EXPOSITORY THOUGHT.

THE MAN THAT FELL AMONG THIEVES.

BY REV. J. E. H. THOMSON, B.D.

LUKE X. 25-37.

FEW of the many things the historical method has taught us have been more pregnant with good to the interpretation of Scripture than the importance it has led us to give to the setting of words or incidents. The words of Isaiah have a deeper meaning to us now that we see behind the words the court and kingdom of Hezekiah, now swayed by dread of the terrible Sargonid princes of Nineveh, now seduced into compromising alliances by the intrigues of the Court of Egypt. We can better appreciate the terrible force of the insinuation the rulers made to Pilate when Jesus stood before him, "If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend," when we recall the suspicious recluse of Capreæ. Although few of the parables have been studied more than this of the good Samaritan, we have, as it seems to me, made but little use in the interpretation of it of the setting supplied us by the narrative. The great lesson of the parable is certainly obvious, yet any further light that can be thrown on it or through it on the character of Christ ought to be welcomed.

As a preliminary to a right understanding of this parable, it would be advantageous could we assign accurately its chronological position in the history of our Lord's life, but the want of external notes of time, and still more the loose connectives of the Gospel of Luke, in which alone it is recorded, make this difficult-indeed, impossible, in any but the most general sense. The position in the Gospel of Luke would seem to indicate that this incident occurred comparatively early in our Lord's public ministry. Were we sure that kаens, "in order" in Luke's preface, refers to order in time, the position an incident has in his Gospel would be a matter of high importance. Although, however, he does not seem to have made the chronological order paramount, yet in a general way he does follow it; so, unless we have some clear indication to the contrary, or have conflicting evidence to adduce, it must be assumed that any event recorded by Luke occurred probably at the time he assigns to it. If our conclusion is correct, then this incident is distinct from that related in Matt. xxii. 34-40 and Mark xii. 28-34. The fact that while Luke relates the other incidents related in Matt. xxii. and in Mark xii., he does not relate the story of the lawyer who put a similar question, may be due to the resemblance between the two cases, and the desire to avoid the appearance of repetition. While there are strong resemblances between these two occurrences, there are also marked divergences-divergences too great to permit identifying them. In the incident recorded in Matthew our Lord repeats the summary of the com

mandments; in Luke it is the lawyer who does so. In the narrative in Mark, the lawyer commends our Lord, and has the grateful assurance given him that he is not far from the kingdom of heaven; in the narrative before us, our Lord commends the correctness of the lawyer's answer, while the lawyer feels the commendation a disguised condemnation, for which he has to justify himself. The connection in the two cases is also very different.

The fact seems to be that this occurred during some visit to Jerusalem, prior to that of Palm Sunday and Holy Week. We have in the Gospel of John some incidents from these earlier visits to Jerusalem which show the relationship of our Lord to the Scribes and Pharisees to be much the same as that implied in the present narrative. The intimacy with the household in Bethany, so fully described in the fourth Gospel, implies earlier intercourse, like that related in the incident recorded immediately after that before us. We think the parable of the Good Samaritan and the supper in Martha's house were in close connection. This renders it necessary that we disagree with Greswell, who would place both incidents in Galilee.

Our Lord, with all the reputation as a teacher and wonder-worker which He had gained in Galilee, had come to Jerusalem. One can easily imagine that the accredited Rabbis of the Pharasaic schools looked askance at this new teacher. If, as some have held-not without reason-that our Lord received His title of Rabbi, or Master, from the Essenes, this would scarcely lessen the suspicion with which He was regarded by the Doctors of the Law. Not unlikely some of His sayings of the need of faith and repentance to the attainment of the higher life, His demand for absolute belief in Himself, and absolute self-denial, had been reported in a garbled form in the capital; just as the sayings of any preacher in our own day, who has anything startling to say, get modified and made more eccentric than they were if they were at all eccentric to begin with, or are made eccentric even if they were not originally so at all. A Doctor of the Law enters the Temple court while our Lord is teaching. He sees this young Galilean seated surrounded by a circle of eagerly listening hearers. He goes up to the group to hear what this Man of Nazareth has to say, much as a clergyman among ourselves might linger about the edge of a crowd which has gathered around a street preacher to hear what are his methods of address. After standing for a little, interested perchance somewhat in what he hears-a Rabbi, however, may not compromise himself by being a simple hearer-he determines to examine this young Galilean; he will see whether what is said about His doctrine is strictly correct, and at the same time will exhibit before this audience that is listening to Jesus how much superior he-a Jerusalemtrained Rabbi-is to this carpenter.

For this purpose of testing our Lord, he puts the question, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" If our Lord declares faith-especially faith in Himself to be the only way of salvation, then at once the Scribe will be ready to denounce Him as one who dishonoured the law of God. Our Lord, however, avoids the snare set for Him. He returns the question.

to the questioner, and demands of him what the Law said about this. To a Doctor of the Law, the way to attain eternal life could only be obedience to the Law. Our Lord asks, "What is written in the Law? how readest thou?" The lawyer, at once understanding the purport of the question, without hesitation answers, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself." This answer was not the only answer that was given by the Scribes to the question, "Which' is the great command of the Law?" By some the paramount command was that concerning fringes. It shows, then, a certain spirituality of view on the part of the lawyer that he chose as he did in regard to the commandments.

Our Lord commends the accuracy of the lawyer's answer- "Thou hast answered right," and urges him now to put his knowledge into practice"This do, and thou shalt live." This is a reversal of the position mentally sketched out by the lawyer. He purposed to examine Christ, to test His knowledge, and to commend or condemn as he saw cause. But now this young Rabbi from Galilee has examined him-the Jerusalem doctor; and not content with commending his answer, assumes authority over him to urge him to put his knowledge into practice. We can well imagine he would be indignant at this; but it would seem that strangely another feeling mingled in bis mind with indignant surprise. Something in the look and tone of Christ awakened his conscience to his shortcomings; he feels, as we have said, the commendation to be a condemnation. Our Lord's words often conveyed more to the person addressed than was obvious to the bystander. Thus, to the woman at the well at Sychar, He makes a request which would seem to a bystander dictated only by an Oriental sense of decorum-"Go call thy husband, and come hither." It was reckoned unseemly, especially for a Rabbi, to be talking with a married woman except in presence of her husband. But the real purpose of the request was to reveal to the woman her moral condition. The Samaritan woman strove to escape the stings of conscience by raising a controversy on the rival claims of Mount Zion and Mount Gerizim; and the lawyer, "willing to justify himself," would betake himself also to controversy. It seems to us that dikawσai is far too strong a word to use if it were meant merely to inform us that the lawyer desired to reassert himself (Meyer), and show his question to be of some real moment. It is used in the Septuagint to translate P in Gen. xliv. 16, when Judah would endeavour to exculpate himself and his brethren from the accusation of having stolen Joseph's cup, and felt his advocacy complicated by the consciousness of their sin against. their brother.

The controversial refuge the lawyer takes is worthy of consideration. There were far more possibilities of controversy in regard to the first command -the ethics, the theology, and the psychology all offered boundless fields of controversy. Moreover, on those subjects many of our Lord's teachings must have impinged on those of the Pharisees. There must have been some

personal reason which led the lawyer to ground his self-justification on his own interpretation of the second great commandment. But further, the word "neighbour" had then a technical meaning among the Pharisees, as is well shown by Schürer (II. ii. 22, Clark's Transl.). As certain Christian sects of the present day call themselves "Brethren," address each other as "Brethren," and in general arrogate to themselves this title as if it belonged specially to them, so the Pharisees called themselves Chaberim D (neighbours). This lets us see that one possible interpretation of the second command was to limit its incidence to Pharisees. Pharisees were to love Pharisees as themselves. We can easily understand how the command of God might be made of none effect by this interpretation. Yet even having yielded to the temptation to excuse himself in failure, he is not at rest; he desires to stifle his conscience by controversy, and to buttress his tottering self-complacency by the animus of conflict.

Our Lord, however, will not be drawn aside into giving a definition of a neighbour, but rather tells a story. We need not dwell on the features of the beautiful well-known parable. One, moreover, must remark on the evidence the story supplies, that immediately before the period of the action of the story, the stern Roman rule must have put down brigandage for a season. Only when the " way of blood" was reported free of robbers would four successive solitary travellers be found on it. The events then probably occurred during the governorship of Pilate, whose hand was heavy on all marauders. Further, the statement of the Talmud may be noted, that a third of the priests stayed in Jericho, as explanatory of the presence of a priest and Levite on the road. In order, however, to understand the full force of the story, we must remember the intensity of the hatred the Jews bore to the Samaritans. In the Talmud it was declared that the Jew that showed hospitality to a Samaritan laid up judgment for himself and his family; that a Samaritan had no share in eternal life; and that the testimony of a Samaritan was not to be received in a Court. These statements are exaggerated, and to that extent untrue, but still there was a kernel of truth in them. The cruel vengeance John Hyrcanus took when he sacked Samaria, and burned the temple on Mount Gerizim, was recognized by the Jews as a wrong incapable of atonement; and therefore they hated the Samaritans. bitterly the injurer always hates the injured. The Samaritans but shortly before this date had desecrated the Temple at Jerusalem on the eve of the great Day of Atonement by scattering dead men's bones over all its courts. Yet in this tale our Lord represents a Samaritan being kind to a Jew at great risk to himself, for the robbers who had stripped the man could not be far off, and might be on the outlook for further plunder. Would a Pharisee believe this? Would he not at once protest that such an occurrence was utterly impossible? Nay, more, if his object were to destroy Christ's influence with the people, what easier way could be open to him than to exclaim, as was done not impossibly during this very visit of Christ to Jerusalem, "Say we not well that Thou art a Samaritan"? Something must

have sealed the lips of the lawyer. What more likely to have silenced any objection to the possibility of the events than the knowledge of their actuality?

It is to be observed further that the parable is not strictly an answer to the question of the lawyer, but rather the converse of it. The question of the lawyer demands: To whom is a Jew to show the self-denying love inculcated in the commandment? The parable shows from what unlikely quarters a Jew in distress may-and did, given that this story is historical, not merely hypothetic-receive help. Yet there is no protest by the lawyer that the parable is not on all fours with his question. We do not mean to deny the vastly deeper meaning our Lord gives to the command by this parable. We feel that implicitly He asserts that we ought to regard the question "who is my neighbour?" not from the grudging Pharisaic standpoint which strains to find how few can claim to be treated as neighbours, but to hold it a privilege to be able to do good and bestow benefits. This is the wider lesson for the vast audience of future humanity, but it must have had a direct personal reference ad hominem. What was this personal reference? This leads us to look at the story before us more directly. It seems hardly possibly to deny that the incident here narrated must have really happened. Even the minor features bring this out. This Samaritan was one who was in the habit of coming to Jerusalem from Samaria by way of Jericho, and is known to the innkeeper in the caravanserai to be so. The Samaritans to whom this could apply would be but a small number. "The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans." To the knot of auditors standing about our Lord and the lawyer it might not be impossible that the few to whom such a description could apply would be known. Another thing we may remark in passing, which follows from the fact we have noted the Samaritan would have had abundant opportunity of suffering from Jewish hatred. This adds emphasis to the benevolent care he manifested for the Jew who had fallen among thieves. This, however, is by the way. The small number of Samaritans to whom the description would be applicable renders the probability greater that the parable is a narrative of a real event. Note, too, the hesitancy with which the lawyer answers the demand of our Lord, "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among thieves?" The words of his answer seem to come from a mouth and tongue dry with apprehension and shame; he cannot answer directly "the Samaritan," but only "He that showed mercy on him." Had there not been some private reason for his hesitancy he would readily have answered "the Samaritan," and have immediately denounced the improbability of the tale and the heretical proclivities of him that dared to devise it.

If, however, it was an actual occurrence, it could not have been generally known to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for we know that in these circumstances our Lord's habit was to refer to the incident merely. As when He wishes to guard His disciples from rashly deducing that those were specially