Learn about tax collectors and why Jesus hung out with them.  Also learn how Judaism relates to the story.

The prodigal son's family was almost certainly Jewish.  In the Torah, or first five books of the Bible, there are many instructions or rules that devout Jews are expected to follow.  In Leviticus 11, it says:

And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the living things that you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth....And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you....Whoever touches them when they are dead shall be unclean until the evening.

That means that if you touched a dead pig, you were considered unclean and could not enter into the temple complex until you had gone through some rituals to purify yourself.  Eating pigs was strictly forbidden.  To have a job feeding pigs would have been considered about as undesirable a job as could be imagined for the prodigal son.

The prodigal son was hungry enough to eat what the pigs were eating, carob pods.  Carob pods, while nutritious, were mostly used as food for livestock.   Carobs grow all over the Mediterranean, including places in Africa.  A tree can produce a ton of pods every year and may do so for 200 years.  Today, the seeds in the carob pods are sometimes used to make a chocolate substitute.

Jesus lived in the Roman empire.  The Romans used tax collectors to get their money to run the empire.  Tax collectors would pay the Romans a large amount of money up front for the right to tax an area.  They would then the individuals in the area to make back that money and make a profit.  How much profit?  Well, that was the problem.  Some took quite a bit more than they should have.  This gave tax collector very bad reputations in society.  People thought of them like thieves and robbers, even if legal ones. Shortly after Jesus' time period there would be an emperor who would address the corruption of this system and help reform it.

Some of the religious leaders were criticizing Jesus for hanging out with tax collectors.  Jesus is telling the story of the prodigal son story to answer that question.  So, what's the answer?  Why was Jesus hanging out with the tax collectors?