John Gill Commentary Matthew 10:9

"Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses;" — Matthew 10:9 (ASV)

Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass
That is, not any sort of "money", as both Mark and Luke express it. For money was then coined, as now, of these three sorts of metals, which include all kind of money.

So that they were not to provide, get, prepare, or take along with them for their journey, as not gold, nor silver, or any parcel of this sort of money, which might be of considerable importance and lasting consequence to them. So neither brass money, as halfpence and farthings, the least and most inconsiderable: they were forbidden to carry any of either sort.

in your purses :
or, as it may be rendered, "in", or "within your girdles"; in which travellers, among the Jews, used to carry their money; and who, in their travelling dress, might not go into the temple, and are thus described ^F8 ;

``a man may not go into the mountain of the house with his staff, or with his shoes on, nor (wtdnwpb) , "with his girdle".'' The (adnwp) "phunda", Maimonides says ^F9 , is an inner garment, worn to keep off sweat from other garments, to which were sewed hollow things like purses, in which a man put what he pleased; though other

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FOOTNOTES:

• F8: Misn. Beracot, c. 9. sect. 5.
• F9: In ib. & Celim. c. 29. 1. & Sabbat, c. 10. 3.
• F11: Bartenora & Yom Tob in ib. Gloss in T. Bab. Beracot, fol. 62. 2. & in Sabbat. fol. 92. 1. & 113. 1. & 120. 1. & Nedarim, fol. 55. 2. interpreters say it is (twem wb Nyntwnv lwlx rwza) , "a hollow girdle, in which they put their money": and so the Romans ^F12 had used to do; and so do the Turks ^F13 to this day; to which practice the allusion is here.
• F12: Gracchus apud A. Gell. Noct. Attic. 1. 15. c. 12. Sueton. in Vita Vitellii, c. 16.
• F13: Bobovius de Peregr. Meccan. p. 14.