(Matt. 9:36) But great was the misery to be seen among the people languishing under all kinds of oppression, especially in the market towns and villages! Physically and in their souls they were scattered and languished like sheep among wolves, without even one shepherd! (Matt. 9:37) Since this shattered condition of the poor peoples moved Me to exceedingly deep pity, I spoke as at the well in Sychar (Matt. 9:38): ‘The harvest is great, but the workers are few! Therefore ask the Lord to send workers into His harvest! For these poor people are ripe for the kingdom of God, and the field on which they stand is great! They languish and thirst for light, truth and deliverance! But workers, workers! Where are they!?’
The disciples say: ‘Lord! If You considered us capable (?), could we not divide up, and each take a city and a market town?’ I say: ‘We are now (Preparation for chapter 10 of Matthew) on the way to a poorest village; when we have reached the village, I shall choose the most capable and strongest among you and send them out into the many regions and places; and you will then do everything that I do and have done before you. But now let us hurry towards the village!’
In just under half an hour we had reached the little village and found truly unparalleled misery there! Parents and children went about literally naked and barely covered their private parts with foliage. When the little community saw us coming, everyone, great and small, young and old, hurried towards us and asked us for alms, for there was great distress among them. Children wept and held their hands over their little bellies, for they were very hungry, having eaten nothing for two full days already; and the parents despaired partly from their own hunger pains, but still more because of their little children asking for bread and milk.
Peter, whom this sight moved through and through, asked a very honest-looking old man, saying: ‘Friend! Who has made you so utterly miserable?! How did you come into this condition?! For I see only walls with no roofs or projecting bays above them, and your grain stores that I know lie in rubble?! How, how did this happen?!’
The man questioned said in a tearful voice: ‘Oh, you dear and surely good people! The boundless hardness and greed of the leaseholding king Herod have done this! His father was Satan’s left arm, and he is his right arm! We could not raise the taxes he demanded of us ten days ago; his bailiffs gave us a deadline of six days. But what were six days?! During this time the bailiffs consumed almost all our better supplies, and on the seventh day, when we could not possibly pay and discharge the unaffordable tax demanded, they took everything we had and barely left us this naked, miserable life, with the utmost difficulty! Oh, friends! That is hard, infinitely hard! If God does not help us, we and our children will starve to death this very day! Do help us as much as you can! If Herod’s evil servants had only not stripped us to the skin, we could at least go begging?! For our children it is too far in every direction, and we are, as you see, as naked as in the womb! O God, O God, why did we in particular have to be made so terribly miserable!? Which of all our sins has brought upon us such a punishment from You, O Jehovah?’
Then I step up to the old man and say: ‘Friend! It is not your sin, which is found before God to be the least in all Israel, that has done this to you, but God’s love!
‘You were indeed the purest in all Israel; yet some worldly desire still clung to your souls. But God, who loves you, saw this and wished to free you all at once from the whole world, so that you should now be fully capable of receiving the grace of your Father in heaven. That has happened, and now you are safe from Herod for all time. From those whom his greed allows to be completely robbed, he no longer levies taxes afterwards; for subjects reduced to beggars are struck from the tax book!
‘And look, thus you have now been freed from the whole world in one blow; this is God’s greatest benefit to you, and now you can at last begin in full earnest to care purely for your souls!
‘But I tell you, in future do not build rich-looking houses, but erect basic huts for yourselves, and no one will demand taxes from you any more except the king of Rome, who alone is entitled to do so, and he asks only two to three out of a hundred. If you have something, you can give it, and if you have nothing, you are exempt. But we shall speak more of this later.
‘But now go into your roofless houses; there you will find food and clothing. Strengthen and clothe yourselves, and come back afterwards, and I shall then arrange further matters with you.’