Throughout the world our economies depend on the concept of a medium of exchange.  We have stock exchanges all over the globe and people buy and sell currencies from other countries, such as the US dollar, British pound, and Japanese yen.  When you travel from country to country, you can typically walk into a bank and exchange one currency for another based on a standard of exchange that is current. This same concept was very much true in Biblical times as well.

Ancient Money

The concept of money, or stamped pieces of metal, or any paper notes, authorized by a government as a medium of exchange, has been around for close to 5000 years. Prior to minted coins, which began to appear around the 6th Century BCE, precious metal was exchanged as “money”. A system of weights and measures was used to determine value.  “For the exchange of metals, standardized units of weight were used to determine value.  An official stone or metal weight (or weights) would be placed on one side of a scale to measure the precious metal that served as money on the other side.  If the stone was overweight, it could be shaved down; if under, lead could be inserted into drilled holes.”[1] The term given to these units would be shekel, which means “to weigh” in Hebrew, it would later become the name of a coin denomination.[2] There are six other weights mentioned in the Bible: talent, mina, beka, gerah, pim and kesitah.[3] The talent, mina, shekel, beka, gerah and pim are the weights that we are able to determine a scale for based on the Bible and other sources.

Talent is the largest unit of weight in the Bible, and equated to about 3000 shekels.[4]  We can see this in Exodus 28:25-26:

“And the silver from those of the congregation who were numbered was a hundred talents and a thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels, by the shekel of the sanctuary: a beka ahead (that is, half a shekel, by the shekel of the sanctuary), for every one who was numbered in the census, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred and three thousand, five hundred and fifty men.”[5]

The Shekel was originally a bartering material, such as silver, bronze, or gold, but typically silver or gold, because these were more portable than bronze.[6]  The beka or half shekel, and the gerah are subdivisions of the shekel.  A simple way to break this down is:

1 Talent=60 maneh=3,000 shekels

1 maneh=50 shekels=100 beka=1,000 gerahs

The only problem with determining the exact amount of these different “denominations” is that we do not know how much a shekel weighed exactly, and there are three kinds of shekels mentioned in the Bible.[7]  The first is in Genesis 23:16, which is the earliest mention of the shekel weight I was able to find, which mentions a shekel of silver “according to the weights current among the merchants”.[8] 

 “Abraham agreed with Ephron; and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver which he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants.” [9]

The second we can see in the above referenced passage from Exodus 28:25-26, which states “by the shekel of the sanctuary”.  The third is referenced in II Samuel 14:26 and references the “king’s weight”:

“And when he cut the hair of his head (for at the end of every year he used to cut it; when it was heavy on him, he cut it), he weighed the hair of his head, two hundred shekels by the king’s weight.”[10]

Eventually however, things began to change and minted coins came into circulation, at first still alongside the weight system. The first known form of coinage was the Mesopotamian shekel which dates as far back as 650 to 600 BCE.  It was a stamped silver and gold coin in Asia Minor which was used to pay armies.  As time continued on, coinage evolved and more and more forms of coinage came into existence.  The majority of the different minted coins would have been from the different rulers of all the different kingdoms and this helped them to facilitate the exchange of goods and commodities across the regions they controlled.[11]  Many of these coins would have had the image of that particular ruler on them and even had them stylized as deities.[12] Which Jesus references in his teaching on paying taxes in Matthew and Mark.

“Show me the money for the tax.  And they brought him a coin.  And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?  They said, “Caesar’s.”  Then he said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[13]

Money Changers

Since there was such a proliferation of different coins, and as mentioned above, each was stamped differently, there needed to be some systematic way to exchange these coins for the local currency.  Money changing was very common in the Roman Near East and each village most likely had its own money changer, as a matter of fact in Palestine, each region had a “royal bank”, which was held over from Hellenistic times.[14]

This is why we find money changers in the temple that was referenced in John 2:14-16:

In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business.  And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.  And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”[15]

A vast number of Jews would stream into Jerusalem with considerable amounts of money from all the foreign countries which needed to be exchanged for the local currency or were given to the temple authorities for deposit into the Temple treasury.  “Thus, Jerusalem became a sort of central bourse and exchange mart, and the Temple vaults served as “safe deposits” in which every type of coin was represented.”[16]  These money changers would set up tables in the outer court of the Temple so that it was convenient for all the worshipers to exchange their money. As a matter of fact, “excavations around the Temple walls have uncovered stores or kiosks, some of which, it has been surmised, were occupied by money changers.”[17]

Money has been a very important means of barter throughout history and will continue to be so. Knowing that this is true, one has to wonder why Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple saying “...you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”[18]

When we look at this event in the Gospel of John, which occurs during Passover, we get a very dramatic episode of Jesus making a whip of cords and chasing people out of the temple, turning over tables and yelling as he does so.  There is a lot of symbolism happening in this

pericope.  What we have here, as I stated above, is an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover.  People come to the temple to exchange their local currency (which is considered Idolatrous, because it bears the emperor's image) for Temple currency.[19]  While this practice was not against the law, it was not what the Temple was for.  Jesus was disrupting this practice that had been set in place and become law. “He was implementing the true law, Israel’s divine law, in opposition to a custom that had become deeply corrupt…”[20]  The actions that were occurring in this part of the Temple was not focused on worship, which is what the Temple is for, but on worldly things.  As St. Mark says:

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and mammon.”[21]

The Temple was designed to draw people closer to God and all the cacophony of these extracurricular activities was distracting from the worship which was required of the place. 

What God wants is for us to focus on Him.  If we look closer at this pericope in light of the fact that it occurred during Passover[22], what we find is Jesus alluding to Himself as the Temple.  The Jews at the time, knew the Old Testament well, and knowing who Jesus was should have noticed this reference to Jeremiah 7:11:

“Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?  Behold, I myself have seen it, says the Lord.”[23]

In John’s Gospel, immediately after Jesus chases everyone out, the Jews confront Him and demand for a sign to know on whose authority he acts and Jesus replies to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”[24]  As Pope Benedict XVI says “His ‘sign’ is the Cross and Resurrection.  The Cross and Resurrection give him authority as the one who ushers in true worship.  Jesus justifies himself through the Passion…”[25]

Money may be a necessity for our society, and everyone deserves to have enough money to live on, but it should not be Idolatrous for us because we cannot worship two masters.  We should be focused on Jesus and His passion and that the Cross and Resurrection were done for us and our sins.

[1] Anthony Keddie, “Money”, At Bible Odyssey, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/main-articles/money

[2] Ibid

[3] Jewish Virtual Library https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/weights-measures-and-coins-of-the-biblical-and-talmudic-periods

[4] Ibid

[5] Holy Bible, RSV 2nd Catholic Edition, (Pennsylvania: Ascension,2006)

[6] Anthony Keddie, “Money”, At Bible Odyssey, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/main-articles/money

[7] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/weights-measures-and-coins-of-the-biblical-and-talmudic-periods

[8] Ibed

[9] Gen 23:16

[10] 2 Sam 14: 26

[11] Anthony Keddie, “Money”, At Bible Odyssey, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/main-articles/money

[12] Ibid

[13]  Matthew 22:21

[14] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/money-changers

[15] JN 2:14-16

[16] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/money-changers

[17] Ibid

[18] JN 2:16

[19] Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, (California: Ignatius Press, 2006), 12

[20] Ibid

[21] Mark 6:24

[22] There is some discussion of the chronology of the Passover in question in relation to John and the Synoptic Gospels, which I am not going to discuss here.  For this paper, it is well enough to know that this occurred during Passover.

[23] Jeremiah 7:11

[24] John 2:19

[25] Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, (California: Ignatius Press, 2006), 21