And the Pharisees also, who were covetous. — The words are important as showing that they had been listening during the previous parable, and that the words, though addressed to the disciples, had been meant also for them. (See Note on Luke 16:1.) The word for “covetous” is literally lovers of money, as distinct from more general cupidity, and as being used by St. Paul in 2 Timothy 3:2, and nowhere else in the New Testament, furnishes another instance of community of language between him and the Evangelist.
Derided him. — The verb implies visible rather than audible signs of scorn — the distended nostril, and the sneering lip, the naso suspendere adunco of the Roman satirist. It is, i.e., a word that forcibly expresses the physiognomy of contempt (see Galatians 6:7). Here again we have a word common to the two writers just named. The motive of the derision lies on the surface. That they, the teachers of Israel, should be told that they were like the Unjust Steward, that they were wasting their Lord’s goods, that they must make friends with the unrighteous mammon of quite another kind than those whom they were wont to court — this was more than they could stand. They have felt the force of the rebuke, and therefore they stifle it with mockery —
“A little grain of conscience made them sour.”