Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Luke 16:1-13, The dishonest manager
A rich man's manager, about to be dismissed for wasting his master's property, calls in the master's debtors and cuts their bills. The master praises his shrewdness.
Luke 16:1-13, in every translation this tool compares.
A wealthy owner learns that his estate manager has been squandering his goods and gives him notice. Too weak for manual labor and too proud to beg, the manager quickly reduces what each debtor owes so that they will take him in once he is out of work. The owner praises his cleverness, and Jesus draws lessons about using money to win friends, being faithful with small things, and the impossibility of serving both God and wealth.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/estates-and-laborers\/","n":"Estates, tenants and day laborers","s":"Wealthy owners, often living in town, let their land to tenant farmers for a share of the crop or hired day laborers in the marketplace and paid them a denarius at sundown.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/debts-and-lending\/","n":"Debts, talents and lending","s":"A denarius was a day's pay and a talent about six thousand of them. Creditors could jail a debtor until someone paid, and people with spare money buried it or lent it at steep interest.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/patrons-and-benefactors\/","n":"Patrons, clients and benefactors","s":"Favors in the Roman world came with strings. A patron gave help and protection, the client paid it back in loyalty and public honor, and rulers who gave gifts to the public were hailed as benefactors.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/honor-and-shame\/","n":"Honor before a crowd","s":"Public standing was the currency of the ancient Mediterranean. People competed for honor and dreaded being shamed in front of others.","r":""}
Who the debtors were is read differently: Bailey takes them to be renters paying a fixed quantity of the crop, while Strauss, in the Zondervan backgrounds commentary, thinks the size of the debts suggests wealthy merchants. The debtors make the changes in their own hand (the cultural backgrounds notes; Bailey). In hard times landowners sometimes wrote off part of a debt and were praised as benevolent, and Keener and his notes argue that the master cannot now undo the cuts without losing the honor he has just been given. What the manager cut is disputed. Wright argues that he removed hidden interest, since Jews got round the ban on lending at interest by lending in kind, so the master could not complain without exposing himself. Blomberg answers that the amounts "do not correspond to any known interest or commission rates of the day", the ESV Study Bible thinks the cuts too large for a commission, and Bailey rejects the interest theory because "it of necessity implicates the master in dishonest dealings." Bailey, Blomberg and Wright agree that the one who praises the manager is the master in the story.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Luke 16:1, 16:2-4, 16:5, 16:6-7, 16:8 and 16:9-13
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Luke 16:1, 16:3, 16:4, 16:6, 16:7, 16:8 and 16:13
- Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes, Poet and Peasant, ch. 5, Exegesis of Luke 16:1-13
- Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, ch. 26, The Parable of the Unjust Steward
- Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 7.7 The Unjust Steward
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Luke 16:8a
- N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, comment on Luke 16:1-9
- Mark L. Strauss, Luke, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Luke 16:3, 16:5, 16:6-7, 16:8, 16:9 and 16:13
