Luke 16:9

ἐκλίπῃ אBDL, ἐκλείπῃ A, ἐκλίπητε EG &c., ἐκλείπετε D. See note.

9. ἑαυτοῖς ποιήσατε φίλους ἐκ τοῦ μαμωνᾶ τῆς�. Comp. Luke 16:8, ὁ κριτὴς τῆς�, Luke 18:6. It is the qualitative genitive, and describes the characteristic abuse of wealth. This descriptive genitive in Hebrew makes up for the paucity of adjectives. The Greek may imply either, Make the unrighteous mammon your friend; or make yourselves friends by your use of the unrighteous mammon. There is no proof that mammon is the Hebrew equivalent to Plutus, the Greek god of wealth (Matthew 6:24). ‘Mammon’ simply means wealth, and is called ‘unrighteous’ by metonymy (i.e. the ethical character of the use is represented as cleaving to the thing itself) because the abuse of riches is more common than their right use (1 Timothy 6:10). It is not therefore necessary to give to the word ‘unrighteous’ the sense of ‘false’ or ‘unreal,’ though sometimes in the LXX[300] it has almost that meaning. We turn mammon into a friend, and make ourselves friends by its means, when we use riches not as our own to squander, but as God’s to employ in deeds of usefulness and mercy.

[300] LXX. Septuagint.

ὅταν ἐκλίπῃ. Cum defecerit. ‘When it (mammon) fails,’ which the true riches never do (Luke 12:33). The reading ἐκλίπητε means ‘when ye die.’

δέξωνται. The ‘they’ are either the poor who have been made friends by the right use of wealth (comp. Luke 16:4), or the word is the impersonal or categoric plural, as in Luke 12:11; Luke 12:20; Luke 23:31. Comp. Matthew 24:31; Mark 13:27; Tob 4:7. The latter sense seems to be the best, for it is only by analogy that those whom we aid by a right use of riches can be said (‘by their prayers on earth, or their testimony in heaven’) to ‘receive’ us. The notion of a human welcome into heaven does not occur in Scripture.

εἰς τὰς αἰωνίους σκηνάς. ‘Into the eternal tents,’ John 14:2, “And give these the everlasting tabernacles which I had prepared for them,” 2Es 2:11. (Comp. 2 Corinthians 5:1; Isaiah 33:20, and see p. 384.) The general duty inculcated is that of “laying up treasure in heaven” (Matthew 6:20; comp. 1 Timothy 6:17-19). There is no Ebionite reprobation of riches as riches here; only a warning not to trust in them (Mark 10:24).