---
title: "Matthew (Levi)"
category: "theology"
description: "The tax collector who left the booth mid-shift, threw a party for his disreputable colleagues, and then wrote himself into his own Gospel with the job title still attached."
tags: ["apostles", "person/matthew", "discipleship", "repentance", "matthew"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "Matthew 9:9-13"
bible_references: ["Mark 2:13-17", "Luke 5:27-32", "Matthew 10:3", "Mark 3:18", "Luke 6:15", "Acts 1:13", "Hosea 6:6"]
date_created: 2026-08-08
date_modified: 2026-10-09
ai_provider_models:
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---

# Matthew (Levi)

Of all the Twelve, Matthew had the most to lose by following Jesus and the least chance of getting
it back. A fisherman can return to his boat. A tax collector who walks away from his booth has
handed his franchise to someone else permanently.

## Key Takeaways

*(This section follows the [Key Takeaways](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/key-takeaways/) format — see that page for what each part is for.)*

### Lessons about Jesus

Jesus called Matthew *at the booth*, before he had resigned, made restitution, or demonstrated
anything. The call came to a man mid-transaction in a despised job, and the response required was
two words' worth of obedience.

### Memory verse

> ✝️ Matthew 9:13 (ESV)
>
> 13 Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

### Be transformed

Matthew's first recorded act as a disciple was to throw a large dinner and fill it with tax
collectors, the people he already knew, who would not have been welcome anywhere else. Your existing address book may be the assignment.

### Prayer

Lord, you called a man everyone had written off, and you did it without preconditions. Thank you
that you desire mercy and not sacrifice. Give us the courage to bring the people we actually know
to your table. In Jesus' name. Amen.

---

## The name

**Matthew**: <span lang="grc">Μαθθαῖος</span> (*Maththaios*, math-THAI-oss, G3156), from Hebrew
<span dir="rtl">מַתִּתְיָה</span> (*Mattityah*, mat-tit-YAH, H4993): "gift of Yahweh."

**Levi**: <span dir="rtl">לֵוִי</span> (*Lewi*, lay-VEE, H3878), "attached, joined" (Genesis 29:34). Mark
and Luke call him Levi at his calling (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27); Matthew's Gospel calls him Matthew in
the same scene. Both names for one man is unremarkable for the period.

Mark adds a detail: "he saw **Levi the son of Alphaeus** sitting at the tax booth"
(Mark 2:14). Another apostle is called **James the son of Alphaeus**. Whether they were brothers is
not stated anywhere, Alphaeus was not a rare name, and no list groups the two men together; they
sit in different groups of four. It is a loose end.

## Background

A <span lang="grc">τελώνης</span> (*telōnēs*, G5057, tel-O-nace): a collector of public revenue, working
the toll station at Capernaum, on the trade road through Galilee. The Roman system farmed out
collection rights: the collector paid for the franchise and recouped it, plus profit, from whatever
he could extract above the required amount. The structure invited extortion and generally received
it.

The social consequence was total. "Tax collectors and sinners" is a fixed phrase in the Gospels
because the pairing needed no explanation. A *telōnēs* was regarded as both a thief and a
collaborator with the occupying power, and was excluded from ordinary religious life.

That is the man whose name sits at position seven or eight in every list of the Twelve, two to four
places from Simon the Zealot, whose political movement existed to drive out the empire Matthew worked for.

## What Scripture records

The call is three sentences long in all three Synoptics:

> ✝️ Matthew 9:9 (ESV)
>
> 9 As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he rose and followed him.

Then the dinner. Luke says plainly that "Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a
large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them" (Luke 5:29). The Pharisees
object to the company, and Jesus answers with a diagnosis and a quotation: those who are well have
no need of a physician, and "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice", citing Hosea 6:6, and telling the
religious experts to go and *learn* what it means.

Matthew never speaks in Scripture. Beyond the call and the feast, he appears only in the lists.

## How he lists himself

Compare the four lists. In Mark and Luke, Matthew is
named **before** Thomas. In the Gospel of Matthew, he is placed **after** Thomas, and he is the only
one of the four writers to attach "the tax collector" to the name (Matthew 10:3).

Given that, on the traditional authorship below, this is the author's own list and his own name, moving himself down a place while adding
the label everyone else left off is at minimum a distinctive editorial choice.

## What tradition says

Traditions about Matthew's later ministry are unusually scattered: Ethiopia, Persia, Parthia, and
elsewhere appear in different sources, with correspondingly varied accounts of his death. There is
no early consensus, and little that can be relied on.

An early and better-attested tradition is literary. **Papias**, bishop of
Hierapolis in the early second century, is quoted by Eusebius (*Church History* 3.39) as saying
Matthew compiled the sayings "in the Hebrew dialect." Papias's own writings are lost, so he survives
only in quotation, but this is the earliest surviving statement linking Matthew to a written record.

**Irenaeus** says the same thing later that century, and adds a date:

> Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul
> were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church.
>
> — Irenaeus, *Against Heresies* 3.1.1

Whether Irenaeus knew this independently or was drawing on Papias cannot be settled. What
"their own dialect" refers to (Hebrew, Aramaic, or a Semitic *style* of Greek) has been argued over
ever since, and the question is not closed. See [Patristic Sources](https://the-way.lewy.au/resources/patristic-sources/).

## Takeaway

Matthew is the answer to whether there is a category of person too compromised to be called. He was
the most obviously disqualified man in the group, he was called at work without preconditions, and
he responded by introducing Jesus to a large company of his fellow tax collectors, and then, when he wrote it
down, refused to leave out what he had been.

## References

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the English Standard Version (Crossway). Etymology from
*Strong's Greek Dictionary* (public domain), G3156 and G5057, with *Strong's Hebrew Dictionary*
H4993 and H3878. Note that the derivation field for G3156 in the public Strong's data used here is
corrupt (it points to G3164, "to quarrel"); the entry's own gloss and the parallel entry G3161
*Mattathias* both give the correct Hebrew origin, H4993, "gift of Jah."