The steward repeats the same move with a second debtor. He had called "every one of his lord's debtors" (Luke 16:5), and each question was a chance to put someone in his debt before he lost his position. The second debt was in wheat rather than oil, and this time the reduction was smaller: from a hundred measures to "fourscore," that is, eighty.

The debtor answered, "An hundred measures of wheat." The steward said, "Take thy bill, and write fourscore" (Luke 16:7). Then the story turns: "the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light" (Luke 16:8). Jesus Himself then draws the lesson for His disciples (Luke 16:9).

"Fourscore" is the old English word for eighty. The measure of wheat was the kor, which Barnes, following Dr. Arbuthnot's tables, puts at "about 32 pecks, or 8 bushels," though he notes larger reckonings of about fourteen bushels. A hundred kors was a very large debt. Gill notes that it is "the same quantity as in" Ezra 7:22, "where, as here, they are called an hundred measures of wheat," where the Persian king allowed Ezra up to that amount for the house of God.

The two debtors make the steward's method clear. He was generous, but with his master's goods. Jesus' surprising comment is that "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light" (Luke 16:8). People who live only for this world are often more careful and energetic about their future than God's people are about theirs.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary makes the same point: worldly people are foolish in what they aim at, but "in their activity, and perseverance, they are often wiser than believers." Jesus then turns the story into a call to faithfulness: "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much" (Luke 16:10).