Your riches are corrupted: and your garments are motheaten.
ο πλουτος υμων σεσηπεν και τα ιματια υμων σητοβρωτα γεγονεν
8 Church Fathers comment on this verse
Let us turn to the narrow way. How long shall there be comfort? How long rest? Have we not had enough of carelessness, laughter, and singing? The same foods, satiety, luxury, wealth, purchases, and buildings will not come again. And what is the profit? Death. And what is the end? Ashes and dust, the grave and worms.
The rotting of riches, he says, the eating of garments by moths, and the rust of silver and gold will bear witness against you. They will convict you that you gave nothing away.
Therefore in the last days, that is, at the coming of the Lord, your wealth will prove to be like fire gathered for your destruction. This is what the rich man mentioned in the Gospel experienced.
"As fire, which you have treasured up in the last days" must be joined to the words "your riches." The sense is this: "your riches, which you gathered like fire, and spent and squandered on pleasures upon the earth."
Riches cannot hinder a good man, because he spends them mercifully. Nor can they help a bad man in anything, so long as he either hoards them through greed or squanders them through luxury.
The fire of Gehenna will burn not only impious and merciless rich men. Even before the judgment of their souls, it will consume their rotten wealth and empty glory. By these they could easily have redeemed their own wantonness during life.
Lest any of the rich say, “O blessed James, why do you compel us to weep, since we have received wealth from God, according to Ecclesiastes: ‘To every man to whom God has given wealth and possessions’” (Eccl 5:18)?
“Perhaps wealth is evil, and the rich deserve weeping? If this were so, then God, who gives wealth, would be the cause of evil.”
Answering this, the brother of God says: do not think, O rich men, that I call wealth evil, or that wealth by itself mediates torment for those who have it. No.
The evil use of wealth is what makes wealth evil. For, O rich man, God did not give you various garments so that you would leave them in chests and let moths devour them.
He gave them so that you might clothe your naked brothers with them. God did not give you gold and silver so that rust from many years would consume them and reduce all this to nothing.
He gave them so that you might distribute them to the poor and needy. Therefore the wise Sirach rightly said: “Riches are good when there is no sin in them, and poverty is evil in the mouth of the ungodly” (Sir 13:30).
And again: “Riches are not fitting for a stingy man, and what use are possessions to an envious man?” (Sir 14:3). Solomon says: “Why was there wealth for a fool?” (Prov 17:16).
By these words the wise show that neither wealth nor poverty can be considered evil in themselves. Rather, the evil or good use and the free choice of man produce good or evil.
Therefore, he says, since you rich have not used your wealth for good, so as to distribute it to the poor, weep and howl as you remember the torments coming upon you for your love of silver and hard-heartedness.
For the rottenness of the garments and the rust of the silver will all stand before you on the day of judgment, as though animate and rational, in witness against your merciless mind.
The wealth you gathered while giving no alms will devour your flesh on the last day of judgment like a certain fire that you yourselves gathered upon your head.
Then you will repent much, but without any profit. You did not gather wealth in heaven through almsgiving, but gathered it only for yourselves, for punishment, unquenchable fire, and torments.
Therefore the Lord forbade Christians to gather treasures on earth, but commanded them to gather treasures in heaven: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where worm and decay, that is, rust, destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
But lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither worm nor decay destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Mt 6:19-20).
The Apostle Paul also writes the following to Timothy: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty,” but “to do good, to be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share.
They are to store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of eternal life” (1 Tim 6:17-19).
Here there is a denunciation and condemnation of the rich, but not of all rich men or of every kind. Neither Christ nor His apostles preached equality of possessions among people, nor did they condemn wealth unconditionally.
The Apostle condemns to grievous miseries only those rich men who hoped that wealth, and not the mercy of God, could turn away from them the calamities of the days to come, “you have heaped up treasure in the last days” (v. 3).
He condemns those who withheld the wages of the workers who reaped their fields, so that the cries of the reapers reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth (v. 4).
He condemns those who lived in luxury on the earth and indulged themselves, fattening their hearts as animals are fattened for slaughter, “as in a day of slaughter” (v. 5).
He condemns those who condemned and killed the righteous man, though He did not resist them, and therefore deserved mercy all the more (v. 6).
Rich men for whom nothing is dear except their gold truly deserve strict condemnation.
“Your riches have rotted,” and so forth. This is a depiction of the judgment of God itself upon the rich, turning every earthly wealth into nothing.
In the spirit of the ancient prophets, the future is presented as already accomplished, to affirm the certainty of this future judgment.
By riches here is meant not only wealth that can undergo rotting. The particular stands in place of the general, and denotes every kind of wealth, or wealth in general.
The concept of rotting likewise generally signifies the corruption and destruction of all wealth, in the sense that your wealth has perished.
“Your garments are moth-eaten” (cf. Mt 6:19). The general concept of wealth is further specified in particular features: garments, gold, and silver.
Garments, which form part of wealth (cf. Gen 28:20; Gen 41:14 and the like), when eaten by moths, are no longer of any use (cf. Job 13:28; Isa 51:8).
After a general instruction to the powerful and the rich, the Apostle turns with a special instruction to the rich. He exhorts them to weep and howl, since every adversity may be especially grievous for those accustomed to the comforts and abundance of life.
This will happen when their wealth rots and becomes the possession of moth and rust, when their very body decays, and afterward is delivered to fire in the last days. That is, according to the word of the Lord, when evil men go into everlasting fire.
Here the words of Christ are, as it were, reproduced: do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy.
Recalling the Lord’s words, “but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Mt 6:19-20), the Apostle speaks as if rebuking sinful Christians who keep their treasures until death without using them as Christians ought.
“So this is how you have fulfilled the commandment of your Lawgiver! Behold what a sorrowful lot is yours for this!”
Many of the unrepentant rich men exposed by the Apostle were overtaken by the foretold wrath of God at the destruction of Jerusalem. Then, according to the Savior’s word, there was such great tribulation as had not been from the beginning of the world (see Mt 24:21).
An even more fearful lot awaits these rich men and those like them in the life to come.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 10 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS