A Trained Professional VI: Weighed In the Balance

“Money, so they say…is the root of all evil today” ~ Roger Waters, Pink Floyd

Actually, it’s the love of money that is the root of evil but leave it to godless rock musicians to mess up even the most basic idiom. The fact that services of bankers and moneychangers were vital in Jewish and Christian life in the first century is evident from the mention of them in the gospels, where we read of money-changers, changers of money and exchangers. Pretty much anywhere the Bible says the aforementioned terms a reader can insert the word banker in their place and it will mean the same thing.

Matthew 21:12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

Matthew 25:27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.

Mark 11:15 And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons

Luke 19:23 Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?

The Jewish money-changers roll was to change large denominations of foreign money, principally Roman, into the smaller coinage giving silver for gold, copper for silver for normal everyday commerce situations in the market. The most important department of the early banking system was the exchange of foreign coinage into the half-shekels required for yearly payment into the Temple treasury.

Therefore it was not uncommon to see moneychangers near the Temple. It was for the convenience of the Jews that these “changers” were permitted to set up their tables in the outer court of the Temple. In the court of Gentiles in Temple precincts there were seats of those who sold and selected and approved animals for sacrifice and other things. The magnitude of these financial transactions necessitated the need of the bankers or brokers (people who would break money) to be very close to the Temple if not within it (Matthew 21:12; John 2:14). Their presence near or in the outer court isn't what necessarily angered Jesus.

As with anything, the wealthier members like today’s stuff-shirt bankers took money on deposit for purposes of investment in which interest was paid. This of course was an absolute no-no that God forbid. The Jewish bankers should’ve known better but as was the Jewish history towards God…they were disobedient in their sin (greed in this instance). Under the Mosaic Law, Jews were forbidden to take interest on money from one another. To have done this in the outer courts of the Temple was exceptionally insulting to God…hence Jesus’ flipping of their tables in anger. The rich were making a profit at the expense and on the backs of the poor.

Coins are mentioned for the first time in the Bible in the exiles return in Ezra 2:69. In the following passage a daric was a coin weighing about 1/4 ounce or 8.5 grams. A mina was about 1 1/4 pounds or 0.6 kilogram

Ezra 2:69 According to their ability they gave to the treasury of the work 61,000 darics of gold, 5,000 minas of silver, and 100 priests' garments.

By the time of the New Testament conditions for currencies had greatly changed and trading capital was required for business. It was so prevalent that Jesus actually commended the investment of money so that it would yield proper interest (Matthew 25:27; Luke 19:23). From this passage we can see that the usage of currency is not only acceptable but encouraged. So much so that Jesus actually offers financial advice by cautioning the holder of it to invest it wisely. This would make sense because spending beyond one’s means is misappropriation of the resources God has given. Our nation and its current state of debt and mismanagement could learn a profound lesson here. As is says in Luke 12…

Luke 12:48 Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

Regardless of today’s folly of debt and overspending…in the ancient world, rates of interest were very high. The love of usury, or high interest, was the cause of the turmoil which ended with Christ driving the moneychangers from the Temple. It wasn’t the money-changing that was the instigator of Jesus’ anger, it was the moneychangers sin of charging interests (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35,37; Deuteronomy 23:19),  and doing it in God’s Temple causing the poor to be even more destitute thereby adding insult to injury. They  were not loving their neighbors as themselves.

Despite of all control measures installed by Greek and later Roman authorities, moneychangers often abused their specialized professional knowledge and the ignorance of their clients for their own benefit. This being the direct opposite of the thieves and deceitful people would often try to short the moneychangers in terms of weights of gold or silver coinage. Money changers were obliged to check and change the coins in front of their clients and to put the most recent coinage proclamation at their disposal.

Governments sometimes tried to ban the circulation of foreign coins within their territory but that was virtually impossible. There was a general understanding of permitted coins, their appropriate weight and grading and their official rates of exchange in local currency. If coins below standard were presented to the money changer, they had to cut them into pieces in front of his client for their material value. It is obvious the money changer had to work with gauges, weights and scales. When one who was wicked is mentioned in the Old Testament it is along with the imagery of unjust scales. They are scales that basically robbed people of their money by weight. It was the rich doing so to the poor in a form of legalized theft (usury). The punishment of real (illegal) theft would've been death.

Micah 6:11-13 Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights? Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins.

It would seem that the shrewdness of Jewish governance and business sense which has characterized or stereotyped them for over two thousand years, received its start during the Babylonian exile. They were a transplanted exiled people moved from a backwater at the edge of the current empire (Jerusalem) and dropped in the very center of the empire (Babylon). As now, so in the early days of banking money changers needed to be extremely careful about counterfeit money or they would’ve lost their livelihood. They were constantly dealing with foreign and/or odd currencies therefore constantly had to be on their guard against deception, trickery and theft. 

The irony being that they were financially/ materially very discerning but not so much when it came to the spiritual. In the case of the Jewish moneychangers the defrauding was robbing people of hard-earned income but in the case of the Jewish Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees they were potentially defrauding people of salvation in their deception. The moneychangers or the money-clippers they dealt with would foist counterfeit or underweighted monies on people. The spiritual leaders would foisted damning counterfeit religion on them.

Matthew 23:15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

So as a case-in-point and a lesson to use today, perhaps we too should take stock of the lesson the bankers of the Bible have to teach us today? If weighing things unjustly financially or unethically to one’s favor while defrauding another person is such a horrendous evil we should be alert to said behavior in our own lives. 

How is it that we as believers… are exceptional experts on the ways of the world but not of the things God commands? We are not aware of what pleases God? We are experts in money, stock patterns, betting odds, football scores, who won an election or a game and by how much. Yet many don’t even know how to properly evangelize a lost soul. I fear this is the case because some self-professing Christians are themselves not even sure of their own salvation. Perhaps the scales in our lives are out of balance? Perhaps we need to take stock and weight of what is in our lives to determine what is of true value?

The scales of spirituality are out of balance. The things that damn us are weighing down one side of the scales. Just like the weighted scales of a crooked money-changer. Sins are continually piled on one side forever destroying our chances of reward in Heaven or even some people's chances of salvation. This of course directly points a finger to the story of Daniel and the judgment of King Belshazzar by God for his evil. Why judgment from God? It is because in the Bible scales are also an image of justice or they symbolize the idea of fairness and fair distribution of law, with no influence of bias, privilege or corruption. A justice we would expect from a perfect judge that is God.

Daniel 5:24 “Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

The weight to counterbalance all the sin debt weighing down the wrong side of the scales though is within our reach. We need only reach for Christ and the Cross. When the weight of these hit the scale, all those sins will go flying like a catapult of worthless weighted moneychanger’s stones into the night. Those sins will be forgiven and forgotten like old currency thrown into the dark. Jesus has already given the down payment and given a retainer in the form of the Holy Spirit. It’s that, or you can pay the Devil his due. It’s your choice how you invest your time and effort in this life...and the next.