Biblion Bible Commentary
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Where Are the Nine?
Luke 17:11-19
11 As he was on his way to Jerusalem, he was passing along the borders of Samaria and Galilee. · WEB
Ten lepers are cleansed on the road and one comes back — the wrong one, by every reckoning of the day.
As he was on his way to Jerusalem, he was passing along the borders of Samaria and Galilee Luke 17:11.
The geography is the setting for what follows. A borderland is where a mixed group of outcasts would be, and this one is mixed.
Ten men who were lepers met him, who stood at a distance Luke 17:12. The distance is required of them by the law Leviticus 13:45–46, and it is the only relationship any of them has had with a healthy person for years.
"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Luke 17:13. Shouted, because that is the only way to be heard from where they are standing.
"Go and show yourselves to the priests." As they went, they were cleansed Luke 17:14.
Nothing happens while they stand there. He sends ten visibly diseased men to present themselves for the certification of a cure they do not have, and the healing occurs somewhere on the road. All ten obey, and all ten are cleansed — the account is careful about that, and it means their faith was real. They set out on his word alone.
One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice Luke 17:15.
The loud voice is the same one that begged from a distance. And turned back means he broke off an errand he had been given, which is the interesting part: the nine are doing exactly what they were told.
He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan Luke 17:16.
The last clause is held to the end of the sentence, and it is the point of the story. Leprosy had put a Samaritan and nine Jews into the same company outside the villages; the cure ended that. Restored to health, the nine could go back to their people, and he could not go back with them.
"Weren't the ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there none found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?" Luke 17:17–18.
The questions are not put to the man kneeling in front of him — they are asked of the bystanders, and the tone is closer to grief than to anger. Something was missing and its absence is noticed.
What the nine missed is worth naming. They received a real gift, obeyed a real instruction, and went where they were sent. They lost nothing that was given them. What they never got was the thing that only happens when a person turns around.
"Get up, and go your way. Your faith has healed you" Luke 17:19.
He is told something the other nine are not, and the verb has shifted. They were cleansed; this word is the one used for being made whole, and it is the word this Gospel uses of salvation. In a book where a Samaritan is the hero of its best parable Luke 10:33, a Samaritan is now the one man in ten who came back.
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