Luke 10:34

“And came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine, and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.”

And the Samaritan took up the man and bound up his wounds, and treated them as best he could with what he had available, with oil and wine. These two items are both well attested as being used for healing purposes. And then he put him on his own ass and bore him to a wayside inn and took care of him.

The picture is all one of someone who is revealing the love of God and a heart full of compassion. And that is certainly how we should first see it, and as the Pharisee saw it. But behind the picture lies the description of the One Who was all compassion, and had Himself come out of compassion in order spiritually to do this very thing.

‘He came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine.' He sued what mean he had to hand. But we may note that abundance of oil and wine is very much to be an indication of the last days (Joel 2:19; Joel 2:24). So this one who had come pouring in oil and wine is a symbol of the ‘the last days'. The days of the Messiah are in mind here.

There are also points of contact between this aspect of the story and 2 Chronicles 28:15. There members of the Northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria and Galilee) returned men who had been taken captive to Judah, providing them with food and drink, anointing them with oil, and bearing them on their asses. There too ‘the people of God' had been cared for by unorthodox people from the north, from Samaria and Galilee. Thus Jesus may well have expected the Scribe and His other listeners, once they considered His words more deeply, to make the connection and see that the Samaritan represented the northern kingdom of Israel including Galilee, and was therefore a picture of the unorthodox, rejected, Prophet of Galilee introducing ‘the last days'.

Here then was a picture for all to consider of the One Who had come as a physician for sick Israel (Luke 5:31) in order to make them spiritually whole and provide them with oil and wine.