Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 16:6

"And he said, A hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bond, and sit down quickly and write fifty." — Luke 16:6 (ASV)

Take your bill, and sit down quickly.—The better manuscripts give, your bills, or your documents, in the plural. These would include what corresponded to the modern lease, the contract which specified the rent, and probably also the memorandum of the due delivery of the annual share of the produce.

In this case the measure is the Hebrew bath, which has been variously estimated, the data being uncertain and conflicting, at from one to three gallons to the higher number stated in the marginal note.

The steward, by thus tempting the debtors with an immediate gain and making them sharers in his frauds, took the quickest and most direct means of securing both their favor and their silence. What corresponded to this in the first application of the parable was the conduct of the Pharisees, in direct proportion to how they lost the moral force they had once exercised, by accommodating their casuistry to the selfishness of their followers.

Thus, by their Corban teaching (see Note on Matthew 15:5), they released men from the obligation of supporting parents; made perjury easy by their artificial distinctions regarding oaths (Matthew 5:33; Matthew 23:16–22); gave a wide license to lust through their doctrine of divorce (Matthew 5:31; Matthew 19:3); and substituted the paying of tithes of mint, and anise, and cummin for the weightier matters of the Law (Matthew 23:23).

Similar phenomena have been observed in analogous circumstances in the history of the Christian Church. When Leo X sent out his preachers of indulgences with their short and easy methods of salvation; when Jesuit confessors were to be found in every court of Europe, doing nothing to preserve their devotees from a fathomless licentiousness; when Protestant theologians adjusted their teachings to the times and pandered to the passions of a Henry VIII or a Landgrave of Hesse; when the preachers of justification by faith turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, or made it compatible with a life of money-making worldliness; when men lower the standard of duty to gain support and popularity—in all these instances, the act of the steward in telling the debtor to write fifty measures when he owed a hundred, finds its counterpart.