In my message this weekend, I talked about how Israel’s worship of the golden calf in Exodus 32 became a watershed and guilt-inducing moment for literally centuries in ancient Israel. 

For instance, ancient Jews paid an annual half-shekel tax for the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus references this tax when He instructs Peter: “Go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours” (Matthew 17:27). The coin Peter finds is equal to a shekel––enough to pay the tax for both Jesus and Peter.

But this tax was not merely about maintenance. It was also tied, in later Jewish interpretation, to malfeasance. A Jewish collection of sermons known as Midrash Tanchuma connects the half-shekel tax to Israel’s sin with the golden calf: “Because they had violated the Ten Commandments,” and specifically the First Commandment when they made the calf, “each one had to give ten gerah, which totals half a shekel” (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 10:1). The tax became, in this tradition, a way of reckoning with guilt for a sin committed centuries earlier.

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