_A piece of money._――The term thus vaguely rendered, is in Greek στατηρ, (_stater_,) which was a coin of definite value, being worth among the Jews about four attic drachms, and exactly equivalent to their shekel, a little more than half a dollar of federal money. The tax here paid was the half-shekel tax, due from every Jew for the service of the temple, so that the “piece of money,” being one shekel, was just sufficient to pay for both Jesus and Peter. The word translated “the tribute money” (in verse 24) is equally definite in the Greek,――διδραχμον, (_didrachmon_,) equivalent to the Jewish _half_-shekel, and being itself worth half a _stater_. The stater, however, as a name for Attic and Byzantine _gold_ coins, was equivalent to twenty or thirty times the value of the shekel. (See Stephens’s Thesaurus, Donnegan’s, Jones’s and Pickering’s Lexicons.) On this passage see Hammond’s Annotations, which are here quite full on values. See too, Lightfoot’s Horae Hebraica on Matthew xvii. 25. Macknight’s Paraphrase, Poole and Kuinoel, for a very full account of the matter. Also my note on page 32. There have been two different accounts of this little circumstance among commentators, some considering the tribute money to have been a Roman tax, and others taking the ground which I do, that it was the Jewish tax for the expenses of the temple-worship. The reasons may be found at great length, in some of the authorities just quoted; and it may be remarked that the point of the allusion in Jesus’s question to Peter, is all lost on the supposition of a Roman tax; for how could Jesus claim exemption as a son of the Roman emperor, as he justly could from the Jewish tax for the service of the heavenly king, his Father? The correspondence of values too, with the half-shekel tax, is another reason for adopting that view; nor is there any objection to it, except the circumstance, that the time at which this tax is supposed to have been demanded, does not agree with that to which the collection of the temple-tax was limited. (Exodus xxx. 13, and Lightfoot on Matthew xvii. 24.) THE QUESTION OF SUPERIORITY.