Local men, usually Jewish, who bought or held the right to collect Rome's tolls and duties and made their living on what they collected above the quota — a system that rewarded overcharging and built extortion into the job description. ⚠ The resentment was not only economic: collecting for Rome made a man a visible collaborator with the occupying power, and contact with Gentile money and Gentile administration carried its own ritual taint. The fixed pairing ‘tax collectors and sinners’ (Matthew 9:10-11, and again at 11:19) is doing real social work — the phrase names a category, not two overlapping groups. Yet Matthew's own Gospel is written under the name of one of them (see Matthew), and the class recurs: 21:31-32 has tax collectors and prostitutes entering the kingdom ahead of the chief priests and elders, and Luke's Zacchaeus (not on this site) becomes the type-scene for the whole reversal. The Pharisees' objection in this chapter is not manufactured outrage — sharing a table was a real social and religious line, and Jesus is shown crossing it on purpose.