The Parable Of The Good Samaritan

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Luke 10:25-37

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best-known parables of Jesus. But like all parables, they serve as illustrations. They shed light on a topic and flesh it out. So when we interpret this parable, we must first find out why Jesus uses this parable. What is Jesus trying to shed light on? At first it might seem that it is to answer the religious lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbor?” whereas there is truth in this statement, there is more to the parable to this than simply to answer this question. To find out why Jesus used this parable, we must look to the entire exchange between Jesus and the lawyer.

When we start at verse 25, we see that the lawyer initiated the dialog. He asks Jesus what good work he should do to inherit eternal life. It also says he asked Jesus to test Him. This was an unusual question to ask as many Jews thought that they inherited eternal life just because they were Jews and that God had promised eternal life to them. It is true that some thought eternal life could be lost by apostacy from Jerusalem. But the view was that eternal life was something not to be lost rather than something to be gained.

In typical rabbinic fashion, Jesus answered the man’s question with a question. He asked the lawyer how he understood the Scripture. The man responded with the well-known combination of the Jewish “Shema” which commanded the Israelite to complete loving commitment to Yahweh. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.” Every Jew was expected to memorize this. But the man adds to this a quote from Leviticus 19: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This too was known by the Jews. Jesus Himself had put these commandments together (Matthew 22:40). These two were the great commandments upon which the Law and the Prophets hung.

Jesus commends the man for having given the correct answer. He adds: “Do this and you shall live.” Jesus’ words sank deep into this man’s heart. They shined upon a defect in the man’s character. The defect did not seem to center upon his devotion to Yahweh, although he should have seen the problem here as this comes first. Instead, he was bothered by the second commandment about love for neighbor which is truly the demonstration of our love for the LORD.

So the men that asks: “Who is my neighbor?” For many Jews, the neighbor was not the person who lived the closest to him or her. It was the closest JEWISH neighbor. Perhaps this man was troubled by this interpretation. Perhaps God had pricked his heart that this was an unsatisfactory response to the second great commandment. The Law of Moses commanded that the strangers who lived within Israel were to be equally treated under the Law. “There shall be one law for you and for the stranger (Exodus 12:49; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:16 et al). As this man was a scholar of the Scripture, he was aware of these verses.

So Jesus answers this question with a parable. He starts it out with the conventional form of the parable. People knew the dangers of the Jericho road. It was narrow and tortured. There were cliffs with caves where robbers would hide on one side and a sheer drop into a canyon on the other. The road was unsafe for the solitary traveler. The robbers would swoop down on the victim in a violent attack and rob him. Usually the victim would be thrown off the cliff afterward as leaving him bloody on the road would warn others of the presence of these highwaymen. But in this case, the half-dead body of the man was left lying on the road.

Jesus goes on by noting that a priest happened to be going down the road. The LORD had called the priests to intercede for the people and their troubles. But the priest was also not to touch a dead body as well (Leviticus 21). The priest also realized that their were robbers in the area. To be off guard by stooping down to check the man put his own life at risk. It is also interesting to note that he was going DOWN the road rather than up the road. The priest was headed toward Jericho and not Jerusalem. There is a metaphor here that people today are likely to miss. One always ascended to Jerusalem regardless of the elevation of the place from which they came. There is a moral component to this. He was morally descending as well as physically descending. The priest who was to be totally dedicated to the service of Yahweh was headed in the wrong direction, EVEN THOUGH he could reason from Scripture that he was avoiding contact with a dead body even though the man was not yet dead. The hearers of this parable probably justified the priest’s action because of this. So the priest passed by on the other side. Perhaps he kept his head up so as not to look at his need for compassion. If he passed by on the side of the road next to the sheer drop, his lack of looking where he was going could have made his descent quite fast.