What Does Luke 16:14 Mean?
The separated ones also heard all these things, being silver-lovers, and they turned up their noses at him.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him.THE KEY
A person can hear the truth clearly while the love of silver turns the response into a sneer.
THE MEANING
You can hear a truth and still meet it with contempt when it threatens what you love. The verse names that attachment as love of silver and lets the sneer expose the conflict. Hearing reaches the ear; it does not by itself mean the heart receives.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that hearing a truth means letting it reach you; someone can hear clearly and still use ridicule to guard an attachment.
THE ROOT
φιλάργυροι
philargyroi
GROWS FROM
φιλ- + ἀργυρ- (a Greek compound)
Love of silver; fondness for money.
“silver-lovers” in this verse is philargyroi. English “covetous” can sound like a general flaw, but this Greek compound makes the object visible: silver is loved. It links desire to allegiance, so the derision follows as a response from people already attached to wealth.
ALSO GROWS
philos: Loving; friend or beloved.
φίλος
This supplies the affection in “covetous”: silver is not merely present but loved.
argyros: Silver.
ἄργυρος
This names the object beneath the broader English word “covetous.”
ἐξεμυκτήριζον
exemyktērizon
GROWS FROM
μυκτηρ-
Nose; the basis of the gesture of turning up one’s nose.
“turned up their noses at him” in this verse is exemyktērizon. “Derided” can sound like speech alone, but the Greek word carries the image of a nose turned up in contempt. The sneer makes visible on the face the resistance stirred by what they hear.
ALSO GROWS
myktēr: Nose.
μυκτήρ
The bodily source of the image shows contempt as a visible gesture.
myktērizō: To turn up the nose at; to sneer or mock.
μυκτηρίζω
This related verb shares the root used for “mocked” in Galatians 6:7.
THE PATTERN
When wealth becomes the heart’s beloved, it cannot satisfy and begins to rival allegiance to God.
The lover of silver is not filled with silver, and the lover of the crowd is not filled with the harvest. This too is vapor.No one can serve two masters, for he will either hate the one and love the other, or he will hold fast to one and look down on the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.For the love of silver is a root of all evil, which some, reaching out for it, have wandered away from trust, and pierced themselves through with many pains.THE THREAD
Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.Luke’s “derided” and Galatians’ “mocked” share the μυκτηρ- word family, whose image is turning up the nose. In Luke the sneer answers what they hear; Galatians says that contempt does not erase what is sown.
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