StrongerBible

mammōnas

μαμμωνᾶς

GreekG3126“mammon, money, ...”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 6:24Luk 16:9Luk 16:11Luk 16:13
Word studyResearch-grademah-mo-NAHSSnoun

What mammōnas means

money and material possessions, pictured in Jesus' teaching as a rival master that competes with God for a person's trust and service.

TranslatabilityUntranslatableCertaintySettled

Mammon began as an ordinary, everyday word. In the language Jesus spoke, it simply meant the property a person owns: money, goods, whatever one has. Jewish teachers of the time used it with no hint of evil, telling people to guard a neighbor's money as carefully as their own, and even to honor God with their wealth by giving generously. The word itself was neutral.

What makes it striking in the Gospels is what Jesus does with it. Rather than translate the foreign word, the Gospel writers kept it and set it up as if it were a person, a master. "You cannot serve God and mammon" puts wealth in the place of a rival lord that demands the same whole-life devotion which belongs to God alone. The point is not that money is evil, but that it competes for the loyalty of the heart.

In Luke's Gospel Jesus twice calls it "unrighteous mammon," or "the mammon of unrighteousness." This is not a charge that the money was stolen. It is a way of speaking, common in the Jewish writings of that era, that labels wealth by the corrupt world it belongs to: money as it works in a fallen age, tangled up with injustice and bound to pass away. Against it Jesus sets the "true riches," the lasting wealth of God's kingdom, and asks whether people who cannot be trusted with mere money can be trusted with that.

Mat 6:24Luk 16:9Luk 16:11Luk 16:13

What scholars say about mammōnas

The major lexica converge on a modest gloss: BDAG gives "wealth, property," LSJ simply "wealth," and Louw-Nida places it (domain 57.32) alongside πλοῦτος and χρῆμα. The word is a transliterated Northwest-Semitic loanword (Hebrew/Aramaic מָמוֹן) that never appears in the Septuagint and enters Greek only through the New Testament. Its etymology is genuinely disputed: Hauck (TDNT 4:388-390), Black, and Fitzmyer derive it from the root אמן "to be firm, trustworthy" (mammon as "that in which one trusts"), which would ground the play on πιστός / ἀληθινός vocabulary in Luke 16:10-12; Rüger (ZNW 64 [1973] 127-131) and BDAG prefer Canaanite מון "to provide, nourish" (originally "food, provisions"), supported by Augustine's note that "profit is called mammon in Punic." In pre-Christian Jewish sources (Sirach, Qumran 1QS and CD, the Targums, Pirqe Avot 2:12, the Mishnah) the noun is ordinarily neutral for "property," its negative force supplied by a qualifier. The genitive in μαμωνᾶς τῆς ἀδικίας is widely read (Fitzmyer, Marshall, Bovon, Bock, Green, Johnson) as a Semitic genitive of quality ("dishonest wealth"), paralleling Qumran הון הרשעה and Targumic ממון דשקר; Luke recasts it with the adjective ἄδικος in 16:11 to confirm this. Matthew's and Luke's commentators (Davies-Allison, Luz, France, Nolland, Hagner, Keener) agree that Jesus personifies wealth as a rival κύριος rather than invoking an actual deity; the demonic "Mammon" is a medieval and Miltonic development with no lexicographical basis.

Where scholars disagree about mammōnas

The Semitic root from which mammon derives, which bears on how the wordplay in Luke 16:10-12 should be read.

  • contestedFrom the root meaning "to be firm, trustworthy" (Aramaic אמן), so that mammon originally meant roughly "that in which one puts one's trust"; this would make the surrounding language of faithfulness and true riches a deliberate play on the word.; Friedrich Hauck, "μαμωνᾶς," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 4:388-390; Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3rd ed. (1967); Joseph A. Fitzmyer, "The Story of the Dishonest Manager (Lk 16:1-13)," Theological Studies 25 (1964) 23-42
  • contestedFrom a Canaanite root meaning "to provide, nourish," so that mammon originally meant "food, maintenance, provisions"; this is now the preferred derivation of the standard Greek lexicon.; Hans Peter Rüger, "Μαμωνᾶς," Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 64 (1973) 127-131; BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), s.v. μαμωνᾶς
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), s.v. μαμωνᾶςlexicon
  • LSJ (Liddell-Scott-Jones), s.v. μαμωνᾶςlexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 57.32lexicon
  • Friedrich Hauck, "μαμωνᾶς," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 4:388-390dictionary
  • Hans Peter Rüger, "Μαμωνᾶς," Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 64 (1973) 127-131article
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, "The Story of the Dishonest Manager (Lk 16:1-13)," Theological Studies 25 (1964) 23-42article
  • Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3rd ed. (1967)monograph
  • I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, NIGTC (1978)commentary
  • François Bovon, Luke 2, Hermeneia (2013)commentary
  • Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (1997)commentary
  • Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53, BECNT (1996)commentary
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew, ICC (1988)commentary
  • R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (2007)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of μαμμωνᾶς

dative m s

μαμωνᾷ

Mat 6:24, Luk 16:11, Luk 16:13

genitive m s

μαμωνᾶ

Luk 16:9