The end of the letter. The Philippians have sent Paul money in prison by the hand of Epaphroditus, and he has to thank them — which is more delicate than it sounds. In the ancient world a gift created an obligation, and a wandering teacher who accepted money risked being classed with the paid sophists Paul elsewhere goes out of his way not to resemble. He has taken support from no other congregation. These verses are him accepting money without accepting patronage, and every phrase is weighed.
What happens
"Brothers and sisters: I rejoice greatly in the master that now at last you revived your concern for me… Not that I say this because of need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I find myself, to be self-sufficient. I know indeed how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me… It is not that I am eager for the gift; rather, I am eager for the profit that accrues to your account. I have received full payment and I abound. I am very well supplied because of what I received from you through Epaphroditus, 'a fragrant aroma,' an acceptablesacrifice, pleasing to Theos. My Theos will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus."
What to notice
The opening verb is a gardener's. Anethalete to hyper emou phronein — "you made your concern for me bloom again."Anathallō is what a dry tree does when it puts out leaves; the Septuagint uses it in Ezekiel 17:24 for exactly that. And Paul immediately covers for them — you were thinking of me, but you had no opportunity — praising the gift and excusing the gap in one sentence. Then the word that would have made an educated reader sit up. Emathon en hois eimi autarkēs einai, "I have learned, in whatever circumstances I am, to be autarkēs."Autarkeia is the flagship term of Stoic and Cynic ethics: self-sufficiency, the condition of the sage who needs nothing outside himself and is therefore beyond the reach of fortune. Paul claims it — and then, three verses later, blows it apart:panta ischyō en tō endynamounti me, "I have strength for all things in the one who empowers me."The Stoic's whole point is that the sufficiency is auto-, from oneself. Paul says he has acquired it and names an external supply. The word survives; the doctrine does not. And the verb for how he learned it is startling: memyēmai — the technical term of the mystery religions, "I have been initiated." English gives "I have learned the secret," which is right but tame; memyēmai is what one says after the rites at Eleusis. Paul says he has been initiated into the mystery of being full and of going hungry, and the initiation, on the evidence of the letter, took place in a prison. Then the passage turns into bookkeeping, and the vocabulary is exact: eislogon doseōs kai lēmpseōs, "to an account of giving and receiving," a standard phrase for a two-column ledger; ton karpon ton pleonazonta eis logon hymōn, the interest accruing to your account; and apechō de panta — apechō is the receipt formula, the word stamped on paid invoices all over the Egyptian papyri. He is issuing them a receipt. And then, without transition, the ledger becomes an altar: osmēn euōdias, thysian dektēn, euareston tō theō — Levitical language, the formula of Exodus 29:18 and Leviticus 1:9 for a burnt offering Theos accepts. He has talked like an accountant for six verses and suddenly talks like a priest. The money did not go to Paul. It went up. The last line closes the loop with one verb: Paul says peplērōmai, I have been filled, and then ho de theos mou plērōsei pasan chreian hymōn, and my Theos will fill your every need.They filled him; Theos will fill them.
Psalm 111 and Psalm 112 are twins and must be read together. Both are acrostics of twenty-two half-lines, aleph to tav; both the same length and shape.Psalm 111 is about the works of Yahweh. Psalm 112 is about the man who fears him — and it hands that man, phrase by phrase, the attributes the previous psalm gave to Theos.
The selected verses
Psalm 112:1–2."Blessed the man who fears Yahweh, who greatly delights in his commands. His posterity shall be mighty upon the earth; the upright generation shall be blessed." Psalm 112:5–6."Well for the man who is gracious and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice; he shall never be moved; the just one shall be in everlastingremembrance." Psalm 112:8a, 9."His heart is steadfast; he shall not fear. Lavishly he gives to the poor; his generosity shall endure forever; his horn shall be exalted in glory."
What to notice
Put the two psalms in parallel and the transfer is unmistakable. Psalm 111:3 says of Yahweh: v'tzidqato omedet la'ad, "and his righteousness stands forever."Psalm 112:3 says of the man who fears him: v'tzidqato omedet la'ad — word for word, the same clause.Psalm 111:4 calls Yahweh channunv'rachum, gracious and compassionate; Psalm 112:4 uses the same two adjectives of the righteous man. This is not sloppiness. It is the point of writing the two poems as a pair.Tov ish chonen u-malveh, "good is the man who is gracious and lends" — the verb lavah in a context where interest on a loan to a fellow Israelite was forbidden: lending that expects the principal back and nothing more.Y'khalkel devarav b'mishpat has a homelier verb than "conducts his affairs" suggests: kul is to hold, to sustain, to provision, the word for supplying a household with food. He provisions his affairs with justice, the way one stocks a larder. And Psalm 112:9 is the verse the day is built on: pizzar natan la'evyonim, "he has scattered, he has given to the needy."Pazar is not careful distribution; it is the verb for scattering, strewing, flinging. Paul quotes this exact line in 2 Corinthians 9:9 while raising money for the Jerusalem collection — which means the psalm turns up in the New Testament in precisely the context it has here: a letter about a gift.Qarno tarum b'khavod, "his horn shall be lifted up in glory" — the horn being the standard image of a beast's strength, and the passive doing what passives do in this literature. He scatters; he is lifted.
These verses are the application of yesterday's parable about the manager who was fired and spent the afternoon making friends. Luke has attached a small cluster of sayings to it — and then, at the end, tells us who was listening.
What happens
"I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters… You cannot serve Theos and mammon." The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all these things and sneered at him. And he said to them, "You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but Theos knows your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of Theos."
What to notice
Mamōnas is not Greek. It is an Aramaic loanword, and its root is almost certainly '-m-n — the root of amen, of emunah, faithfulness, of he'emin, to trust. Mammon is, etymologically, the thing in which one puts confidence. Which makes Luke 16:13 a sentence about two objects of trust rather than about religion and finance: you cannot rely on Theos and on that-which-is-relied-on. The word contains its own indictment. Then count the occurrences of pistos, trustworthy, in Luke 16:10–12: three times, with adikos, untrustworthy, twice more. Five uses of the trust-word in three verses, arranged as a set of proportions — small to great, false wealth to true, another's to your own. That last pair repays stopping on. En tō allotriō, "in what belongs to another," is what money is called; to hymeteron, "your own," is what the true wealth is called. The categories are reversed from the way anyone naturally holds them: the money in my account is described as somebody else's, and the thing I do not yet have is described as mine. Aiōnious skēnas, "eternal tents," is a small oxymoron and probably deliberate — a skēnē is by definition temporary, the booth of Sukkot, the tent of the wilderness. "Everlasting tents" is a phrase that will not sit still, which is about right for a saying about converting a currency that will fail. Exemyktērizon auton, of the Pharisees, is wonderfully physical: from myktēr, nostril — they nose-mocked him. Luke says flatly that they were philargyroi, lovers of silver. And the closing sentence lands two heavy words: hoi dikaiountes heautous enōpion tōn anthrōpōn, "the ones justifying yourselves before people" — the same verb Luke used of the lawyer in Luke 10:29 — and bdelygma, abomination, which is not mild. It is the Septuagint's term for idolatry, the word in Daniel's abomination of desolation.He has just been asked to choose between two masters, and he ends by calling public esteem an idol.
How They Fit Together
A ledger, an altar, and a currency that is stated to fail
Calls it someone else's, and says it can be converted into friends
Philippians ends today, and it ends on a thank-you note for money — the least likely place for a great passage, and it turns out to be one.
Watch what Paul does with the Stoic vocabulary. Autarkēs is not a casual word; it is the technical center of the most respected ethical system in his world. The sage is autarkēs — needing nothing from outside, and therefore beyond the reach of fortune, which is what makes him free. Paul says he has learned it. And then he says how:panta ischyō en tō endynamounti me, I have strength for everything in the one who empowers me.Auto-, from oneself, has been replaced by en, in someone. He keeps the freedom from circumstance and relocates its source entirely outside himself — not a refinement of Stoicism but its inversion.
And the verb he uses for having learned it — memyēmai, I have been initiated — belongs to the mystery cults. He treats knowing how to be hungry as an esoteric attainment, which anyone who has been hungry involuntarily will recognize as an honest description.
Then he does the day's decisive thing. He has been writing like a merchant — an account of giving and receiving, interest accruing, paid in full — and without warning he switches registers and calls their money osmē euōdias, a fragrance of sweet smell, an acceptablesacrifice. The gift does not stop being a transaction; it stops being a transaction with him. The ledger has a third party in it, and once it does, Paul's debt is not to them: my Theos will fill up your every need.
Which is exactly the move Jesus recommends, in blunter language. Money is to allotrion, someone else's, it is mamōnas tēs adikias, and it fails — stated as a plain fact about the asset class. So the counsel is to spend it on the one thing that outlasts it: poiēsate heautois philous, make yourselves friends.Convert a currency that will fail into people who will receive you. That is what yesterday's manager did with his last afternoon of authority, and it is what the Philippians did with a sum of money sent to a prison.
And the psalm names the same act with the same violence Luke gives it: pizzar natan la'evyonim — he scattered, he gave to the poor. Not budgeted, not allocated. Scattered. And the psalm's structural joke is that a man who does this is described in the exact words Psalm 111 uses of Theos. The acrostic pair makes a theological claim by rhyming: this is what the imitation of Theos looks like from the outside.
One last thread. Mamōnas comes from the root behind amen.It is the word for the thing you lean on. So the choice in Luke 16:13 is not between piety and prudence; it is between two things that will hold you up, one of which the passage says will fail. And a man in prison who has just been sent money writes back that he has learned the secret of hunger and plenty alike, and that his Theos will supply their needs — not that he will.
A Question to Sit With
Paul was in prison, on someone else's money, and he wrote back to say he had been initiated into a mystery: how to be full and how to be hungry, and that neither one had the power to move him. Then, in the same breath, he told them their gift had gone up as a sweet smell — meaning it had never really been addressed to him at all. I am considerably more moved by the amount than he was, in both directions. What am I currently leaning on so habitually that I would only notice it by its absence — and is it something the gospel says will fail?