TEXT [Commentary]

2. The second controversy: Jesus calls Levi and eats with sinners (2:13-17; cf. Matt 9:9-13; Luke 5:27-32)

13 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him.

15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) 16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees[*] saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?[*]”

17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

NOTES

2:14 Levi. This may be the same person as Matthew, with Levi as his second name, as was common in Jewish contexts (Lane 1974:100-101). Others reject this identification (Guelich 1989:99-100).

tax collector’s booth. This booth would have been in the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas and was probably located in Capernaum (Sherwin-White 1963:125-126). Tax collectors were disliked by Jews because they reminded people of Roman authority by collecting taxes for them, spent much of their time in contact with Gentiles, and were often dishonest (Donahue 1971:39-61). Later mishnaic and talmudic texts compare them to murderers and robbers (m. Nedarim 3:4; b. Bava Qamma 113a). It is perhaps better to speak of them as “toll collectors” because Levi was collecting usage taxes, or indirect taxes based on use and consumption. Levi would have had to bid for the right to collect taxes and to add a surcharge for his efforts (Luke 3:13; 19:8; Marcus 2000:225). Great opportunity for abuse existed in setting the amount of the surcharge.

Levi got up and followed him. As with Peter and the three others in 1:16-20, the call to follow Jesus was a call to discipleship.

2:15 sinners. Toll collectors were not the only disreputable people Jesus drew. Mark uses the general category of “sinners” for other social outcasts that were drawn to Jesus.

2:16 teachers of religious law who were Pharisees. These scribes were also Pharisees; they regarded table fellowship with such people as implying acceptance of them and their sins.

such scum. This rendering attempts to convey the emotive force of the lit. expression, “toll collectors and sinners.” These were two groups of disreputable people that the Pharisees thought Jesus should not be so friendly with. Their objection could be that their food was not properly tithed (Deut 14:22; Matt 23:23) or prepared with proper attention to purity (7:1-8), or there may have been other issues related to cleanliness (m. Hagigah 2:7; Hooker 1991:96; Marcus 2000:227). They also feared that such association would lead to sharing in sinful practices (so the later text, b. Berakhot 43b).

COMMENTARY [Text]

Hooker (1991:94) perceptively suggests that this story about Jesus’ eating with sinners and tax collectors illustrates the theme of forgiveness introduced in 2:1-12. This account also presents a controversy in the form of a pronouncement, where everything in the passage drives towards Jesus’ concluding utterance; whatever offense the religious officials took at Jesus’ associations, he was justified in seeking out sinners—this was his calling. Thus, one finds Jesus wherever there is disease that needs to be healed. Jesus did not wait for sinners to approach him, as the calling of Levi shows. Rather, he made it clear that he and the God he represented sought out such people for entry into fresh relationship with God. This account shows God’s absolute commitment to reach people as Jesus associates with sinners in order to bring them to God.

Jesus said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” This is Jesus’ mission statement. The only other such statement in Mark is in 10:45. His divine task was not to treat the righteous but to heal the spiritually ill. Jesus had come to help sinners (Cranfield 1959:106) and his ability to heal, cleanse, and forgive revealed his divine power (cf. Exod 15:26).