Reviewed
Does the Bible say money is the root of all evil?
The verse is the love of money, and the popular version drops those words from the King James too. Two of the other famous differences are translation judgments rather than dropped words, and the correction makes the verse harder, not easier.
Verses everyone quotes wrong · Reviewed
Also asked as Is money the root of all evil? · What does 1 Timothy 6:10 actually say? · The love of money is the root of all evil — meaning
The question
“Money is the root of all evil” is one of the most quoted sentences in English. It gets attributed to the Bible constantly, and it gets listed almost as often among the things people wrongly think are in the Bible.
Both claims are slightly wrong. There is a verse, and it does not say that.
02 The objection — as its best advocate would put it
”It’s the love of money” is the most convenient correction in Christian ethics. It moves the verse off a thing that can be measured — how much you have — and onto an inner state that cannot be. Nobody has ever concluded from this correction that they personally have a problem. It is generally deployed by people with money, in the direction of people with money, and it ends the conversation comfortably.
And the linguistic case is shakier than the correction usually admits. Ancient Greek has no indefinite article. Rendering the noun as “a root” rather than “the root” is a translator’s judgment, not a word printed on the page. The same goes for “all kinds of evil”: the Greek reads, literally, “all the evils”. So of the famous missing words, at least two are decisions made by modern translators, and presenting them as words somebody dropped is not accurate. The King James translators did not lose them. They made a different call.
And the whole exercise looks like damage control. Jesus told a rich man to sell what he had. He said you cannot serve God and Mammon. James is ferocious about the wealthy. Reaching past all of that for one verse in 1 Timothy, in order to establish that money is fine and only attitudes matter, is not restoring context. It is supplying cover.
The second objection is correct and is almost never conceded. So concede it first, and in detail.
The answer
The Greek, laid out. The clause is rhiza gar pantōn tōn kakōn estin hē philargyria. Word for word: “for a root of all the evils is the love of money.”
Three things about the popular version differ from that. They are not equally strong, and it matters which is which.
One: “the love of”. This one is not a judgment call. Philargyria is a single compound noun — literally silver-love — and in that sentence it carries the definite article, which in Greek marks it as the subject of the clause. Rhiza, “root”, has no article, which marks it as the predicate. So the sentence’s subject is the love of money, and what it is being called is a root. The popular quotation removes the subject and puts its object in the subject’s place. That is not a shade of meaning; it is a different sentence.
And here is the detail that settles the argument about who dropped what. The King James Version of 1611 reads: “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” The words “the love of” are in the translation everyone believes they are quoting. The slogan drops them from the King James as well as from every modern version. Nobody translated them away. They fell off in transmission, the way phrases do.
Two: “a root” rather than “the root”. Here the objection is right, and it should be said plainly: Greek has no indefinite article, and rendering an anarthrous predicate noun as “a root” is a translator’s decision. Most modern translations make it, on the grounds that the sentence is describing where a great many evils come from rather than identifying the single origin of evil as such. The King James made the other decision. Neither is forced by the grammar, and a reader who prefers “the root” is not misreading the Greek.
Three: “all kinds of evil” rather than “all evil”. Same situation. The Greek is “all the evils”. Rendering it “all kinds of evil” is an idiomatic judgment, widely made and defensible, and it is a judgment. It is worth noticing why translators make it: read as a strict universal, the sentence would be refuted by a single act of cruelty with no financial motive, and there are many. But that reasoning is interpretation, not grammar.
So the honest score is one out of three beyond dispute, two out of three defensible but contestable. And the one that is beyond dispute is the one carrying all the weight.
Now the harder objection: is the correction convenient?
I do not think so, and the reason is what it does to the target.
“Money is the root of all evil” is a sentence about a substance, and it lets almost everybody off. If money is the problem, then the problem is external, and the person with nothing is automatically innocent. Put the subject back and the verse is about an appetite, and appetites are not means-tested. You do not need to have money to love it. The verse describes something a person can do with an empty account, all day, for a lifetime.
The surrounding paragraph is doing exactly that. Verse 9 is not about the rich: “those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts”. Determined to be — the target is the wanting, which is where nearly everyone lives. And the paragraph opens with contentment as its counterweight: “godliness with contentment is great gain… having food and clothing, we will be content with that” (6:6–8). That is a high bar, and it is not a bar that gets easier the poorer you are.
And what the same chapter says to the rich. Seven verses later Paul turns to them directly, and the instruction is not to divest: “Charge those who are rich in this present world that they not be haughty, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on the living God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to share” (6:17–18).
Read that carefully before using it as a defence, because it is not one. It contains “not haughty”, “hope not set on riches”, “ready to distribute” and “willing to share”, and it assumes those instructions will cost something. What it does not contain is a command to liquidate. Both halves of that are in the text.
One thing this page cannot do. Quoting this verse correctly settles what this verse says. It does not settle what the New Testament says about wealth, and anyone using 1 Timothy 6:10 as a general clearance has quietly changed the subject. “You can’t serve both God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24) is in the same book as the rest of it. So is the man who went away sorrowful. A correct reading of one verse is not a position on a topic, and this page is only offering the first.
The scripture in full
World English Bible · Public domain
1 Timothy 6:6–10
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we certainly can’t carry anything out. But having food and clothing, we will be content with that. But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:17–19
Charge those who are rich in this present world that they not be haughty, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on the living God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to share; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold of eternal life.
Matthew 6:24
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.
Hebrews 13:5
Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have, for he has said, “I will in no way leave you, neither will I in any way forsake you.”
Ecclesiastes 5:10
He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance, with increase: this also is vanity.
Where Christians disagree
“A root” or “the root”
Set out above. The grammar permits both, most modern translations choose the first, the King James chose the second, and Christians who prefer either are not making an error. The choice does change the size of the claim, and it is worth knowing that your translation has made it for you.
How this passage relates to the harder sayings about wealth
Some Christians read 1 Timothy 6:17–19 as the settled New Testament counsel to those who have money: hold it loosely, share it readily, do not build your security on it. Others read the more radical calls — sell what you have, cannot serve two masters — as the norm, and read this passage as pastoral instruction to people who have not yet got there. This is a real difference and it produces very different lives. The letter does not adjudicate between them.
Whether “food and clothing” is a standard or a rhetorical floor
Verse 8 names two things and calls contentment with them great gain. Whether that is a literal sufficiency standard or a deliberate exaggeration marking the direction of travel has been read both ways for a very long time.
What the text does not tell us
- i.Where the line is. No amount, no threshold, no proportion. The verse names an appetite and does not quantify it, which means it cannot be used to classify other people, and cannot be used to clear yourself either.
- ii.How to tell whether you love money. The passage gives no diagnostic. It offers contentment as the opposite and determination-to-be-rich as the symptom, and that is the whole of the description.
- iii.What to do with what you have. “Do good”, “be ready to distribute”, “willing to share” is as specific as it gets. There is no percentage in the passage.
- iv.Whether money itself is good, bad or neutral. This verse does not say. Its subject is an appetite, and it makes no claim about the object of that appetite at all, which is precisely why using it as a verdict on money in either direction misreads it.
- v.Who first shortened it. The slogan is old and its origin is not traceable to any one person. There is no story here about anybody being deceived. A long sentence lost its opening three words, which is the single most common thing that happens to long sentences.
In one paragraph
There is a verse, and it reads: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). The popular version drops “the love of” — and it drops it from the King James Version too, which reads “the love of money is the root of all evil”, so nobody translated the words away; they simply fell off. That change is not a matter of interpretation: in the Greek, the love of money is the grammatical subject of the sentence, and the slogan replaces the subject with its object. The other two differences people cite, “a root” rather than “the root” and “all kinds of evil” rather than “all evil”, are genuine translation judgments that most modern versions make and that the King James did not, and it is more honest to call them judgments than missing words. Restored, the verse is harder rather than easier: it indicts an appetite rather than a balance, and you do not need to have money to have the appetite. What it cannot do is settle what the rest of the New Testament says about wealth, which is a larger and less comfortable subject.
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thefairquestion.com/questions/money-root-of-all-evil/ · Reviewed 2026-07-30 · Scripture: World English Bible, public domain