Luke 16:19-31

Parable of Dives and Lazarus (Lk. only). The story may have originally ended at Luke 16:23 or at Luke 16:25, and been intended simply to illustrate the contrasted lot of poor and rich in this world and the next. Cf. Luke 6:21; Luke 6:24. Inequality is redressed apart from moral considerations. We need not suppose that Dives was specially cruel; if Lazarus had only got harsh treatment at his door he would have shifted his pitch. Certain points are (as usual in the parables) ignored, e.g. the fate of the godly rich or the wicked poor, and the unequal balance of temporal comfort and eternal woe. To the rich man's deprivation is added punishment, so that we have to assume that he was not only rich but wicked. The five brothers are types of unbelieving, unrepentant Judaism, and the object of the addition (Luke 16:26) to the parable is to show that their unbelief is without excuse. Moses and the prophets really testified to the Messiahship of Jesus and therefore how to avoid Gehenna. It is scarcely necessary to find in Luke 16:31 an allusion to the resurrection of Jesus, or even to the raising of Lazarus (John 11).

Luke 16:20. Lazarus: the name (= Eleazar) may have been chosen for its meaning, God is his help.

Luke 16:21. crumbs: the word is not in the Gr., and we should rather understand the pieces of bread which took the place of table napkins after the eaters had dipped their hands in the dishes.

Luke 16:22. into Abraham's bosom: i.e. reclining next to Abraham in the celestial banquet.

Luke 16:23. Hades: here equivalent to Gehenna, not simply a places of shades, but of torment, which is emphasised by Paradise being within sight. Note that judgment here follows immediately on death, and is unalterable (Luke 16:26). The description of the realms beyond death is without parallel in the reserve with which the conditions of the future are elsewhere veiled (Carpenter).