Luke 16: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus tells his disciples about a manager who is about to lose his job and cuts the debts owed to his master so that the debtors will take him in later. The story leads into sayings about being trustworthy with money, and about the impossibility of serving both God and wealth. The Pharisees, who loved money, laugh at him, and he answers them with words about the Law, the kingdom of God, and divorce. He then tells of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus, and what became of each of them after death.

Claim by Claim

1. 16:1
   • He said this also to his disciples.
   • There was a certain rich man.
   • The rich man had a steward.
   • The steward was accused to the rich man of wasting his goods.
2. 16:2
   • The rich man called the steward.
   • The rich man asked what this was that he heard about him.
   • The rich man told him to give an account of his stewardship.
   • The rich man said he could be steward no longer.
3. 16:3
   • The steward said within himself, What shall I do?
   • The steward said his master was taking the stewardship away from him.
   • The steward said he was not strong enough to dig.
   • The steward said he was ashamed to beg.
4. 16:4
   • The steward said he had resolved what to do.
   • His purpose was that when he was put out of the stewardship, people would receive him into their houses.
5. 16:5
   • The steward called every one of his master's debtors to him.
   • He asked the first how much he owed his master.
6. 16:6
   • The first debtor said he owed a hundred bath measures of oil.
   • The steward told him to take his bill.
   • The steward told him to sit down quickly and write fifty.
7. 16:7
   • The steward then asked another how much he owed.
   • That debtor said he owed a hundred cor measures of wheat.
   • The steward told him to take his bill and write eighty.
8. 16:8
   • The master commended the unjust steward.
   • The master commended him because he had acted shrewdly.
   • The children of this age are shrewder toward their own generation than the children of light.
9. 16:9
   • Jesus said to them, Make friends for yourselves from the mammon of unrighteousness.
   • The purpose is that when it fails, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.
10. 16:10
    • He who is faithful in the least is faithful also in much.
    • He who is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
11. 16:11
    • If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, no one will entrust the true riches to you.
12. 16:12
    • If you have not been faithful in what belongs to another, no one will give you what is your own.
13. 16:13
    • No household servant can serve two masters.
    • He will either hate the one and love the other.
    • Or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.
    • You cannot serve God and mammon.
14. 16:14
    • The Pharisees heard all these things.
    • The Pharisees were lovers of money.
    • The Pharisees derided him.
15. 16:15
    • He said to them that they are the ones who justify themselves before men.
    • He said God knows their hearts.
    • He said that what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in God's sight.
16. 16:16
    • The law and the prophets were until John.
    • Since that time the kingdom of God is preached.
    • Every man presses into it.
17. 16:17
    • It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tiny stroke of the law to fall.
18. 16:18
    • Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.
    • Whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.
19. 16:19
    • There was a certain rich man.
    • He was clothed in purple and fine linen.
    • He feasted splendidly every day.
20. 16:20
    • There was a certain poor man named Lazarus.
    • Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate.
    • Lazarus was covered with sores.
21. 16:21
    • Lazarus desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.
    • The dogs came and licked his sores.
22. 16:22
    • The poor man died.
    • The poor man was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom.
    • The rich man also died.
    • The rich man was buried.
23. 16:23
    • In Hades the rich man lifted up his eyes.
    • The rich man was in torments.
    • He saw Abraham far off.
    • He saw Lazarus in Abraham's bosom.
24. 16:24
    • The rich man cried out.
    • He addressed Abraham as father.
    • He asked Abraham to have mercy on him.
    • He asked Abraham to send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water.
    • He asked that Lazarus cool his tongue.
    • He said he was tormented in this flame.
25. 16:25
    • Abraham addressed him as child.
    • Abraham told him to remember that he had received his good things in his lifetime.
    • Abraham said Lazarus likewise received evil things.
    • Abraham said Lazarus is now comforted.
    • Abraham said the rich man is now tormented.
26. 16:26
    • Abraham said that besides all this, a great chasm is fixed between them and the rich man.
    • The chasm's purpose is that those who wish to cross from here to you cannot.
    • Nor can any cross from there to us.
27. 16:27
    • The rich man asked Abraham, calling him father, to send Lazarus to his father's house.
28. 16:28
    • The rich man said he had five brothers.
    • He asked that Lazarus testify to them.
    • The purpose was that they not also come into this place of torment.
29. 16:29
    • Abraham said they have Moses and the prophets.
    • Abraham said let them hear them.
30. 16:30
    • The rich man said no, father Abraham.
    • The rich man said that if one went to them from the dead, they will repent.
31. 16:31
    • Abraham said that if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if one rose from the dead.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

16:1

A steward here is a household manager, usually a trusted slave or freedman, who ran a wealthy man's estate: leasing land, collecting rents in kind, keeping the books, and making contracts in his master's name. His signature was legally his master's, which is what makes the scheme in verses 5 to 7 possible while his dismissal is not yet publicly known.

16:2

"give an account of thy stewardship" means hand over the books. He is being fired, but for a short while he still holds the account records and still has the master's authority in the eyes of everyone else, and that gap is exactly what he uses.

16:3

"I cannot dig" means digging as a hired field laborer, the hardest and lowest paid work an able man could take. Begging ranked below even that. A dismissed manager, known to be dismissed for dishonesty, could expect no comparable post anywhere else.

16:4

In this society a favor created a lasting obligation. By putting the debtors in his debt, the manager is buying himself a network of households that will be socially bound to feed and shelter him.

16:5

These debtors are most likely tenant farmers or traders who took the rich man's land or goods on credit and repay in produce rather than coins. Their debts are business sized, not small personal loans.

16:6

The Greek word is batos, a Hebrew liquid measure of roughly 22 liters, about six gallons. A hundred of them is something like 2,000 liters of olive oil, the yield of a large grove, not a household order. The "bill" was the debtor's own promissory note, written in his own hand, which is why the manager tells him to sit down and rewrite it himself.

16:7

The Greek word here is koros, a dry measure of about 220 liters, so a hundred of them is roughly 22,000 liters of wheat, the harvest of a very large acreage. The King James "fourscore" is eighty: a score is twenty. Note that the two reductions, fifty percent on the oil and twenty percent on the wheat, are close to the same value, which may reflect the different worth of the two commodities.

16:8

"The lord commended" is ambiguous in the Greek: ho kyrios can mean the master in the story or the Lord, that is Jesus telling it. Most readers take it as the master. "Done wisely" translates a word meaning shrewd, canny, quick witted. It praises the man's skill, not his honesty, and the King James "wisely" can mislead a modern ear. "Children of this world" and "children of light" are a Semitic way of saying people who belong to, or are characterized by, one thing or the other.

16:9

"Mammon" is not English; it is an Aramaic word for wealth or property that the King James translators left untranslated. "The mammon of unrighteousness" is a Semitic phrase meaning dishonest, or simply worldly, wealth. "When ye fail" is uncertain in the manuscripts: some read "when it fails," that is when the money runs out, and others "when you fail," that is when you die. "Everlasting habitations" translates a word for tents or dwellings.

16:13

"Servant" here translates doulos, a slave, who was legally owned property rather than an employee. The point turns on ownership: a slave belongs to one owner and cannot be the property of two.

16:14

The Pharisees were a movement devoted to careful observance of the Law and to working out how it applied in ordinary daily life; they were influential teachers among the general population rather than the temple establishment. The King James "covetous" translates a word that literally means lovers of silver. "Derided" translates a vivid Greek verb meaning to turn up the nose at someone.

16:15

The word translated "abomination" is used throughout the Greek Old Testament for idols and for things ritually detestable. It is stronger than mere disapproval.

16:16

"The law and the prophets" was the ordinary way of naming the Jewish scriptures as a whole. "John" is John the Baptist. The verb behind "presseth into it" is genuinely disputed: it can mean everyone is forcing his way in, whether eagerly or violently, or, read as a passive, everyone is being pressed or urged to enter.

16:17

A "tittle" translates keraia, literally a little horn: the tiny stroke or serif that distinguishes one Hebrew letter from another very similar one. The image is of the smallest mark a scribe's pen makes.

16:18

"Putteth away" means divorces. In this period a man ended a marriage by handing his wife a written certificate of divorce; a woman could generally not initiate one. Jewish teachers argued over what grounds the certificate required, one school allowing almost any cause and another only serious sexual offense, so a statement about divorce was a live legal controversy, not an abstraction.

16:19

Purple cloth was dyed with a secretion from murex shellfish, so costly that it marked out royalty and the very rich, and fine linen from Egypt was the luxury fabric worn next to the skin. The two together signal wealth on a spectacular scale. The rich man is never given a name in the Greek; the traditional name Dives is simply the Latin word for "rich man" borrowed from an early translation.

16:20

Lazarus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Eleazar, which means "God has helped." He is the only character in any of Jesus's parables given a name. "Was laid" is passive: someone else carried him there and put him down, which implies he could not walk. The gate is the gateway of a walled town estate.

16:21

Dogs in this setting were not pets but scavengers roaming the streets, and were counted unclean. Their attention adds to the degradation of his condition rather than relieving it.

16:22

"Abraham's bosom" is not an embrace but a place at table. Diners reclined on their left sides on couches, so the guest in the place of honor lay with his head level with the chest of the host. The picture is of Lazarus given the best seat at Abraham's banquet. Note also that the rich man is buried and nothing is said of any burial for Lazarus.

16:23

"Hell" here translates Hades, the Greek name for the realm of the dead in general, the place where everyone who has died is. It is a different word from Gehenna, the term used elsewhere in the Gospels for final punishment, and the King James uses the same English word for both.

16:24

"Father Abraham" is a claim of descent: the rich man is appealing to his standing as a member of Abraham's family. Abraham's reply in verse 25 addresses him as "Son," or child, granting the kinship without granting the request.

16:26

A "gulf" is a huge split in the ground, a canyon too wide to cross. "Fixed" means it was put there on purpose and cannot be moved.

16:28

"Brethren" is the old plural of brother. To "testify" is to give a warning as a witness does, telling people what you have seen for yourself.

16:29

"Moses and the prophets" means the scriptures they already possess and hear read every week: the five books attributed to Moses and the prophetic writings.

16:30

The King James word here is "repent." It means to change your mind, turn around, and start going the other way.