Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Timothy · About this commentary
The Love of Money
1 Timothy 6:9-10
9 But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation, a snare, and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. · WEB
The letter's most quoted sentence is also its most misquoted, and the wording is careful in three places.
Verse 9 describes not the rich but those determined to be rich — the participle is about intention, and the letter is describing an ambition rather than a bank balance. What follows the ambition is a sequence: a temptation, then a snare, then many senseless and harmful desires, and finally a verb meaning to drag under water.
Verse 10 states the principle, and three details in it are routinely lost.
It is the love of money, not money, that is named. The Greek is a single word for fondness for silver, and the letter has already used its cognate of overseers and deacons 1 Timothy 3:3 1 Timothy 3:8.
It is a root, not the root. The sentence does not claim that all evil grows from this one source, and the English translations agree in not making it exclusive.
And it is a root of all kinds of evil — the range is in the varieties produced, not in a claim to be the sole cause.
The second half of the verse is where the letter's own concern shows. Some, reaching for it, have been led astray from the faith — this is a doctrinal casualty, not merely a moral one, which is why the sentence sits in a passage about teachers who supposed godliness was a means of gain 1 Timothy 6:5.
The closing image is self-inflicted: pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Nobody did it to them.
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