And they send to him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, that they might catch him in speaking.
The leaders had just heard a parable aimed at them, so now they change tactics. They send men who look like honest questioners — but who were these two groups, and why would enemies join forces against Christ?
The leaders wanted to arrest Him, but the crowd stood in the way, so words became their weapon.
The Pharisees and Herodians present themselves first to catch Him in His words. They did not dare to arrest Him, though they would gladly have done it. They had fully understood that He had spoken the parable of the vineyard and the tenants against them. But the people were still under the influence of His words and His works. The rulers feared the people. They were slaves not only to their own passions and unbelief, but to the people as well.
The two parties named here normally had nothing to do with each other. One was religious, the other political — and opposition to Christ was the one thing that could hold them together.
An alarming alliance! Usually the Pharisees and Herodians were bitter enemies. The Pharisees insisted on religious forms. The Herodians belonged more to the court party: men who used every means to advance their own interests in the world, just as the Pharisees did to win a religious reputation. But where Christ is concerned, the bitterest enemies can unite against Him or His truth.
Who exactly were the Herodians?
The name comes from Herod. It refers to those who joined with him and his successors in spreading Greek and Roman ways and loose living among the Jews. They stood strongly against the Pharisees. That makes it even more striking that they joined with them in trying to trap the Lord in His words.
Both groups wanted to raise themselves in this world. That shared aim shaped how they came to Christ.
They opposed one another, yet they shared one hatred of Christ and one desire to exalt themselves in this world... Inevitably they both find that One who is here only for the glory of God must condemn such aims. So they oppose the Lord. So if they come to Christ, it is not to learn at His feet, but in the hope of catching Him in His words. Their worldly motives had blinded them completely to the glory of Christ. They were so puffed up with pride in their own powers and importance that they really thought they could catch the Lord of glory in His words.
They framed their tax question so that either answer would damage Him.
When the Lord Jesus was on earth, the chief priests and scribes sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to Him (Mark 12:13; Luke 20:19). They put a clever question to Him. They wanted either to discredit Him before the people or to make Him challenge the right of Caesar... If the Lord had said they should not pay tax to Caesar, they would have reported Him to the Romans as a rebel. If He had said, Pay the tax to Caesar, they would have said He was not a true patriot.
The same spirit shows up in anyone who reads or listens for a slip instead of for meaning.
If my aim is to pick holes in the word of God, the devil will give me all the help I need to "twist it to my own destruction" (2 Peter 3:16). But if my desire is humbly to find out what God means, He will honour me by opening my understanding... They went to hear Him, not to learn from Him, but "to catch Him in His words." Dear friend, beware of men who quibble about words to no profit.
The men who came to expose Him ended up exposing themselves.
Seeking to catch Him in His words, they fall into their own trap. They show their low condition — plainly before men, and morally before God.
- Fear — the leaders wanted to seize Him but feared the crowd, so they attacked with words instead of hands.
- Alliance — the Pharisees and Herodians were bitter enemies, yet hatred of Christ brought them together.
- Motive — both sides lived to exalt themselves, one by religion and one by politics, and that blinded them to His glory.
- Method — they framed the tax question so that either answer would ruin Him, with Rome or with the people.
- Outcome — those who came to catch Him fell into their own trap, and the warning stands: hear Him to learn, not to find fault.
And they come and say to him, Teacher, we know that thou art true, and carest not for any one; for thou regardest not men's person, but teachest the way of God with truth Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?
Two groups who normally despised each other arrive together. They open with praise, but the compliment hides a trap. Their question about Roman taxes had two edges: any answer Jesus gave would ruin Him with someone.
One writer names what each group wanted, and what pushed them together.
They were opposed to one another, yet they shared one hatred of Christ, and they were alike in wanting to lift themselves up in this world. The Pharisees wanted a religious reputation, built on keeping outward forms and ceremonies. The Herodians wanted to get ahead in society and politics. Both are bound to find that One who is here entirely for the glory of God must condemn such aims, and so they oppose the Lord.
Another writer draws a wider lesson from this pairing.
Where Christ is concerned, the most opposed can unite against Him or His truth.
Their words named three things: He is true, He shows no favouritism, and He teaches the way of God. All three were accurate. That is what makes their approach so strange. One writer turns the obvious question back on them.
Yet they testify that He is true, that He showed no favouritism to anyone, and that He taught the way of God in truth. (Why then did they not submit to His teaching?) Of course, their sly wickedness meant these words only as flattery, hoping to influence His answer to their question.
They were using a technique that usually works on people.
What is more, they think the tactics that so often work with other people will work with the Lord too. So by flattery and lies they try to trap Him... What they said was true in fact, but it did not express what was really in their evil hearts.
Their description of Him holds up under any test, and one writer weighs how far that sets Him apart.
Notice how, in verse 14, these opponents paid tribute to His perfect truth. In a way far beyond anything they realized — in the fullest sense — He was the truth and taught the truth, never turned aside by man and his small world. No other servant of God fits that description. Even Paul let human considerations sway him, as Acts 21:20-26 shows. Jesus alone is the perfect Servant of God, and He was so poor that He had to ask someone to bring Him a coin.
They were not asking for guidance. Either answer to the tax question would give them something to use against Him.
If the Lord had said they should not pay taxes to Caesar, they would have reported Him to the Romans for stirring up rebellion. If He had said, Pay taxes to Caesar, they would have said He was no true patriot.
There was a deeper pressure in it too. To say yes seemed to abandon Israel's hope of deliverance.
If He said Yes, He seemed to be giving up the hopes of Israel; He was only sealing them up in their bondage to the Romans. How could He be a true-hearted Jew, or even more, the Messiah, the deliverer they were waiting for, if He left them still slaves of Roman power?
Jesus asked for a coin, and their own answer about whose face was on it settled the matter.
He made them admit that they were in bondage to Caesar by pointing to their own coins. Their lips, not His, said the image was Caesar's. Then He gave the answer to their question, which was obvious once they had admitted that. But He did more: He used it to open up the far weightier matter of God's claims on them.
Roman coins circulating in their land pointed to something they had never faced.
Caesar's money circulating in the land was a witness to how low the nation had sunk, in bondage to a foreign power. Sadly, even in this humiliating position they showed no true repentance, for they kept rebelling against Caesar, and they rejected their own Messiah.
- Alliance — Religious strictness and political ambition usually clashed. Against Christ they joined hands.
- Flattery — Every word of their compliment was accurate; none of it was honest. The test of belief is not what you say about Him but whether you submit to His teaching.
- Trap — Yes made Him a traitor to Israel; no made Him a rebel against Rome. They left truth no safe exit.
- Truth — Their bait was true in a way they never grasped. He alone taught with nothing in man to turn Him aside, and He was so poor that He had to ask for a coin.
- Claim — Their own coin proved whose rule they lived under. The answer then moved past taxes to the debt they had ignored: what they owed to God.
Should we give, or should we not give? But he knowing their hypocrisy said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Bring me a denarius that I may see [it].
The tax question was a trap, set by two groups who normally despised each other. Before He answers, Jesus names their motive and asks for the coin.
The two parties sent to Him had nothing in common except their target. One prized religious form, the other political advantage.
Ominous alliance! Normally the Pharisees and Herodians were bitter enemies. The Pharisees insisted on religious forms. The Herodians were more the court party — men who used every means to advance their own interests in the world, just as the others worked to gain a religious reputation. But where Christ is concerned, the most opposed can unite against Him or His truth.
They built the question so that either answer would ruin Him:
If the Lord had said they should not pay tax to Caesar, they would have reported Him to the Romans as a rebel. If He had said, Pay the tax to Caesar, they would have said He was not a true patriot.
Mark says He knew their hypocrisy. He was not reading their faces; He was reading them.
I notice in Scripture that our Lord does not usually answer questions. He answers the man who asks them. He knew what men were. He knew the hearts and minds where the questions started. His answer spoke to the state of the questioner, and not merely to the question. So it was here. These men — He calls them hypocrites — now stood before the Searcher of hearts, and there was no hiding from His eyes.
Their flattery had been accurate about Him and false about themselves:
They stooped to flattery and lies to reach their spiteful goal. What they said was true in itself, no doubt. But it was completely false as an expression of what they really felt and thought about Him.
His counter-question, "Why put me to the test?", did more than deflect. It put them on display.
The Lord exposes their hypocrisy with His question, "Why put me to the test?" They tried to catch Him in His words. Instead they fall into their own trap and show their low condition — in fact before men, and morally before God.
They assumed He could be handled like anyone else:
They think the tactics that often work so well on their fellow men will work on the Lord too... Worldly motives ruled these men. Those motives had blinded them completely to the glory of Christ. They were so puffed up with conceit about their own powers and importance that they really thought they could catch the Lord of glory in His words.
He does not produce the coin. He asks them to fetch one — and the request says something about Him as well as about them. (Older translations render the coin "a penny.")
The Lord's question, "Why put me to the test?" showed that He knew their trickery through and through. His request for the penny reveals His own poverty. The inscription on the penny was a witness to their subjection to Caesar.
Roman money in Jewish pockets showed who ruled the nation. So what should Israel have done under that rule?
The Jews should have accepted the yoke God Himself had placed on their neck. They should have carried it until grace set them free and they received the Deliverer promised to them. Until then they owed God His due, always accepting the discipline He sent. But they did neither. They were hypocrites before God, and rebels against men.
Behind the coin lay a longer story of misplaced trust:
How long they had gone without any full, whole-hearted reliance on the Almighty, the God of their father Abraham — and, by their own profession, their God too! They had leaned on an arm other than His. They had coveted the riches of a world which Abraham had refused. They were trading with Caesar's money, and must pay him back his money.
- The trap — Enemies of each other joined forces against Christ. Either answer would condemn Him: "yes" made Him a traitor to Israel, "no" a rebel against Rome.
- The sight — He knew their hypocrisy. He answered the questioner, not the question. No one hides from the Searcher of hearts.
- The exposure — His one question turned the trap around. The men trying to catch Him were the ones caught: in fact before men, morally before God.
- The coin — He had to ask them for a denarius. His poverty stood next to the Roman money already in their pockets.
- The verdict — The writing on the coin proved they were under Caesar. Their own unfaithfulness had brought that yoke on them.
And they brought [it]. And he says to them, Whose [is] this image and superscription? And they said to him, Caesar's.
The Pharisees and Herodians tried to trap Jesus with a question about the tribute money. He asked for a coin, pointed to the face on it, and raised a bigger question: who owns the people holding the coin?
Jesus did not argue. He made the men who set the trap supply the answer themselves.
They designed their question about the tribute money with great skill, to make Him an offender one way or the other. He would offend either the national feelings of the Jew or those of the Roman. His answer, however, left them powerless. He made them admit their servitude to Caesar by an appeal to their coinage. Their lips, not His, pronounced it to be Caesar's image.
Older translations read "image and superscription" where the ESV reads "likeness and inscription." They also call the coin a "penny" — the Roman denarius.
The root idea of representation in the word "image" is well illustrated in the incident of our Lord and the Roman penny or denarius. The emperor's likeness was the official representation of Rome's authority, which governed the Jews in Palestine. Roman money in Jewish hands, used every day, proved beyond answer that they were subject to the world ruler in the distant capital.
The writing around the edge of the coin worked the same way as the face in the middle.
Whatever writing was around the edge of the coin, it would in some way describe the Emperor whose image was in the centre.
Handling Roman money was not neutral. It showed where the nation's own sin had left it, and the Lord's reply held them there.
The question of tribute to Caesar was very subtle. They used the effect of their own wickedness to tempt the Lord. In principle the Jews ought not to have been subject to the Gentiles. And what is more, the Messiah had come, the Deliverer of Israel. If He said, Obey the Gentiles, where was His delivering power? If He said, Rebel, they would have had an excuse to hand Him over to Pilate... But the Lord answered with divine wisdom. He put them exactly in the place where their sin had put them.
There was a way out of that place, but it was not the way they were looking for.
Give Caesar then what is his: it is no use expecting God's help to ignore what their sin had brought them into. No! And yet there was a way — a way they had never taken: give God also His own! How surely then the burden would drop from their back, and they would find the rest they longed for.
If a stamped likeness settles ownership, the question turns back on the questioner.
These marks showed that the coin belonged to Caesar's realm, so it was right to give it back to him. What an astonishing answer to their crafty question! The rest of His answer challenged the consciences of the men who had asked it — "and to God the things that are God's." If such marks proved the coin belonged to Caesar, we do well to ask: what are the marks of what belongs to God, and where are they? They are on the whole human race by creation, and — by redemption — more fully on the saints today.
That makes the claim personal, not political.
Man is God's, for he bears His image... Had these men rendered to God the things that were God's, they would not have had the image of Caesar on their money. Everyone here belongs to God... You are God's and you claim yourself. You have no right to yourself, for you bear His image and inscription.
Jesus owned no coin and had to ask for one. He did not treat Rome's rule as stolen power, but He would not let Caesar's rights swallow God's.
The Lord had no purse. When He wanted to preach on a coin, He had to ask someone to show Him one... The Lord was not going to treat Caesar as a usurper... So when the Lord saw Caesar's coin passing through the land, He saw in it Israel's shame, not Caesar's usurpation. How beautifully He escapes the trap of the fowler!... That was a golden rule ever since their captivity — the rule of returned captives, and so it is our rule. Do you treat the powers that are ordained of God as usurpers? No — but do not confuse the rights of Caesar and the rights of God.
- Image decides ownership. The emperor's likeness on the coin left no doubt whose it was.
- Image convicts the owner. Their own lips, not His, named the face — and in naming it they admitted the servitude their sin had brought on them.
- Image reaches further than money. If a mark on metal proves Caesar's claim, the mark of creation on every person proves God's.
- Image demands a response. Caesar gets his coin back; God gets you — and you have no right to keep yourself.
- Image keeps the two claims distinct. Rulers are not usurpers, but never confuse Caesar's rights with God's.
And Jesus answering said to them, Pay what is Caesar's to Caesar, and what is God's to God. And they wondered at him.
Two hostile parties joined forces to trap Jesus over Roman tax: a yes would compromise Him with the Jews, a no with the Romans. His reply escapes the trap and does far more — it settles what the state may claim, then presses a larger claim on His questioners.
The two groups who came to Him had nothing in common except their hatred of Him. One writer shows how unnatural their alliance was, and what their question was meant to do:
Ominous alliance! For normally the Pharisees and Herodians were bitter enemies. The Pharisees were the great defenders of religious forms. The Herodians belonged more to the royal court — men who used every means to advance their interests in the world, as the Pharisees did to secure a religious reputation. But where Christ is concerned, the most opposed can unite against Him or His truth... They wished to involve the Lord in a Yes or No that would compromise Him either with the Jews or with the Romans.
Jesus owned no coin, so He asked for one. What He saw on it was not an insult from Rome but a verdict on Israel:
The Lord had no purse. When He wanted to preach on a penny, He had to ask to be shown one... Very well; the Lord was not going to treat Caesar as a usurper. He was the rod of God's anger in the land of Israel. Whether Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, or Romans, they were no usurpers. So when the Lord saw Caesar's coin passing through the land, He saw in it Israel's shame, not Caesar's usurpation. What a perfect escape from the trap set for Him!
Caesar's claim is real, and it does not rest on the ruler's character:
The civil power has rights, and they should be respected. In this case the Caesar on the throne was anything but a pattern of goodness; yet, because he was God's minister (Rom. 13:4), they had to pay him tribute. But God has His rights over men. We should respect those rights too, and submit to them. "We must obey God rather than men," said Peter on a memorable occasion, who was then upholding the duty of rendering to God the things that were God's... So the Lord settled the question for that time, and for all later ages as well.
The saying was not a clever escape for one afternoon. It fixed a rule that outlives Rome.
The second half is the sting. If a coin belongs to whoever stamped it, then the question becomes: who stamped you?
If the coin bore the image of Caesar, and so was his, on whom was the image of God stamped? God stamped it at the beginning on man, and despite the fall it has not been entirely erased... Everyone here belongs to God... you are His creature, you exist to serve Him... If you are still in your sins you are not rendering to God what is God's. You are robbing Him. You are God's and you claim yourself. You have no right to yourself, for you bear His image and superscription.
One writer traces their bondage under Rome back to its cause:
They had not rendered to God the things that were His. That is why Caesar had gained the rights of conquest over them.
The answer left neither side with a complaint — and left both sides exposed:
The Roman power could find no fault with rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. The Jew could find no fault with the principle of rendering to God the things that are God's... They saw the wisdom of the Lord's reply and marvelled. But they had no conscience toward God, and none toward man.
- Cause — Israel had not given God His due. Foreign rule was the fruit of that failure, not an accident of politics.
- Coin — the image stamped on the money decided who owned it. Caesar's coin in Israel's hands was Israel's shame.
- Caesar — the civil power has real rights. Tribute was due even to a ruler who was no pattern of goodness, because he is God's minister.
- Creator — the same rule turns on us: man carries God's image, so man must render himself to God.
- Collision — when the two claims clash, God's comes first: "We must obey God rather than men."