Luke 10:33

a certain Samaritan A Samaritan is thus selected for high eulogy though the Samaritans had so ignominiously rejected Jesus (Luke 9:53)-

as he journeyed 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.

had compassion on him Thereby shewing 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.