Luke 16:19-31

Parable of the rich man and Lazarus. This story is hardly a parable in the sense of illustrating by an incident from natural life a truth in the spiritual sphere. Both story and moral belong to the same sphere. What is the moral? If Jesus spoke, or the evangelist reported, this story as the complement of the parable of the unfaithful steward, then for Speaker or reporter the moral is: see what comes of neglecting to make friends of the poor by a beneficent use of wealth. Looking to the end of this second “parable,” Luke 16:31, and connecting that with Luke 16:17, we get as the lesson: the law and the prophets a sufficient guide to a godly life. Taking the first part of the story as the main thing (Luke 16:19-26), and connecting it with the reflection in Luke 16:15 about that which is lofty among men, the resulting aim will be to exemplify by an impressive imaginary example the reversal of positions in this and the next world: the happy here the damned there, and vice versâ. In that case the parable simply pictorially sets forth the fact of reversal, not its ground. If with some (Weizsäcker, Holtzmann, Feine, J. Weiss) we cut the story into two, an original part spoken by Jesus and an addition by a later hand, it will have two morals, the one just indicated, and another connecting eternal perdition with the neglect of the law and prophets by a worldly unbelieving Judaism, and eternal salvation with the pious observance of the law by the poor members of the Jewish-Christian Church. On this view vide J. Weiss in Meyer.