O. Teaching, mostly about money (16:1–31)
O. Teaching, mostly about money (16:1–31)
1. The unjust steward (16:1–9)
This is notoriously one of the most difficult parables to interpret. The root problem is the commendation of the steward who is so plainly dishonest (8). The usual explanation is that the steward is commended, not for his dishonesty, but for taking resolute action in a crisis. The coming of Jesus forced people to decision. When even dishonest worldly people know how and when to take decisive action, much more should those who follow him. It is the astuteness of the steward which is commended, not his commercial practices. T. W. Manson reminds us that there is a world of difference between ‘I applaud the dishonest steward because he acted cleverly’ and ‘I applaud the clever steward because he acted dishonestly’.19 This may well be the way we should understand the parable. This view is often held in conjunction with the idea that Luke has appended applications to the use of money which Jesus did not originally teach. Some think that the steward was entitled to commissions and that the rewriting of the bonds was the forgoing of this money in the hope of getting something more. But this scarcely does justice to the fact that the steward was dishonest (8).
But perhaps we should understand it all in the light of the commercial practices of the day. Jews were forbidden to take interest from fellow-Jews when they lent them money (Exod. 22:25; Lev. 25:36; Deut. 23:19). Those who wished to make money from loans evaded this by reasoning that the law was concerned to prohibit the exploitation of the poor. It was not meant to forbid innocent transactions that were mutually beneficial and where the payment of interest amounted to the sharing of profits. If anyone had even a little of a given commodity he was not destitute and thus lending to him was not exploitation. As almost everyone had a little oil and a little wheat, the way was open for widespread use of a legal fiction. Whatever was borrowed was given a value in oil or wheat (say, eighty measures of wheat), the interest added on (say, twenty measures), and the bond made out for the repayment of the total in terms of oil or wheat (in this case one hundred measures). The transaction was usurious, but the bond gave no indication of this. Commonly such transactions were carried out by stewards, ostensibly without the owner’s knowledge. Understood in this way, the parable presents us with a steward who, faced with the loss of his employment, protected his future by calling in the bonds and getting the debtors to rewrite them so that they no longer carried interest. He looked to their gratitude to express itself by their taking him into their homes. His action put the owner in a difficult position. He would have the greatest of difficulty in establishing his claim to the original amounts now that the first bonds were destroyed. In any case he could not repudiate the steward’s action without convicting himself of taking usury. It would be extremely difficult to obtain his legal rights and in the process he would convict himself of acting impiously. So he put the best face possible on the situation and ‘commended’ the steward, thus securing an undeserved reputation for piety. The steward was now seen as conforming to the law of God and the owner as applauding this. Both were acting decisively in a difficult situation.20
1–2. This story is addressed to the disciples, whereas the previous trio was aimed at the Pharisees (15:2f.). But the Pharisees are still in the background, for they scoffed at what Jesus said (14). Steward is perhaps not a good translation of oikonomos (cf. 12:42), but a better is not easy to find, for we no longer have the office (though I am informed that the Scottish ‘factor’, as Moffatt translates, still exists and performs the same function). It usually denoted a slave who was put in charge of an estate to relieve the owner of routine management. In this story the steward must have been a freeman, not a slave, for he could enter into agreements that bound his master, whereas a slave could not do this. He was the ‘manager’ (NIV) of his master’s estate. This man was accused of wasting (the verb is that used of the prodigal, 15:13) his master’s goods. The nature of his job made it easy for him to be careless or to misappropriate funds for his own purposes. The owner evidently thought the charge well founded for he informed the steward that he was dismissed and instructed him to prepare a final accounting.
3–4. This gave the steward time to think up a plan of action. The loss of the stewardship meant the loss of his livelihood. He glanced at digging, but abandoned the idea on account of his physical limitations. He thought of begging, but was ashamed (cf. Eccl. 40:28, ‘It is better to die than to beg’). I have decided renders an aorist with a meaning like ‘I’ve got it!’ There is the thought of a sudden inspiration. He sees a way of being kept by his master’s debtors.
5–6. He quickly puts the plan into action. He deals with the debtors one by one; secrecy was essential. The first owes a hundred measures of oil. The measure is the batos, mentioned here only in the New Testament. From a reference in Josephus (Antiquities viii.57) we find that this was about 8¾ gallons. The debt was thus for about 875 gallons of oil (Jeremias makes it about 800 gallons and sees this as the yield of 146 olive trees;21 it was thus a considerable debt). The steward tells him to write another bill, substituting fifty.
7. A second example is given. This man is allowed to replace a bill for 100 measures of wheat with one for 80. The measure here is the koros, about 10 bushels, making the total approximately 1,000 bushels. Jeremias sees this as the yield from about 100 acres.22 Clearly quite large amounts were involved. The steward varied his rate of discount perhaps because of the difference in the commodities. It was comparatively easy to adulterate olive oil, so the rate of interest on transactions involving oil was high. Derrett points out that ‘where a debtor has nothing left to offer, short of his self and family as slaves, but an amount of natural produce, and where this is a fluid like olive-oil, he must pay dearly for the risks to which he submits his creditor.’23 It was much more difficult to adulterate wheat and the interest was correspondingly lower. We should probably understand that the steward continued the process with the other debtors. These two examples are sufficient to indicate his general line.
8. The master was in an awkward position if the steward had been getting rid of usurious contracts. To repudiate him would be to declare himself an irreligious and oppressive man. The only thing to do was to make the best of the situation by praising the steward and thus endorsing his action. This would redound to his credit. It might be presumed that the steward had entered the usurious contracts without his knowledge and now he piously praised their cancellation. That the steward is called dishonest may be the master’s protest against the way he had been deprived of his money in these transactions, or it may indicate his conviction that the steward had been dishonest from the beginning (1f.). If it is not a matter of usurious contracts, we must feel that the master appreciated the fact that he had been outwitted by a smart rogue and paid his tribute to the wisdom, though not the morality, of the act. He did not say that he was pleased. He simply admired the astuteness of the steward while doubtless deploring its effect on himself. The worldly-minded (sons of this world ) are wise by their own lights. Cf. Moffatt, ‘the children of this world look further ahead, in dealing with their own generation, than the children of Light.’ The sons of light are the servants of God. Well-intentioned as they are, they often lack the wisdom to use what they have as wisely as the worldly use their possessions for their very different ends.
9. Jesus adds the instruction to use unrighteous mammon wisely. Mammon is our transliteration of an Aramaic expression, of uncertain derivation, which is used to denote money or wealth generally. The adjective reminds us that all too often this is acquired in unworthy ways. The exact expression ‘the mammon of unrighteousness’ does not seem to be paralleled elsewhere.24 Jewish writings, however, do contain a contrast between ‘false mammon’ and ‘true mammon’,25 which indicates that possessions might be acquired honestly or the reverse. Jesus’ use of the term may imply that there is commonly some element of unrighteousness in the way people acquire possessions. Jesus’ followers must use their money for their spiritual purposes just as wisely as the children of this world do for their material aims. As our goal is ‘treasure in heaven’, we should use money for purposes such as almsgiving. This will gain us friends and it will stand us in good stead when money fails, i.e. when we die and money is of no more use. The meaning of they may receive you into the eternal habitations (cf. John 14:2) may be that the friends thus made will welcome us in heaven. More probably we have a common Jewish use of the plural to mean ‘God’ in accordance with a tendency to avoid use of the divine name (SB). It is God who receives people into heaven.
2. God and mammon (16:10–13)
Jesus takes people’s attitude to money as a means of teaching the lesson that discipleship must be whole-hearted.
10. First the principle is laid down. Faithfulness is no accident: it arises out of what one is through and through. What one does with the small things of life one does also in the big things. Faithfulness or dishonesty appears throughout. Life is a unity.
11–12. Jesus contrasts the unrighteous mammon, earthly riches, with the true riches, the heavenly riches that God alone can give. In accordance with the principle laid down in the previous verse anyone who uses money in the wrong way shows himself unfitted to handle more important things. He must not be surprised if God keeps them from him. The same truth is put in a highly paradoxical way. We would say that, if we are not faithful in our own things, we are not fit to handle those of others, but Jesus reverses this. The money we think we own is not really ours. It is always what we have from God (1 Chr. 29:14) and we are no more than stewards of it. We cannot take it with us when we die. If we handle it badly we show that we are unfitted to use the true heavenly riches which will otherwise be given us as our permanent possession (cf. Matt. 25:34).
13. Servant is a household slave and serve (douleuein) means ‘serve as a slave’. Nobody can give his full devotion to two masters at once. He may try, but only one will be central for him. So it is with God and mammon. One can devote oneself whole-heartedly to the service of either, but not both (cf. Col. 3:5).
3. The covetous Pharisees (16:14–15)
This sharp antithesis did not please the Pharisees. The covetous like to disguise their sin; they see their money as evidence of the blessing of God on their activities and thus of their righteousness. So the Pharisees scoffed. Jesus contrasts outward justification before people (which was all the Pharisees could attain) with the state of the heart. That God knows your hearts (‘sees through you’, NEB) is frightening for lovers of money. The corollary of this is that what pleased the Pharisees so much (and people admired) is no more than an abomination in the sight of God.
4. The law and the prophets (16:16–17)
16. The coming of Jesus marked a watershed. Up till then God’s revelation had been made in the law (strictly the books Genesis to Deuteronomy) and the prophets. The combined expression stands for the whole Old Testament. This operated right up to the time of John the Baptist. Conzelmann places great stress on this passage. He sees ‘the period of Israel’ as lasting up to this point, including John’s ministry. He puts more emphasis on this than Luke’s words require, but there is an undoubted stress on the new state of affairs brought about by Jesus’ coming. Now the good news of the kingdom of God is preached. The kingdom is Jesus’ favourite topic of teaching (see on 4:43). It stands for the rule of God in all of life. There is a problem with every one enters it violently. If the verb biazetai is middle it means ‘presses hard’, if passive, ‘is pressed hard’, ‘urged’. Some see the meaning as ‘every one treats it violently’, but this seems unlikely. There may be the thought of pressing into the kingdom ‘with the greatest earnestness, self-denial and determination, as though with spiritual violence’ (Geldenhuys). Or Jesus may mean that those pressing into the kingdom must be at least as much in earnest as the violent men of Palestine who tried to bring it in by force of arms. In the context we may think of people like the astute steward. When they see the value of entrance to God’s kingdom they are ready to force their way in, in contrast to the Pharisees who did not make use of their opportunity. Knox translates, ‘all who will, press their way into it’.
17. It might be thought then that the Law was over and done with. Jesus, however, assures his hearers that it does not lack fulfilment: it outlasts heaven and earth. Jesus never cast doubt on the validity of the Law. It was the way it was interpreted, particularly by the Pharisees, that drew his criticism. The dot was the tittle, a small projection on some Hebrew letters. Its use means that the Law will be fulfilled right down to the minutest particular.
5. Divorce (16:18)
This saying finds its place here apparently because it helps us see from another angle the place of the Law. The Law allowed men to divorce their wives (Deut. 24:1ff.), though women could not divorce their husbands. Jesus puts them on the same level. Some of the Pharisees were very permissive, allowing men divorce on the most trivial grounds. Thus Hillel thought it enough if a wife spoiled her husband’s dinner, and Akiba (early second century) went so far as to permit divorce if the man found someone prettier than his wife (Gittin 9:10). This was to make a mockery of the Law. Jesus taught that God instituted marriage so that the two should become one (Gen. 2:24). Divorce was not the aim of the Law but a provision for man’s ‘hardness of heart’ (Mark 10:5). Marriage was meant to be a life-long union. Thus the man who divorces his wife and remarries commits adultery, as does the man who marries a divorcee. Jesus is not here suggesting a law for society at large. He is saying that this is how God’s people regard marriage. Some hold that he is making a public criticism of Herod Antipas, who had divorced the daughter of Aretas and married the divorcee Herodias. He was thus guilty on both counts. Jesus’ words certainly apply to Herod, but it is difficult to think that they were aimed primarily at him.
6. The rich man and Lazarus (16:19–31)
This parable is peculiar to Luke. Many see it as an adaptation of a popular folk-tale, perhaps originating in Egypt, which contrasted the eternal fates of a bad rich man and a virtuous poor man (see Creed). If Jesus has taken over a popular tale, he has given it a stamp of his own. As it stands it marks a contrast with the attitude inculcated in the parable of the unrighteous steward. Perhaps we can go further back and say that this chapter challenges the elder son of the previous parable and with him all the respectable who act in the spirit of the unrighteous steward. They should repent and then help others with their money. The alternative is to use their money in such a way as to secure eternal condemnation.
19. Jesus pictures a rich man. Purple was cloth dyed with a very costly dye (obtainable from the shellfish murex). It would be used for the outer garment and the fine linen for the undergarment. The combination stands for the ultimate in luxury. Feasted (euphrainomenos) sounds the note of happiness, for the same verb is used of merriment in 12:19; 15:23, 32. This man had all he asked in life and lived a life of enjoyable ease. He is not said to have committed any grave sin, but he lived only for himself. That was his condemnation.
20–21. In contrast is the poor man, called Lazarus (i.e. Eleazar; the name means ‘God has helped’ and may be significant; certainly man did not help this unfortunate). He is the only character given a name in Jesus’ parables. Sometimes the rich man is called ‘Dives’, but this is simply the Latin for ‘rich man’. Lazarus lay at the gate of the other, the word denoting a large gate or portico like that of a city or a palace. The house was a grand one. Full of sores points to physical misery and this is emphasized with the detail that the pariah dogs licked his sores. His destitution comes out in the information that he desired to be fed (not necessarily was fed) with what fell from the rich man’s table. The one man had all he wanted; the other had nothing.
22. Nothing has been said about the religious state of either. But Lazarus was evidently a faithful servant of God, for when he died the angels took him to Abraham’s bosom. The expression is not common, but plainly it denotes felicity. Some see in it the relationship of child to parent (cf. John 1:18), but it is better to see a contrast between the table at the opening of the story and Lazarus at table with Abraham (for seating at table see note on 14:7). The bliss of the saved is pictured as a great feast in which the favoured one reclines with his head on the bosom of the great patriarch (in the manner of John 13:23; cf. Matt. 8:11). There is no corresponding joy for the rich man after his death.
23. Hades is normally a colourless term, signifying the abode of all the departed whether good or bad. In the New Testament, however, it is never used of the saved. Here it seems to be equivalent to Gehenna, the place of punishment, for the rich man was in torment. Not only so, but he was able to see Lazarus and to note his felicity.
24. The rich man’s attitude to the great patriarch is deferential, for he addresses him as Father Abraham and words his request humbly enough (though it is interesting that he who showed no mercy asks for mercy). There is a note of unconscious arrogance in his attitude to Lazarus, for he assumes that he can have the poor man sent across to do him service (unless his words mean no more than that he was ready to accept the slightest alleviation from any source). He has not realized that earth’s values no longer apply.
25–26. Abraham gives a reasoned refusal of the request. His address, Son, is tender, but he points to a reversal. In life the rich man had had his good things. The adjective your is significant. He had had what he chose. He could have spent time with the things of God and delighted in the word of God. He could have engaged in almsgiving (Lazarus had been close enough!). For him good things had been purple and fine linen, daily merriment and feasting. He had chosen what he wanted and now he must abide by his choice. Lazarus had received evil things. In this case there is no ‘his’. Lazarus had not been responsible for the evils he had suffered.
Now, Abraham points out, a different set of values operates. The balance is redressed. Justice is done. And there is another factor, the great chasm … fixed. This is no doubt a pictorial detail, but it means that in the afterlife there is no passing from one state to the other (the Greek implies that this is the purpose and not simply the result of the great chasm). The rich man can know how it is with Lazarus (and vice versa), but there is no crossing the chasm on the part of either. Some Jewish writings speak similarly of a permanent separation in the afterlife, e.g. 1 Enoch, where interestingly the righteous have ‘the bright spring of water’ (1 Enoch 22:9).
27–28. For the first time in the story the rich man shows some interest in others (though still not in the poor; he sticks to his own). He asks that his five brothers be warned of what awaits them. Once again he assumes that Lazarus may be despatched on his errand: his deep-seated sense of superiority remains. He also implies that he had not been treated fairly; if he had really been given all the information he needed, he would have acted differently. In contrast is Lazarus’s impressive silence throughout the parable. He neither complains about his hard lot on earth, nor gloats over the rich man after death, nor expresses resentment at the latter’s endeavours to have him sent on errands. Throughout he accepts what God sends him.
29–31. Abraham points to the Scriptures. Moses, of course, means ‘the writings of Moses’, and the combination with the prophets points to the whole of Scripture, as in verse 16. The Bible, reasons Abraham, gives the brothers all they need. There is an implication that the rich man’s unpleasant situation was due not to his riches (after all, Abraham had been rich), but to his neglect of Scripture and its teaching. But the rich man does not agree. He knows how he had reacted to the possession of the Bible. So he says that if some one goes to them from the dead things will be different; that will bring them to repentance. Such is the fallacy of the natural man. The parable concludes with Abraham’s solemn affirmation that the appearance of one risen from the dead will bring no conviction to those who refuse to accept Scripture. ‘If a man (says Jesus) cannot be humane with the Old Testament in his hand and Lazarus on his doorstep, nothing – neither a visitant from the other world nor a revelation of the horrors of Hell – will teach him otherwise.’26 In the context the one risen from the dead must be Lazarus. But Luke’s readers could scarcely help thinking of Jesus. He rose. But those who refused to see him in the Scriptures and to heed what is written refused to be convinced by One risen from the dead.