Five-minute study · Day 96 · 1 Timothy 6
1 Timothy 6:10
A word worth stopping on: love of money φιλαργυρία philargyria
This is the most misquoted verse in the New Testament. People say 'money is the root of all evil.' Paul wrote something sharper and more specific. He said the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Three differences in one sentence: it is the love, not the money itself; it is a root, one among many; and it produces all kinds of evil, not all evil categorically. The Greek behind 'love of money' is a single compound word, and it exposes exactly what Paul was targeting.
Word study: love of money
- Greek
- φιλαργυρία
- Pronounced
- philargyria
- Strong's
- G5365
- Definition
- Avarice, love of silver. A compound of philos (love, affection) and argyros (silver).
Philargyria is built from two Greek roots. Philos means fond of, affectionate toward, drawn to. It is the friendship word, the word that names the city of Philadelphia and describes the bond between David and Jonathan. Argyros means silver, the metal that served as everyday currency in the Roman world. Gold was for large transactions and state reserves. Silver was what you held in your hand at the market.
The compound targets something precise: an emotional attachment to currency. Philargyria targets the emotional attachment to wealth, the fondness for it, the way you are fond of a friend. The miser who counts coins at night, the executive who checks portfolio balances before checking on family, the person who measures every relationship by its financial utility: philargyria names the condition.
Paul wrote 'a root' with no definite article in the Greek. Rhiza is anarthrous, which means he deliberately avoided saying 'the root.' Greek grammar gave him the option and he declined it. He was identifying one root system among several. Philargyria does not explain every evil. It does, however, send tendrils into an extraordinary range of them.
Historical context · First century AD
Silver in the Roman Economy
The Roman denarius was a silver coin weighing about 3.9 grams. A laborer earned one denarius per day (Matthew 20:2). When Paul used argyros in his compound word, his readers pictured something specific: the coin they handled daily, the weight of a day's work sitting in the palm.
Timothy was stationed at Ephesus, one of the wealthiest cities in the Roman East. The temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, functioned simultaneously as a religious center and a banking institution. Deposits were made at the temple. Loans were issued from its treasury. The silversmiths who made Artemis shrines had rioted against Paul years earlier because his preaching threatened their revenue (Acts 19:24-27). The love of silver was not an abstraction in Ephesus. It had a street address.
Philargyria appears in several ancient Greek moralists. Diogenes Laertius attributes to Diogenes the Cynic the observation that the love of money is the mother-city (metropolis) of all evils. Paul's phrasing echoes a broader Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, but he roots it in pastoral reality: people in the Ephesian church were being drawn away from the faith by financial ambition (6:9-10).
For reflection
Paul separated money from the love of money. One is a tool; the other is an attachment. When you think about your finances this week, which word better describes your relationship to them: stewardship or affection?
Philargyria uses the friendship word. It describes silver as a companion you are drawn to, something you enjoy being near. That is the diagnostic.
Sources: BDAG Lexicon; Marshall, 'Pastoral Epistles' (ICC); Diogenes Laertius, 'Lives of the Eminent Philosophers' 6.50