<p>20:21 <i>And they asked him, saying: Teacher, we know you say and teach rightly- </i>Gk.&nbsp;<i>orthos</i>, from whence 'orthodox'. They were thereby trying to lead Him to make a right wing, conservative answer, namely, that tribute should be given to God and not Caesar. And then the Herodians with whom they were working in this plan (see Matthew) could legally swoop upon Him and have Him arrested for disloyalty to the empire.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><i>And show no favouritism to any person- </i>This was an appeal to Jewish orthodoxy, whereby the righteous Jew was supposed to be obedient to God regardless of what others thought. They were trying to lead the Lord into a position whereby He said 'No' to the question about giving the tribute money. And the Herodians were ready to pounce on Him if He did; for according to Matthew, they were working together with the Pharisees in this. We can reconstruct how the Pharisees and Herodians worked together in this; the Pharisees were trying to lead the Lord by a path of theology and logic to a position whereby He denied the need to pay tribute- and then Herod's supporters could pounce on Him. The verisimilitude and internal agreement of the record is again strong encouragement to accept this as the inspired word of God, recording he actual words spoken rather than giving a mere summary or imagination of them from a distance of time and space.</p><p><i>But in truth teach the way of God</i>- John the Baptist had attempted to prepare the way or path over which God's glory in Messiah could come to Zion. The only other occurrence of &quot;the way of God&quot; is when we read that Apollos, who knew only John's teaching, had to have &quot;the way of God&quot;, i.e. John's message about the way, explained more fully to him (Acts 18:26). It may be that John had been so unworldly that he had not paid tribute to Caesar, or at least, he had been interpreted that way; and so now the Pharisees were commenting that if the Lord truly upheld John's teaching, then what was his answer about paying the tribute money? Because it was perceived, at very least, that John had advocated not paying it.</p>