Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Luke 16:10-13

These verses contain not so much an application as a corrective of the parable. They may have been added by Lk. (so J. Weiss in Meyer, and Holtzmann, H. C.) to prevent misunderstanding, offence, or abuse, so serving the same purpose as the addition “unto repentance” to the saying, “I came not to call,” etc. (Luke 5:32); another instance of editorial solicitude on the part of an evangelist ever careful to guard the character and teaching of Jesus against misunderstanding. So viewed, their drift is: “the steward was dishonest in money matters; do not infer that it does not matter whether you be honest or not in that sphere. It is very necessary to be faithful even there. For faithful in little faithful in much, unfaithful in little unfaithful in much. He who is untrustworthy in connection with worldly goods is unworthy of being entrusted with the true riches; the unjust administrator of another's property will not deserve confidence as an administrator even of his own. In the parable the steward tried to serve two masters, his lord and his lord's creditors, and by so doing promoted his own interest. But the thing cannot be done, as even his case shows.” This corrective, if not spoken by Jesus, is not contrary to His teaching. (Luke 16:10 echoes Matthew 25:21; Luke 19:17; Luke 16:13 reproduces verbally the logion in Matthew 6:24.) Yet as it stands here it waters down the parable, and weakens the point of its teaching. Note the epithets applied to money: the little or least, the unjust, and, by implication, the fleeting, that which belongs to another (τῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ). Spiritual riches are the “much,” the “true” τὸ ἀληθινὸν, in the Johannine sense = the ideal as opposed to the vulgar shadowy reality, “our own” (ἡμέτερον).

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Luke 16:10-13

Old Testament

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