Jesus also said to his disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he called him in and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management, because you can no longer be manager.’
3 “The manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg. 4 I know what I’ll do, so that when I’m removed from management, people will welcome me into their homes.’
5 “He called in each one of his master’s debtors. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He said, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write fifty.’[1] 7 Then he said to another, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He told him, ‘Take your bill and write eighty.’
8 “And the master praised the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than the people of light are. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.[2]
10 “Whoever is faithful with very little is also faithful with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little is also dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been faithful with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own?
13 “No household slave can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
14 The Pharisees, who loved money, were listening to all this, and they sneered at him. 15 He said to them, “You are the ones who make yourselves look right in the eyes of people, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is disgusting in God’s sight.
16 “The Law and the Prophets were until John. Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is being proclaimed, and everyone is pressing hard into it.[3] 17 It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fall.[4]
18 “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and the man who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.
19 “There was a rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in splendor every day.[5] 20 And a poor man named Lazarus lay at his gate, covered with sores, 21 longing to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 “The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.[6] 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus at his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this flame.’
25 “But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus likewise received bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that those who want to cross from here to you cannot, and no one can cross from there to us.’
27 “He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house — 28 for I have five brothers — to warn them, so they won’t also come to this place of torment.’
29 “But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them.’
30 “He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will change their hearts.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Notes
Note 1. The Greek names specific ancient measures. A “bath” (batos) of oil was roughly 8–9 gallons, so a hundred of them ran to hundreds of gallons; a “kor” (koros), the dry measure named in the next verse, held ten baths. These are not household IOUs but the debts of a big estate. ↩
Note 2. The word behind “wealth” here is mammon (Aramaic māmōnā), a loanword meaning money or possessions. In Jewish usage it could be neutral. Here it is paired with “of unrighteousness,” and verse 13 sets it opposite God. ↩
Note 3. The Greek verb biazetai is genuinely ambiguous. As a middle voice it means people are “forcing their way in” or eagerly pressing toward the kingdom; as a passive it means the kingdom “is being forced” or suffers violence. Translators have gone both ways, and the choice noticeably changes the sense of the sentence. ↩
Note 4. The Greek keraia (“horn” or little hook) was a scribal term for the tiny pen strokes that distinguished otherwise near-identical Hebrew letters — the small mark, for instance, that separates a daleth from a resh. ↩
Note 5. Purple dye came from murex sea-snails and was staggeringly labor-intensive to produce — Diocletian’s later price edict lists the best purple wool at a value many times an unskilled laborer’s yearly earnings. ↩
Note 6. The phrase (literally “the bosom of Abraham”) pictures the righteous dead resting in comfort, as if reclining beside the patriarch at a banquet. It reflects Second Temple Jewish ideas about the realm of the dead, in which the righteous awaited their future in a place set apart from those in torment. ↩