The Rich Man and Lazarus
Read the parable
- Luke 16:19-31 Primary account
Context
Spoken to Pharisees whom Luke describes as "covetous" and who had just derided Jesus' teaching that no one can serve God and mammon. Purple cloth and fine linen were the most expensive dress of the age, and daily feasting was extravagance; Lazarus — the only character in any parable given a name of his own (Abraham appears as the patriarch), meaning "God has helped" — lay at the rich man's gate desiring crumbs, with dogs licking his sores. "Abraham's bosom" was a Jewish expression for the blessed place of the righteous dead.
Meaning
Death reverses the two men's fortunes: the beggar is carried by angels to Abraham's bosom while the rich man, who feasted past the sufferer at his own gate, finds himself in torment, the great gulf fixed. The rich man is condemned not for wealth as such but for a life of self-indulgent indifference to the neighbor God had laid at his door — the very failure of love the law and prophets condemn. The closing exchange is the sharpest edge: those who will not hear Moses and the prophets "neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead" — a pointed foreshadowing of unbelief in the face of Jesus' own resurrection.
Go deeper
Two free lessons walk through the parables as a whole: The Parables of Jesus and Interpreting the Parables.