Mammon

Mammon is a Aramaic/Syriac word meaning wealth or riches, used by Jesus in two key passages. In Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13, Jesus states: "No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and mammon." Here Mammon functions almost as a rival deity — wealth personified as a competing lord that demands total allegiance. The parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16:1–13 develops the theme by commending the shrewd use of "mammon of unrighteousness" (material wealth) to make friends for eternity, while concluding with the absolute incompatibility of serving both God and wealth.

Jesus's use of the Aramaic term rather than the standard Greek word for money (chrēmata or argyros) may indicate a well-known cultural concept in the Judaism of his day — wealth as a potentially idolatrous attachment. The later medieval personification of Mammon as a demon of greed (appearing in Spenser, Milton, and others) extended this Jesuanic usage into full demonization. The theological point in both Gospel passages is that loyalty is indivisible: the claim of God and the claim of wealth are mutually exclusive ultimate allegiances.