The Good Samaritan
Read the parable
- Luke 10:25-37 Primary account
Context
A lawyer — an expert in the law of Moses — stood up to test Jesus and, "willing to justify himself," asked "And who is my neighbour?" The road from Jerusalem down to Jericho drops about a thousand meters through seventeen miles of desolate ravines notorious for bandits. Jews and Samaritans had centuries of religious and ethnic hostility; a priest or Levite might fear ritual defilement from a corpse, but a Samaritan was the last figure the lawyer would expect as the story's hero.
Meaning
Jesus reverses the lawyer's question. Instead of defining the limits of "neighbour" — who qualifies for my love — the parable asks which of the three proved neighbor to the man in need. The despised Samaritan, moved with compassion, crosses every boundary of enmity and cost: bandaging wounds, paying the innkeeper, promising more. Mercy defines neighborliness, and neighbor-love has no ethnic or religious fence. "Go, and do thou likewise" turns the discussion of eternal life into a command to concrete, costly compassion for whoever lies in our path.
Go deeper
Two free lessons walk through the parables as a whole: The Parables of Jesus and Interpreting the Parables.