Money Changers
Holman Bible Dictionary [1]
Three words are translated “moneychangers”: kollubiston ( Matthew 21:12; Mark 11:15; John 2:15 ) of Semitic origin referred to the exchange rate or commission; kermatistas ( John 2:14 ) referred to a dealer in small change; and trapetzitais ( Matthew 25:27 ) which Luke used in a slightly different form ( trapetzan , Matthew 19:23 , or shulhanim in Hebrew) referred to a money agent who sat at a table.
Money changers were in the area with vendors who sold animals, birds, and other items used in Temple worship and sacrifices. Such transactions were numerous and required the service of brokers who knew the value of foreign money. Some exchangers profited greatly and loaned their money along with that others invested with them. Their interest rates ranged from 20 to 300 percent per year.
In anger at this corruption of the purpose of the Temple, Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers and drove them and the sellers of animals out of the Temple court ( Matthew 21:12 ).
Elmer L. Gray
Fausset's Bible Dictionary [2]
Κollubistes and Kermatistes , both denoting dealers in small coin ( Kollubos and Kerma the profit money, 1 1/2d.). They set up tables in the court of the Gentiles, to supply at a profit foreign Jews with the Jewish half shekels (1 shillings, 3 pence) required for the yearly payment into the temple treasury, in exchange for foreign coin. The "exchangers" ( Matthew 25:27), Trapezitai , were bankers.
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblial Literature [3]
It is mentioned by Volney that in Syria, Egypt, and Turkey, when any considerable payments are to be made, an agent of exchange is sent for, who counts paras by thousands, rejects pieces of false money, and weighs all the sequins either separately or together. It has hence been suggested that the 'current money with the merchant,' mentioned in Scripture , might have been such as was approved of by competent judges whose business it was to detect fraudulent money if offered in payment. It appears that there were bankers or money-changers in Judea, who made a trade of receiving money in deposit and paying interest for it . Some of them had even established themselves within the precincts of the temple at Jerusalem , where they were in the practice of exchanging one species of money for another. Persons who came from a distance to worship at Jerusalem would naturally bring with them the money current in their respective districts, and it might therefore be a matter of convenience for them to get this money exchanged at the door of the temple for that which was current in Jerusalem, and upon their departure to receive again that species of money which circulated in the districts to which they were journeying. These money-changers would, of course, charge a commission upon all their transactions, but from the observation of our Savior, when he overthrew the tables of those in the temple, it may be inferred that they were not distinguished for honesty and fair dealing: 'It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves' .
