workers speaks of a denarius for a day’s work (Matthew 20:2). That seems to have been a common daily wage for a manual laborer in the fields; later rabbinic texts mention similar amounts, though wages varied by region and period. With that benchmark, many figures in the Gospels gain weight. The disciples reckon that two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for the crowd (Mark 6:37): nearly seven months of work. The perfume poured on Jesus was worth more than three hundred denarii (Mark 14:5), about a year’s wages once Sabbaths and festivals are subtracted. The Samaritan in the parable leaves two denarii with the innkeeper, perhaps enough for several days’ lodging. And the day laborer, hired in the morning and paid at day’s end, depended on that coin to buy his family’s bread. That is why the Law required paying the poor worker the same day, before sunset (Deuteronomy 24:14-15).

The Temple’s money

The Temple was also Judea’s great financial center. Every adult Jewish man was to pay a half-shekel once a year for worship, based on Exodus 30:13-15, and Jews across the empire sent these contributions to Jerusalem. The Mishnah says the payment had to be made in Tyrian coin (Bekhorot 8:7), for the purity of its silver, even though these coins bore the head of the god Melqart and an eagle. Hence the money changers: according to the Mishnah, their tables were set up in the provinces on the 15th of the month of Adar and in the Temple on the 25th (Shekalim 1:3). In Capernaum the collectors ask whether Jesus pays the didrachma, that is, the half-shekel; the coin found in the fish, a stater, was worth four drachmas and paid for two. In the Temple courts there were thirteen trumpet-shaped offering chests, each with its own purpose (Shekalim 6:5), and into one of them a widow dropped two small coins.

Land, labor and debt

Galilee’s economy was agrarian. Most people were smallholders, tenant farmers, day laborers or slaves, and a small elite held the best land, often living far from it. The parables reflect this world: the owner who leases his vineyard to tenants and goes abroad (Mark 12:1), the manager who renegotiates debts of oil and wheat, the servant who cannot pay. A bad harvest led to a loan, and a loan could lead to losing the land or to debt slavery, like the servant the king orders sold with his family (Matthew 18:25). The Law provided for the cancellation of debts in the sabbatical year, but according to the Mishnah the teacher Hillel created the prosbul, a document that allowed debts to be collected after the seventh year, so the wealthy would not stop lending (Sheviit 10:3-4). The tension was real: in AD 66, one of the rebels’ first acts in Jerusalem was to burn the public archives where debts were recorded (Jewish War 2.427).

The numbers in the parables

Jesus used figures his hearers grasped at once. A talent was worth about 6,000 denarii, close to twenty years of a day laborer’s work. The servant in the parable owed ten thousand talents, something like sixty million denarii: an absurd sum on purpose. For comparison, Josephus says Herod Antipas received from Galilee and Perea together about 200 talents a year (Antiquities 17.318). The fellow servant owed a hundred denarii, three or four months’ work: a serious debt, but payable. The contrast shows the size of the forgiveness received and the pettiness of the one who will not forgive. The woman who loses one drachma out of ten searches with lamp and broom because it was worth about a day’s work, perhaps part of the household’s savings. And the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas, probably Tyrian shekels, recall the value of a slave in the Law (Exodus 21:32) and the contemptible wage in Zechariah 11:12.

Money in the community of Jesus

Jesus spoke about money more than many expect: about the impossibility of serving God and wealth, treasure in heaven, generosity toward those who cannot repay. The early church took this seriously. In Jerusalem, those who owned land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds to the apostles, so that no one would be in need (Acts 4:34-35). When a severe famine struck Judea in the reign of Claudius, around AD 46 to 48, an event Josephus also mentions, the Christians of Antioch sent relief through Barnabas and Saul (Acts 11:28-30). Years later Paul organized among the churches of Galatia, Macedonia and Achaia a collection for the poor in Jerusalem, asking each person to set something aside on the first day of the week (1 Corinthians 16:1-3). In a world where debts enslaved and the poor were invisible, the community of Jesus turned money into an instrument of fellowship.

Did you know?

Where this shows up in the Bible

To go deeper

Where to read in the Bible

Connections

Continue on the site →

Read today's devotional →
A Bible passage, a reflection and a prayer. You can listen to it.