Luke 16:9

Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness The Greek may mean 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. 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.

when ye fail i.e. when ye die; but some good MSS. read "when it (mammon) fails," which the true riches never do (Luke 12:33).

they may receive you The - they" are either the poor who have been made friends by the right use of wealth; or the word is impersonal, as in Luke 12:11; Luke 12:20; Luke 23:31. The latter sense seems to be the best, for it is only by a very secondary and subordinate 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.

into everlasting habitations Rather, into the eternal tents, John 14:2. "And give these the everlasting tabernacles which I had prepared for them," Esther 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 asriches here; only a warning not to trust in them. (Mark 10:24.)