People of the Bible

Matthew

Was sitting at a tax booth, and the next scene is a dinner party at his house with all the wrong guests.

Also called Levi

Matthew is a tax collector at Capernaum, which in that setting means a man working for the occupying power against his neighbours and taking a margin. He is sitting at the receipt of custom when two words arrive, follow me, and he rises and follows. Luke adds that he left all. The first thing he does with his new life is throw a great feast in his own house and fill it with the only friends he has, which brings the complaint that fixes the scene in all three gospels.

Where he appearsMatthew 9 to 10 · Mark 2 · Luke 5

Matthew Mark Luke

Scroll down to the account

The movements, in the order the text gives them.

The Account of Matthew

01
Matthew 9:9
He arose and followed him
Two words and one verse. There is no negotiation, no stated reason, and no mention of what happens to the accounts on the table.
The command contains no job interview. Jesus sees Matthew at the very place that identifies his occupation and calls him from there. The passage offers neither a favorable reference nor a preliminary explanation of how useful a tax collector's skills might become. Follow me is personal before it is professional.
The movement is deliberately plain: sitting, rising, following. Just before this, another man has risen at Jesus' word, the paralytic of verses 6-7. The conditions are not the same, and Matthew's occupation is not being diagnosed as paralysis. But the neighboring scenes both show a command producing visible movement. The authority debated over the sick man's forgiveness now reaches a man sitting at the receipt of custom.
Matthew's response is an action, not a recorded speech. Nothing is said about the balance in his accounts, a final collection, or an agreement with his employer. The verse does not need those imagined negotiations. It ends with the direction of his life physically changed. He had been sitting where people came to pay. Now he follows.
Verse by verse
1. 9:9
  Receipt of custom translates telonion, a toll or tax collection station. It names the place where Matthew is working.
2. 9:9
  Mark 2:14 calls Levi the son of Alphaeus. That shared paternal name alone does not establish that he and James son of Alphaeus were brothers.
3. 9:9
  The verse gives the call and the response without stating whether Matthew had heard or met Jesus previously.
Worth knowing
The closely corresponding calls in Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 name the tax collector Levi, while Matthew 9:9 names him Matthew. Their matching setting and wording underpin the traditional identification of the two names with one man. None of these passages, however, records Jesus changing Levi's name to Matthew.
Matthew 9:9
King James Version · 1 verse
9:9And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.
02
Luke 5:29
A great feast in his own house
He does not quietly change career. He throws a party and invites a great company of publicans and others, which is an introduction rather than a farewell.
Leaving everything in verse 28 is followed by opening a house in verse 29. The juxtaposition is worth keeping intact. Luke does not describe a man earning discipleship by first making himself homeless; he describes someone leaving his former position and immediately using his household to host Jesus. A relinquished occupation and an available table are not opposites.
The guest list is the part that draws attention. Levi, traditionally identified with Matthew through the parallel call accounts, does not arrange a carefully respectable gathering that conceals where he has come from. A great company of publicans sits with Jesus. The old circle has not been erased from the room to make the new disciple look better.
The verse names neither a conversion speech by Levi nor the eventual response of every guest. Its concrete claim is hospitality: he made him a great feast. Jesus is not merely discussed at the table; he is there. The tax collector who has answered the call becomes a host, and the people who attract the objection are already eating beside the teacher.
Verse by verse
1. 5:29
  Luke explicitly identifies Levi as the host and calls the house his own. Matthew 9:10 simply refers to the house.
2. 5:29
  The Greek expression behind sat down describes reclining at a meal, not a modern arrangement of upright chairs.
3. 5:29
  Others does not specify each guest's occupation or conduct. The following objection groups the company as publicans and sinners.
Worth knowing
The Greek word translated feast, doche, occurs only here and in Luke 14:13 in the New Testament. In that later passage, Jesus tells a host to invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind. Both uses place the question of who receives a welcome directly beside the meal.
Luke 5:29
King James Version · 1 verse
5:29And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.
03
Matthew 9:10-13
I will have mercy, and not sacrifice
The Pharisees put the question to the disciples. The reply is about who needs a physician, and then a homework assignment: go and learn what this means.
The objection travels through the disciples, but Jesus answers it himself. The issue is not whether sinners exist. Everyone in the exchange knows the category. The issue is whether their presence at the table discredits the teacher or discloses the purpose of his coming.
The physician comparison refuses the assumption behind the complaint. A doctor's presence among sick people is evidence of his work, not proof that he has misunderstood his profession. Jesus does not have to rename sickness as health in order to approach it. The KJV ends his explanation with sinners to repentance, which keeps the welcome from becoming a claim that nothing needs changing.
Then comes the pointed reversal: go ye and learn. The men questioning his conduct are sent back to a text they ought to understand, Hosea 6:6. Mercy is not a novelty Jesus has invented to excuse an awkward dinner. It is already in the Scriptures they recognize. The table becomes the place where their reading is tested. Their difficulty is not that Jesus has forgotten the prophet. It is that the prophet's words have arrived among people they object to.
Verse by verse
1. 9:10-11
  The criticism concerns eating with the named company. It should not be expanded into a claim that every Pharisee held identical views or behaved identically.
2. 9:12
  Whole means healthy in the physician comparison. The saying explains the direction of Jesus' mission rather than certifying the critics as sinless.
3. 9:13
  Hosea 6:6 pairs mercy with the knowledge of God and contrasts them with sacrifice and burnt offerings. The quotation exposes worship detached from the character God desires.
Worth knowing
Jesus quotes the same words from Hosea again in Matthew 12:7, when his disciples are accused over plucking grain on the sabbath. In chapter 9 the dispute concerns his company; in chapter 12 it concerns his disciples' conduct. The repeated citation makes mercy an interpretive thread across two different controversies.
Matthew 9:10-13
King James Version · 4 verses
9:10And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.
9:11And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?
9:12But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
9:13But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
04
Matthew 10:1-4
Matthew the publican
In the list of the twelve he is the only one whose old job is attached to his name, and it is his own gospel that does it.
The tax booth survives in the apostolic list. Matthew is not introduced here with a newly polished description that hides the earlier occupation. He is Matthew the publican, placed among men receiving authority to heal and to cast out unclean spirits. The title that helped make the dinner objectionable has not excluded him from the commission.
The order of the passage matters. Jesus gives authority, and then the men are named. No individual biography is offered as the explanation for that gift. Matthew does not receive a reduced version because of his background, and the better-known disciples are not said to supply it to him. The authority comes from Jesus.
This also joins two calls without making them identical. In 9:9 Matthew is told to follow; in 10:5 the twelve are sent. The man who left the collection station becomes part of a mission whose instructions include freely ye have received, freely give. The Gospel makes no joke about his accounting. It simply places the former collector inside a commission governed by giving.
Verse by verse
1. 10:1
  The authority is given to the twelve collectively. The verse does not allocate lesser powers to the less prominent names.
2. 10:2-3
  Apostles identifies those sent as commissioned representatives; the action of sending follows in verse 5.
3. 10:3
  Publican means tax collector here. Its retention identifies Matthew's former occupation without saying he continued collecting while traveling with Jesus.
Worth knowing
Among the apostolic lists in Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6, and Acts 1, only Matthew's list attaches the publican to Matthew's name. The other lists retain the person without the occupational label. The distinctive wording is a feature of the text; attributing it to personal modesty requires an additional judgment about authorship and motive.
Matthew 10:1-4
King James Version · 4 verses
10:1And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.
10:2Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;
10:3Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus;
10:4Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

Why it matters

The complaint is asked of the disciples rather than of him, why does your master eat with publicans and sinners, and the answer is about physicians and the whole and the sick. Matthew adds a line the others leave out, go and learn what that means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, which is Hosea quoted at professionals. The gospel that carries his name is the one most concerned with the law and the prophets, written by the man at the booth.

9 songs

The music

Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.

Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26
Arise and Walk
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:40-56
Daughter, Arise
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Matthew 9:9-13
I Will Have Mercy
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Matthew 9:35-10:20
The Harvest Is Plenteous
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics
Mark 2:13-17
I Came Not to Call the Righteous
Play here
Open song pageRead lyrics
Mark 2:23-3:6
Lord of the Sabbath
Play here
Open song pageRead lyrics
Mark 2:1-12
Through the Roof
Play here
Open song pageRead lyrics
Luke 5:1-11
Launch Out into the Deep
Play here
Open song pageRead lyrics
Luke 5:12-26
Thy Sins Are Forgiven Thee
Play here
Open song page Read lyrics

Nearby

All the people

Report an error on this page

Matthew

The Account of Matthew

He arose and followed him

Verse by verse

Matthew 9:9

A great feast in his own house

Verse by verse

Luke 5:29

I will have mercy, and not sacrifice

Verse by verse

Matthew 9:10-13

Matthew the publican

Verse by verse

Matthew 10:1-4

Why it matters

The music

Arise and Walk

Daughter, Arise

I Will Have Mercy

The Harvest Is Plenteous

I Came Not to Call the Righteous

Lord of the Sabbath

Through the Roof

Launch Out into the Deep

Thy Sins Are Forgiven Thee

Nearby