For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. – 1 Timothy 6:10 (NIV)

Let’s look at the key words in the first sentence in the original Greek.

• love of money – it’s one compound word philagyria, which is philos = lover and argyros = silver. Literally: lover of money.

• a root – a root, source; that which comes from the root, a descendent. And from dictionary.com: “to implant or establish deeply”. So the love of money deeply establishes evil.

• all kinds – all, the whole, every kind of. The NASB translates this word as “all” 731 times, and as “all kinds” just once, here.

• evil – bad, evil, in the widest sense. In this case it’s plural: evils. Translators (NASB, KJV, INT) render this in other verses as “evil things” 5 times and “evils” twice.

It seems a translation more consistent with what they’ve done with other verses would be: For the love of money is a root of all evil things. I’m not sure how they got to the softer approach.

In the second sentence, I just want to look at one phrase: “the faith”. Translators often take out “the”, like in these NIV examples. Try reading them with and without the “the”. See how it changes the meaning to depersonalize it into something more theoretical, like a statement of faith?

• Acts 3:16 “By [the] faith in the name of Jesus”
• Acts 24:24 “he spoke about [the] faith in Christ Jesus”
• Romans 10:8 “the message concerning [the] faith that we proclaim”
• Romans 10:17 “Consequently, [the] faith comes from hearing”
• 2 Corinthians 4:13 “Since we have that same spirit of [the] faith”
• Ephesians 6:16 “take up the shield of [the] faith”
• Titus 2:2 “self-controlled, and sound in [the] faith, in love”

Putting that all together we get:

For the love of money is a root [implanting] of all evil things. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Loving money implants all the evil things in our lives. People who put their trust (faith) in money wander away from trusting in Jesus and end up in a big mess.