Scripture · Luke 5:17-26
Luke 5:27-32
The Tax Collector’s Office (The Payment of the Tithes)
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. “Follow Me,” He told him, and Levi got up, left everything, and followed Him. Then Levi hosted a great banquet for Jesus at his house. A large crowd of tax collectors was there, along with others who were eating with them. But the Pharisees and their scribes complained to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
People wait with food while papers crowd the office. Despite its familiar tax-collection title, this scene is now often understood as a country lawyer receiving clients who can pay him in produce.
About the artwork
The hanging bags of documents are a clue. Christie’s notes that such bags held legal petitions and decrees, whereas tax accounts were normally kept in bound registers. The seated man’s professional cap and the clients’ eggs and poultry also support the lawyer interpretation. The clutter becomes more legible as the machinery through which villagers seek assistance.
That reading is supported by seventeenth-century inventories naming a lawyer, rather than a collector of tithes. This panel, dated by the auction catalogue to about 1616–1617, is one of Brueghel’s repeated versions of the composition. Whatever title is used, the uneasy contrast remains between people arriving with material needs and those who control the paperwork.
Featured in: Luke 5 in Art: The Catch, the Roof, the Tax Booth, and the Verses Worth Remembering
What does Luke 5:27-32 mean?
Luke 5:27–32 places Levi at a tax booth when Jesus calls him. Levi leaves his occupation and hosts a meal with other tax collectors. When the company is criticized, Jesus compares His work to a physician’s and names His purpose as calling sinners to repentance.
Brueghel’s office does not show Levi, and its probable legal subject makes it an even less direct reconstruction of his workplace. The pairing instead considers the social world of transactions, dependence and judgment from which a person can be called into a new company. The move from a crowded office to a shared table belongs to Luke’s story, rather than to an event painted here.
Brueghel’s probable lawyer’s office offers an indirect companion to Levi’s call: a world of transactions set beside the possibility of a changed life and table fellowship.
Sources
Private collection; current location not publicly confirmed. Exact circa 1616–1617 panel: legal-office interpretation, seventeenth-century inventories, document bags and payments in produce.
Luke 5 in Art: The Catch, the Roof, the Tax Booth, and the Verses Worth Remembering. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Luke 5 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Luke 5:27-32.
Also from Luke:The Angel Appearing to ZachariasAnnunciation