Lk. 16:1 And He also said to His disciples, “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and on accusations was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods.”
Lk. 16:2 “So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.”
A first reading of the text shows a rich man, who seems to be the master of a large estate, discovering that the steward is squandering his wealth. Although described as wasteful, the steward has a more grievous shortcoming. He is not just inefficient, he is downright dishonest. For this reason, the rich man has the estate manager turn in the records and dismisses him.
Lk. 16:3 “Then the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg.’”
Lk. 16:4 “‘I have resolved what do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’”
The realization of imminent destitution compels the clever steward to develop a scheme to save his own neck. After all, no one else has learned that he has been fired. The brief period between his fateful meeting with his master and his final departure creates an opportunity for the crafty steward to make plans for his self-preservation.
Lk. 16:5 “So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’”
Lk. 16:6 “And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’”
Lk. 16:7 “Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill and write eighty.’”
He quickly calls in his master’s debtors and ingratiates himself to them by reducing their debt. Giving a generous discount to his master’s debtors, the unjust steward helped someone other than himself. To be sure, his actions were motivated by self-interest. Nonetheless, by reducing the debt, he was helping someone else.
Lk. 16:8 “So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly . For the sons of this world are more shrewd in this generation than the sons of light.”
Whoever wanted to follow Yeshua had to live in brotherly love with the outside world and not withdraw from society. This included economic dealings with outsiders. The Essenes, however, practiced extreme separatism. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the parable of the dishonest steward, Yeshua taught His disciples not to behave like the sons of light, the Essenes.
This looks like a good place to include what Josephus had to say about the Essenes to better enhance our understanding of this group. “The doctrine of the Essenes is this: that all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of the souls, and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly strived for; and when they send what they have dedicated to God into the Temple, they do not offer sacrifices because they have more pure offerings of their own; on which account they are excluded from the common court of the Temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves, yet in their course of life better than that of other men; and they entirely bind themselves to husbandry. It also deserves our admiration, how much they exceed all other men that addict themselves to virtue, and this in righteousness; and indeed to such a degree, that as it has never appeared among other men, neither Greeks nor barbarians, no, not for a little time, so has it endured a long while among them. This is demonstrated by that institution of theirs, which will not suffer anuthing to hinder them from having all things in common; so that a rich man enjoys no more of his own wealth than he who has nothing at all. There are about four thousand men that live in this way, and neither marry wives, nor are desirous to keep servants, as thinking the latter tempts men to be unjust, and the former gives the occasion for domestic quarrels; but as they live by themselves, they minister one to another. They also appoint certain stewards to receive the incomes of their revenues, and of the fruits of the ground; such as are good men and priests, who are to get their grain and their food ready for them. They none of them differ from others of the Essenes in their way of living, but do the most resemble those dacae who are called polistae (dwellers in cities).”
Source: Jos. Ant. 18.2.5
It seems by what Josephus says here, and Philo himself elsewhere (Op. P. 679) that these Essenes did not go to the Jewish festivals in Jerusalem, or to offer sacrifices there, which may be one great reason why they are never mentioned in the ordinary books of the New Testament; though, in the Apostolic Constitutions, they are mentioned as those that observed the customs of their forefathers, and that without any such ill character laid upon them as is there laid upon the other sects among that people.
Source: Jos. Ant. 18.2.5, Note #3
Who these “Polistae” in Josephus, or in Strabo, among the Pythagoric Dacae, were, it is not easy to determine. Seagler offers no improbable conjecture, that some of these “Dacae” lived alone,” like monks, in tents or caves; but that others of them lived together in built cities, and from there were called by such names as implied the same.
Lk. 16:9 “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”
The terms “sons of light” and “mammon of unrighteousness” do appear to be direct references to the Dead Sea Sect. The policy of the Essenes was to confiscate all the financial holdings and personal belongings of their members. The covenanters of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which the consensus of the scholars tend to identify with the Essenes, referred to themselves as the sons of light. Money belonging to those outside the community was deemed the mammon of unrighteousness. The Dead Sea Sect believed that God divided mankind into two camps: members of their sect were the “true sons of light,” while everyone else belonged to the condemned, wicked and sinful “sons of darkness. Thus the sect had to separate themselves as far as possible from everything outside their community. Of course, this included avoiding the wealth of the sons of darkness. This extreme economic separatism was also rooted in the ritual aspect of daily life, for their ritual purity did not permit them to come in contact with the impure wealth of the outside world (“Manual of Discipline, 5:14-20"). The term “mammon” (wealth) does not appear in the Hebrew Scriptures, but it was the normal word used during the Second Temple Period and in Rabbinic literature for wealth. The Dead Sea Scrolls, written in classicized Hebrew (a style that mimics Biblical Hebrew) usually used the Biblical word for wealth “Hon,” but there are exceptions where we find the word mammon. These exceptions show that the words “hon”and “mammon” are interchangeable in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The “mammon of unrighteousness,” therefore, was the term the Dead Sea Sect used for the wealth of those who did not belong to their exclusive sect.
Source: DSS Manual of Discipline 5:14-20
Lk. 16:10 “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.”
Lk. 16:11 “Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?”
Lk. 16:12 “And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?”
Yeshua enlarged the scope of the parable’s main theme in its application. He probably had in mind a specific case of economic contact with non-believers, namely deposits which had been entrusted to His followers. In antiquity, it was a common practice to store goods for safekeeping with someone. In such a situation, or in the case of loans or collateral deposits, there was a great temptation for the holder to behave dishonestly when the deposit had to be returned. Yeshua admonished the members of His movement to be trustworthy in handling such deposits.
Yeshua’s message was open to all. Abstaining from association with others would inevitably hinder His disciples from sharing the message of the Kingdom of God. In Yeshua’s eyes, the refusal of the “sons of light” to deal with their own generation was even more foolish than the acts of the fraudulent sons of this world. The suggestion that Yeshua had in mind the deposit of a non-believer held in trust by one of His followers fits well with the meaning of this passage. The passage forms a chain of three arguments. First, the man that can be trusted in a small matter can be trusted also in a great one. And the man that is dishonest in a small matter is also dishonest in a great one. Secondly, if you have not proved trustworthy with the unrighteous mammon, who will trust you with the true? And thirdly, if you have proven untrustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? These three arguments are built in a parallel manner. The first expresses a general principle, and the “smaller matter” corresponds to the “unrighteous mammon” in the second argument, and to “what belongs to another” in the third.
Lk. 16:13 “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
The parable reveals Yeshua’s opinion about the Essenes. The steward is like the sons of light, i.e., the Essenes, who are taking unfair advantage of the people. The children of this age are wiser than these Essenes, who require total financial investment in the community, cutting each member off from the outside world. Money of outsiders is unrighteous mammon, whereas the currency of the community is viewed quite differently. When the unjust steward reverses his actions and starts helping the people he has been cheating, he should be praised. He has made a career out of exploiting his master’s wealth and profiteering from overcharging his clients. With his own financial ruin on the horizon, and the unbearable shame it will bring, he takes drastic measures to control the damage. In fact, although he is portrayed as the steward of unrighteousness from the beginning, because he was squandering his master’s assets, his final actions may actually have been legitimate in the eyes of the debtors, even if it was unethical and unjust. Quite probably he was canceling his own sizable commission, which had been calculated into the amount owed his master. In such a case, what he did was shrewd and perfectly legitimate, because he was taking his percentage of the profits and returning it to those whom he had been overcharging.
Lk. 16:14 Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.
Lk. 16:15 And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
Lk. 16:16 “The Law and the Prophets were until John. Since that time the Kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.”
It is common to hear someone point to the misunderstood phrase, “Did not the New Testament say that the Law and the Prophets were only until John?” This verse is often wrongly interpreted. This verse is simply stating that the Law and the Prophets until Yochanan haMatbil were all the Scriptures there were until that time. The New Testament, as we know it today, was not canonized until some 325 years later. Furthermore, the book of Luke could not possible mean that the Law of God was outdated, because it was used constantly by the church after Yochanan haMatbil a minimum of 185 times in the New Testament writings.
Lk. 16:17 “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the Law to fail.”
Lk. 16:18 “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery.”
Dwight Pryor (quoted here) explains this verse very well. What are we to make of this perplexing and problematic passage? It seems uncharacteristic of Yeshua for at least three reasons. First, it puts Yeshua at odds with the Torah, in effect undermining or abolishing the Torah’s provision for divorce in Deut. 24:1. Though never ideal and subsequent remarriages are permitted in certain cases according to Biblical Law and Jewish tradition. Second, such an unconditional indictment, without regard for circumstances or motivation, seems alien to Yeshua’s typical approach to halakhic issues, which emphasizes the “spirit” rather than the “letter” of the Law. Indeed this verse appears to contradict Matthew 19:9, in which He makes an exception for divorce (and thereby remarriage). And finally, this odd saying seems to come “out of the blue,” with no obvious context. It is spliced between a mention of Yochanan haMatbil and a parable about a rich man.
First, consider the phrase “and marries another.” The conjunction “and” is kai in Greek, but likely behind the Greek lies the Mishnaic Hebrew of Yeshua’s day. The Hebrew vav (and) has a wider range of meanings than the Greek kai, including the “vav of purpose or intention” – an idiomatic usage that means “in order to” or “so that”. Here is a typical example: “Let my people go that [literal Hebrew: and] they may serve me in the wilderness” (Exod. 7:16). The evidence suggests that Yeshua was saying, “The man who divorces his wife in order to marry another commits adultery.” In other words, the two actions are related by intent. But what might occasion such a comment? A clue may be found in Josephus’ history of Herod Antipas and the Gospel account of Yochanan haMatbil. One of King Herod’s sons, Herod Antipas, was the ruler of Galilee at the time of Yeshua and Yochanan. An illicit romantic entanglement between himself and his half-brother’s wife, Herodias, eventuated in them both divorcing their spouses in order to marry each other.
The intrepid prophet, Yochanan, called out Antipas for this infidelity: “It is not lawful [i.e., permitted by the Torah] for you to have her” (Matt. 14:4). As a result, Yochanan was arrested by the tetrarch and later, at Herodias’ insistence, beheaded (14:9-11). This appears to be the backstory behind Yeshua otherwise perplexing comment. He is not arbitrarily issuing a blanket condemnation of divorce and remarriage, but soundly interpreting the Torah to mean that divorcing one’s spouse with the intent or purpose of marrying someone else, whom you lust after, is equivalent to adultery and thus prohibited. He is alluding to Herod Antipas and Herodias, and reaffirming Yochanan’s righteous condemnation of their equally adulterous actions. This is also prohibited in M:Sotah 5:1.
Sources: Deut. 24:1; Exod. 7:16; Matt. 14:4, 9-11; M;Sotah 5:1
Lk. 16:19 “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.”
Lk. 16:20 “But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate.”
Lk. 16:21 “Desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.”
Lk. 16:22 “So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.”
Abraham’s bosom is a common Jewish figure for the place of the departed. The JT:Kiliam 42:2 says, “Rabbi Judah died and in this day he sits in Abraham’s bosom.” Abraham’s bosom is also mentioned in BT:Gittin 57b and BT:Kiddushin 72a.
Sources: JT:Kiliam 42:2; BT:Gittin 57b; BT: Kiddushin 72a
Lk. 16:23 “And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.”
A question often asked of Jewish people by their non-Jewish friends is: “what does Judaism teach about life after death?” Just as there are different branches of Jewish thought and theology, so are there different responses to this question. During the time of Yeshua the Pharisees believed that there would be a physical resurrection, while the Sadducees rejected the idea.
Lk. 16:24 “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’”
Lk. 16:25 “But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil th ings; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.’”
Lk. 16:26 “‘And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’”
Lk. 16:27 “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you send him to my father’s house,’”
Lk. 16:28 “‘For I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’”
Lk. 16:29 Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’”
Lk. 16:30 “And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’”
Lk. 16:31 “But he said to him, ‘”If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”
Lk. 17:1 Then He said to His disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!”
Lk. 17:2 “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”
Lk. 17:3 “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.”
Lk. 17:4 “And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,” you shall forgive him.”
Lk. 17:5 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”
Lk. 17:6 So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Lk. 17:7 “And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat?’”
Lk. 17:8 “But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink?’”
Lk. 17:9 “Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not.”
Lk. 17:10 “So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”
