Biblion Bible Commentary
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Who Is My Neighbor?
Luke 10:25-37
25 Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” · WEB
A lawyer asks a question designed to limit his obligations, and the answer changes which end of it he is standing at.
"Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Luke 10:25.
The man is a specialist in the law and the account says he tested him. The question is an examination question, and it is met with an examiner's reply: "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" Luke 10:26.
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart... and your neighbor as yourself" Luke 10:27. In the other Gospels this pairing comes from Jesus Mark 12:28–34; here the lawyer supplies it himself and is told he is right. "Do this, and you will live" Luke 10:28 — and the emphasis falls on the first word.
But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Luke 10:29.
The motive is stated. The second question is not curiosity but boundary-drawing, and it is the natural next step for anyone who has just been told to do something impossible: establish the limits. Every definition of neighbor produces a list, and every list has an outside.
"A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead" Luke 10:30.
The road drops over three thousand feet in seventeen miles through rock country, and it had a reputation. Notice what the stripping does: with his clothes gone and unconscious, the man cannot be identified. Nobody can tell his nation, his class or his religion. He is reduced to a body by the side of a road, which is the parable's first move — it removes every category the lawyer's question depends on.
By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also Luke 10:31–32.
Both are temple men, and both are going down — away from Jerusalem, their duty behind them. Contact with a corpse would have made them unclean Numbers 19:11, and at that distance you cannot tell a dead man from a dying one without touching him. So there was a defensible reason, and the parable does not supply it. It simply records that they crossed the road, twice, in identical words.
"But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was" Luke 10:33.
The hearer expects a third temple official or an ordinary Israelite. What arrives is a member of the people this book has just shown refusing him hospitality Luke 9:53 — the near neighbor whose religion was held to be a counterfeit, and the enmity ran both ways.
He was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him Luke 10:33–34.
Seven verbs in two verses, and every one of them costs. The oil and wine were his own supplies; the animal means he now walks; the inn means money; took care of him means he stayed the night. And then the part that is easily missed: he leaves two denarii, two days' wages, and takes on an open-ended liability — whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return Luke 10:35. He has guaranteed a stranger's debts to an innkeeper.
"Which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?" Luke 10:36.
The question has been turned inside out. The lawyer asked who qualifies as his neighbor — who is on the list of people he must love. He is asked instead which man acted as a neighbor. The word has moved from a category you assign to others to a thing you do, and once it moves there the list is unusable.
He said, "He who showed mercy on him" Luke 10:37. He cannot bring himself to say the word Samaritan, and he gives the right answer.
"Go and do likewise." Which returns him exactly to where he started, with do this and you will live — no longer as a problem to be defined but as a man on a road who will pass somebody.
settled What this mark means