Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 10:33

Σαμαρίτης τις. A Samaritan is thus selected for high eulogy—though the Samaritans had so ignominiously rejected Jesus (Luke 9:53).

ὁδεύων. He was not ‘coming down’ as the Priest and Levite were from the Holy City and the Temple, but from the unauthorised worship of alien Gerizim.

ἐσπλαγχνίσθη. The aorist implies that his pity was instantaneous. There was no looking on and weighing considerations, as in the case of the calculating Levite. He thereby shewed himself, in spite of his heresy and ignorance, a better man than the orthodox priest and Levite; and all the more so because he was an ‘alien’ (see on Luke 17:18), and “the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans” (John 4:9), and this very wounded man would, under other circumstances, have shrunk from the touch of the Samaritan as from pollution. Yet this ‘Cuthaean’—this ‘worshipper of the pigeon’—this man of a race which was accused of misleading the Jews by false fire-signals, and of defiling the Temple with human bones—whose testimony would not have been admitted in a Jewish court of law—with whom no Jew would so much as eat (Jos. Antt. XX. 6, § 1, XVIII. 2, § 2; B. J. II. 12, § 3)—shews a spontaneous and perfect pity of which neither Priest nor Levite had been remotely capable. The fact that the Jews had applied to our Lord Himself the opprobrious name of “Samaritan” (John 8:48) is one of the indications that a deeper meaning lies under the beautiful obvious significance of the Parable. One main difference between the Samaritan and the ecclesiastics who had gone before him was that his thoughts were of mercy and theirs of sacrifice (Matthew 9:13).

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 10:33

Old Testament

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