Luke 10:29-32

The Priest and the Levite.

Lightfoot has proved that the Rabbins did not, in general, regard as their neighbours those who were not members of the Jewish nation. Perhaps the subject afforded matter for learned debates in their schools. The word πλήσιον, being without article here, might be taken in strictness as an adverb. It is simpler to regard it as the well-known substantive ὁ πλήσιον. The καί, and, introducing the answer, brings it into relation with the preceding question which called it forth. The word ὑπολαβών, rejoining, which does not occur again in the N. T., is put for the ordinary term ἀποκριθείς, answering, to give more gravity to what follows. The mountainous, and for the most part desert country, traversed by the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, was far from safe. Jerome (ad Jer 3:2) relates that in his time it was infested by hordes of Arabs. The distance between the two cities is seven leagues. The καί, also, before ἐκδύσαντες, Luke 10:30, supposes a first act which is self-understood, the relieving him of his purse.

There is a sort of irony in the κατὰ συγκυρίαν, by chance. It is certainly not by accident that the narrator brings those two personages on the scene.

The preposition ἀντί in ἀντιπαρῆλθε, he passed by, might denote a curve made in an opposite direction; but it is simpler to understand it in the sense of over against. In view of such a spectacle, they pass on. Comp. the antithesis προσελθών, having gone to him, Luke 10:34.