Money

Money in Scripture is, first, a quantity of weighed metal — chiefly silver and gold — used to buy, sell, hire, and give, and by extension the wealth that such metal represents. The Hebrew word commonly translated "money" is the same word for silver, and the texts describe it being measured on a balance rather than counted as coin: some "pour out gold from the bag, and weigh silver in the balance" (Isaiah 46:6). Household wealth is listed in the same terms, "flocks and herds, silver and gold, male servants and female servants, and camels and donkeys" (Genesis 24:35). Linguistically and historically, coined money belongs to the later biblical world; the silver pieces of the Passion narrative (Matthew 27:5) and the "silver or gold" Peter says he lacks (Acts 3:6) reflect that later economy, while the patriarchs' wealth was metal by weight.

Scripture treats money as real and useful but never neutral in its effects. It is a proper medium of exchange and gift — the magi open their treasures and offer "gold, frankincense, and myrrh" (Matthew 2:11), and the islands and ships of Tarshish bring "their silver and their gold with them" as an offering to the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 60:9). It is also a standing temptation in religious life: leaders who "judge for bribes," priests who "teach for a price," and prophets who "tell fortunes for money" are denounced together, precisely because they still say, "Isn't Yahweh among us?" (Micah 3:11). The prophets press further, measuring worship itself by money's absence — "you have bought me no sweet cane with money" (Isaiah 43:24) — and announcing a commerce that money cannot conduct: "Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! ... buy wine and milk without money and without price," followed by the sharper question, "Why do you spend money for that which is not bread?" (Isaiah 55:1–2).

The New Testament draws the same line at redemption. Believers are "redeemed, not with corruptible things like silver or gold," but from an inherited way of life (1 Peter 1:18), and the pastoral warning is exact in its wording: "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil," through which some "have been led astray from the faith" (1 Timothy 6:10) — the text names the love of it, not the thing itself.

Christian traditions have read this material differently. Ascetic and monastic traditions, and Anabaptist traditions of simplicity, have taken the warnings as counsel toward poverty or plain living; classical and Reformation-era moral theology has generally treated money and trade as legitimate goods within a well-ordered common life, while insisting that greed is the vice condemned; modern Catholic social teaching frames money in terms of stewardship and the common good; and prosperity teaching reads material blessing as a sign of divine favor, a reading other traditions judge incompatible with Isaiah 55:1–2 and 1 Peter 1:18.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.