Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 16:27
Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
27. that thou wouldest send him to my father ’ s house ] It is difficult not to see in this request the dawn of a less selfish spirit in the rich man’s heart.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Five brethren – The number five is mentioned merely to preserve the appearance of verisimilitude in the story. It is not to be spiritualized, nor are we to suppose that it has any hidden or inscrutable meaning.
May testify unto them – May bear witness to them, or may inform them of what is my situation, and the dreadful consequences of the life that I have led. It is remarkable that he did not ask to go himself. He knew that he could not be released, even for so short a time. His condition was fixed. Yet he had no wish that his friends should suffer, and he supposed that if one went from the dead they would hear him.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Him that the rich man would not hear, when he lay at his gate full of sores, exhorting him to do good and to distribute, to give alms of all that he had, and to make himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, he would now have restored to the earth again, his soul before the general resurrection reunited to His body, that he might go unto his fathers house, and give them warning, that they might not come into the misery which he felt. But is there any charity in hell? Is there any there that wish well to souls upon earth? Or rather, are not damned souls, like persons infected with the plague, desirous that others might be made as miserable as themselves? A grave and acute author saith, he prayeth not for them, but for himself, that he might not be the note miserable by the company of those who upon the earth were his near relations, and dear unto him. But we must remember that our Saviour here speaketh all in a figure, and that which our Saviour by these expressions designs to instruct us in is no more than this, That although atheistical and proud and haughty souls in this life make a mock at hell, and at the wrath of God to be revealed after this life, and despise the poor servants of God, who by their doctrine, or holy life and example, would teach them better things, yet they shall find the fire of hell so hot, the wrath of God so terrible and intolerable, that if you could imagine that souls under those miseries could have the least dram of charity and good nature left it, them, though they apprehend themselves past all hopes of recovery to a better state, yet they would beg that some of those faithful ministers, or godly people, whom they have rejected, despised, and abused, might be sent to every friend they have in the world, to warn them from doing as they have done, and running the hazard of those torments they feel for doing of such things. The papists, who idly go about from hence to prove a sense in departed souls of the state of their friends that are yet alive upon the earth, can derive very little comfort from that speculation out of this text; which if it could prove any thing of that nature could prove no more than that damned souls have such a sense, and might by the same argument also evince their charity. But figurative expressions must not be so closely applied. I have showed what I judge to be the true instruction from this passage.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
27-31. Then he saidnowabandoning all hope for himself.
send him to my father’shouse, &c.no waking up of good in the heart of the lost,but bitter reproach against God and the old economy, as not warninghim sufficiently [TRENCH].The answer of Abraham is, They are sufficiently warned.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Then he said, I pray thee therefore father,…. The Cambridge, copy of Beza’s, and the Ethiopic version read, “father Abraham”; finding he could have no redress of his misery, nor any relief for himself, he applies for others:
that thou wouldst send him to my father’s house; the house of Israel and Jacob, the surviving Jews: and this agrees also with a notion of theirs, that the dead seek for mercy for them l. The Persic and Ethiopic versions read, “that thou wouldst send Lazarus”, &c. whom the one calls Gazarus, and the other Eleazar.
l T. Bab. Taanith, fol. 16. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
That you send him ( ). As if he had not had a fair warning and opportunity. The Roman Catholics probably justify prayer to saints from this petition from the Rich Man to Abraham, but both are in Hades (the other world). It is to be observed besides, that Abraham makes no effort to communicate with the five brothers. But heavenly recognition is clearly assumed. Dante has a famous description of his visit to the damned (Purg. iii, 114).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Send him to my father ‘s house. Compare Dante, where Ciacco, the glutton, says to Dante :
“But when thou art again in the sweet world, I pray thee to the mind of others bring me.” Inferno, 6, 88.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father,” (eipen de eroto se oun pater) “Then he said, I request you therefore father,” I appeal to you, father Abraham, Luk 16:24, but his prayer was too late, Jer 7:16; Jer 11:14.
2) “That thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:” (hina pempses auton eis ton oikon tou patros mou) “In order that you may send him into my father’s house,” to my father’s residence, back on earth, as a witness and warning to them, as they are living selfishly and covetously as I did, lest they also go on in unbelief until it is too late, Joh 8:24.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
27. I beseech thee, father. To bring the narrative into more full accordance with our modes of thinking, he describes the rich man as wishing that his brothers, who were still alive, should be warned by Lazarus. Here the Papists exercise their ingenuity very foolishly, by attempting to prove that the dead feel solicitude about the living. Any thing more ridiculous than this sophistry cannot be conceived; for with equal plausibility I might undertake to prove, that believing souls are not satisfied with the place assigned to them, and are actuated by a desire of removing from it to hell, were it not that they are prevented by a vast gulf. If no man holds such extravagant views, the Papists are not entitled to congratulate themselves on the other supposition. It is not my intention, however, to debate the point, or to defend either one side or another; but I thought it right to advert, in passing, to the futility of the arguments on which they rest their belief that the dead intercede with God on our behalf. I now return to the plain and natural meaning of this passage.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(27) I pray thee therefore, father.The re iterated appeal to Abraham as father is suggestive in many ways: (1) as speaking out that in which too many of the rich mans class put an undue trust, resting on the fatherhood of Abraham rather than on that of God (Mat. 3:9); (2) as showing that the refusal of the previous verse had been accepted, as it were, submissively. There is no rebellious defiance, no blasphemous execration, such as men have pictured to themselves as resounding ever more in the realms of darkness. Abraham is the sufferers father still, and he yet counts on his sympathy.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
‘And he said, “I pray you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” ’
Again this is not to be taken literally. Talking about the rich man as still having some good about him because he is concerned for others is irrelevant, for this is simply putting over in vivid picture form the fact that if men will not listen to the word of God, they will heed nothing. (In fact if we press the detail he still sees Lazarus as someone who is there in order to do as he is told and to see to his desires). This is accomplished by means of a fictional conversation between Abraham (whose voice crosses the great gulf!) and the rich man (whose voice, that of a disembodied spirit, does the same).
Putting it less picturesquely it is Jesus’ way of making clear what the responsibility is, of the rich man’s still living brothers, and of the Pharisees, and of all men. It is to recognise that they will get no voice from the dead beyond the grave (apart from the One Who will rise from the dead) and that they must therefore take heed to the voices put in this world by God.
‘Five brothers.’ The number ‘five’ is the number of covenant. (Compare the feeding of the five thousand). These five brothers represented Israel who always sought signs. But God will give them no further signs, for they have already received them in the Law of Moses. Why do they need signs when that book contains signs galore, and they ignore them? Why do they need to be told what to do, when God has already told them what to do and they disobey Him?
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Hearing Moses and the Prophets:
v. 27. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house;
v. 28. for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
v. 29. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.
v. 30. And he said, Nay, Father Abraham; “but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
v. 31. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. A strange change has come upon the former rich man. Formerly he cared only for himself and the gratification of his own desires, but now, when it is ‘too late,’ he remembers duties and kindnesses which he should formerly have shown to his relatives. The repentance of the damned in hell may be sincere and comprehensive a thousand times over, but then it is too late! A second petition the poor wretch sends across the chasm. He wants Lazarus sent back, as a spirit from the land of death, to warn his five brothers, lest they share his own awful fate. Where faith and belief have been thrown out, unbelief and superstition are rife and rampant. When the Word of God in Law and Gospel has been declared insufficient for the would be enlightenment of a twentieth century, there spiritualism, real and imitated, is hailed as a solution and salvation. Abraham therefore gives him a bit of much-needed information. The old sound doctrine, the written Word of God, is the one and only safe norm and rule of doctrine and life. Moses and the Prophets were accessible to the brothers, they were read in all the synagogues on the Sabbath-day; let the brothers seek for the truth there, nothing more would be needed. If the brothers at that time, if the people of our time, will not heed Moses and the Prophets, if they will not obey the Word and heed its lessons and warnings, as well as its admonitions and promises, then there is no more hope. The Word is a lamp unto the feet of every searcher of truth, Psa 119:105. Note: Hell is not a figment of a diseased imagination, but hell is real! Its torments are terrible: A consuming and yet never destroying flame; thirst that cannot be alleviated by so much as a tiny drop of water; the ability to see the bliss of the saints in heaven, but no possibility of ever becoming partakers of that happiness; no deliverance or salvation from hell’s tortures, all hope forever gone.
Summary. Jesus tells the parable of the unjust steward and adds several lessons for the disciples and for the Pharisees, and relates the story of the rich man and of Lazarus, the beggar.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Luk 16:27-31 . What riches lead to when they are not applied according to Luk 16:9 , is shown Luk 16:19-26 . In order, however, to escape from this perdition while there is still time, repentance is necessary, and for this the law and the prophets are the appointed means (comp. Luk 16:16-17 ); and, indeed, these are so perfectly sufficient that even the return of a dead person to life would not be more effectual.
Luk 16:28 . ] Purpose of the sending; . is a parenthetic clause; his style is pathetic.
.] that he may testify to them , to wit, of the situation in which I am placed, because I have not repented. , Theophylact.
Luk 16:29 . ] they should give heed (listen) to them !
Luk 16:30 . ] nay ! they will not hear them. The echo of his own experience gained in the position of secure obduracy!
] belongs to .
Luk 16:31 . ] not even (not at all), if .
] not immediately (Vulg. Euthymius Zigabenus, Luther, and others), but: they will be moved, will be won over , namely, to repent.
A reference to the resurrection of Jesus (Olshausen), or to the manifestation of Elias (Baumgarten-Crusius), is altogether remote, although the word of Abraham has certainly approved itself historically even in reference to the risen Christ. The illustration, moreover, by the example of Lazarus of Bethany, who brought intelligence from Hades, and whom the Jews would have killed, Joh 12:10 , is not to the point (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius Zigabenus).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
Ver. 27. I pray thee therefore ] Are not the Popish doctors hard driven, when they allege this text to prove that the dead do take care of the living, and pray for them?
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
27. ] This is the believing and trembling of Jas 2:19 . His eyes are now opened to the truth; and no wonder that his natural sympathies are awakened for his brethren.
That a lost spirit should feel and express such sympathy, is not to be wondered at; the misery of such will be very much heightened by the awakened and active state of those higher faculties and feelings which selfishness and the body kept down here.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Luk 16:27-31 . Dives intercedes for his brethren .
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Luk 16:27 . = if no hope for me , there may be for those still dear to me. Possibility of transit from Paradise to earth is assumed. That this is desired reveals humane feeling. No attempt to show that Dives is utterly bad. Is such a man a proper subject for final damnation?
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
I pray = I entreat. Greek. erotao. App-134.
to = unto. Greek. eis. App-104.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
27.] This is the believing and trembling of Jam 2:19. His eyes are now opened to the truth; and no wonder that his natural sympathies are awakened for his brethren.
That a lost spirit should feel and express such sympathy, is not to be wondered at; the misery of such will be very much heightened by the awakened and active state of those higher faculties and feelings which selfishness and the body kept down here.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Reciprocal: Job 21:21 – For what Job 42:10 – when Psa 17:14 – leave Psa 37:10 – wicked Psa 49:13 – approve their sayings Psa 52:5 – pluck Ecc 2:18 – I should
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
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There is nothing said about what the five brothers were to do as to their manner of life. Lazarus was to be asked to testify, which means to bear witness as to the kind of place in which their dead brother was being tormented, to the end they might so live that they would avoid it. The rich man took for granted his brothers would know what changes they would have to make in their lives; also, that if they heard from one who had seen the fate of their brother, they would take warning and make the necessary reformation.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Luk 16:27-28. I pray thee therefore, etc. His brethren were living as he had done. This is the believing and trembling of Jas 2:9. His eyes are now opened to the truth; and no wonder that his natural sympathies are awakened for his brethren. That a lost spirit should feel and express such sympathy is not to be wondered at; the misery of such will be very much heightened by the awakened and active state of those higher faculties and feelings which selfishness and the body kept down here. Alford.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Here the rich man is represented as retaining even in hell some tenderness for his relations on earth; yet others think, that the kindness intended, was rather to himself than to his relations; fearing that their sinning by his example should be an aggravation of his own torments.
Note thence, that the presence of sinful relations and companions in hell, may be supposed to make a considerable addition to the miseries of the damned: the sight of those whom they have sinned with, is a fresh revival of their own guilt; all the circumstances of their past and profligate lives are upon this occasion continually in their remembrance.
Note farther, this miserable wretch is convinced that he could not get out of hell, therefore he desires that no friend of his might come in. He knew well enough, that if they were once there, they would come out no more. Indeed, God will at the great day send forth his writ to the graves to bring out the bodies of the wicked that are shut up there; and will send out his writ to hell, to bring forth the spirits that are shut in there; but it is in order to this, that both soul and body together may receive an eternal sentence for an everlasting imprisonment with the devil and his angels, and there will be no more opening for ever.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Vers. 27-31. The second Conversation.
The rich man acquiesces so far as his own person is concerned. But he intercedes for his brethren still in life. And again it is Lazarus who must busy himself on their behalf!
What is the thought contained in this conclusion? Starting from the standpoint that the idea of the parable is the condemnation of wealth, De Wette, the Tbingen School, and Weizscker himself find this last part entirely out of keeping with the rest of the description. For it is their impenitence face to face with the law and the prophets which exposes the five brethren to danger, and not their being rich men. They allege, therefore, that Luke at his own hand has added this conclusion, with the view of transforming a doctrine which was originally Ebionite and Judeo-Christian into one anti-Judaic or Pauline. The rich man who, in the original meaning of the similitude, simply represented riches, becomes in this conclusion the type of Jewish unbelief in respect of the resurrection of Jesus. Weizscker goes the length of regarding Lazarus as the representative of the Gentiles despised by the Jews. This last idea is incompatible with the Jewish name Lazarus, as well as with the place awarded to him in Abraham’s bosom, the gathering place of pious Jews. As to the rich man, from the beginning he represents not the rich in general, but the rich man hardened by well-being, the Pharisee, whose heart, puffed up with pride, is closed to sympathy with the suffering. This appears from the expressions: Father Abraham, my son, Luk 16:24-25, which are as it were the motto of Israelitish formalism (Mat 3:7-9; Joh 8:39). This conclusion is thus nothing else than the practical application of the parable, which, instead of being presented to his hearers in the form of an abstract lesson, is given as the continuation of the scene itself. It is exactly the same in the parable of the prodigal son, in which the elder son exhibits the Pharisees with their murmurings, and the divine answer. The first portrait, Luk 16:19-21, depicted the sin of the rich man; the second, Luk 16:22-26, his punishment. In this appendix Jesus unveils to His hearers the cause of this misery, the absence of , repentance, and for those who wished to profit by the warning, the means of preventing the lot which threatens them at the moment of their death: taking to heart Moses and the prophets very differently from what they have ever done. There must pass within them what took place in the prodigal son, the figure of the publicans (Luk 15:17 : he came to himself), and in the steward, the type of the new believers (Luk 16:3 : he said within himself): that act of solemn self-examination in which the heart is broken at the thought of its sins, and which impresses an entirely new direction on the life, and on the employment of earthly goods in particular. To reject this conclusion is therefore to break the arrow-point shot by the hand of Jesus at the consciences of His hearers.
Ver. 27. The five brethren cannot represent the rich of this world in general, and as little the Jews who remained unbelieving in respect of Jesus Christ. They are Jews living in a privileged, brilliant condition, like that of the rich manthe Pharisees, whom this man represented; this relation is the idea expressed by the image of the kinship which connects them. Some have imagined that those five brethren are the five sons of the high priest Annas. Would Jesus have condescended to such personalities? The forms of address: father, Luk 16:27, father Abraham, Luk 16:30, continue to define the meaning of this principal personage very clearly. , Luk 16:28, does not signify only: to declare, but to testify in such a way that the truth pierces through the wrappings of a hardened conscience (). In putting this request into the rich man’s mouth, Jesus undoubtedly alludes to that thirst for miracles, for extraordinary and palpable manifestations, which He never failed to meet among His adversaries, and which He refused to satisfy. Such demands charge with insufficiency the means of repentance which God had all along placed in Israel. Some commentators, unable to allow any good feeling in one damned, have attributed this prayer of the rich man to a selfish aim. According to them, he dreaded the time when his own sufferings would be aggravated by seeing those of his brethren. But would not even this fear still suppose in him a remnant of love? And why represent him as destitute of all human feeling? He is not yet, we have seen, damned in the absolute sense of the word. If we must seek a selfish alloy in this prayer, it can only be the desire to excuse himself, by giving it to be understood, that if he had been sufficiently warned he would not have been where he is.
Abraham teaches all his sons by his reply, Luk 16:29, with what earnestness they should henceforth listen to the reading of that law and those prophets, the latter of which they had, up till now, heard or even studied in vain (Joh 5:38-39). The subject has nothing to do with unbelief regarding Jesus; the situation of this saying is purely Jewish.
The rich man insists. His answer, Nay, father Abraham, Luk 16:30, depicts the Rabbinical spirit of disputation and pharisaic effrontery. Repentance would produce, he fully acknowledges, a life wholly different from his own (such as it has been described, Luk 16:19); but the law without miracles would not suffice to produce this state of mind.
Jesus unveils, Luk 16:31, the complete illusion belonging to this idea of conversion by means of great miraculous interpositions. He whom the law and the prophets bring not to the conviction of his sins, will be as little led to it by the sight even of one raised from the dead. After the first emotion of astonishment and terror, criticism will awake saying, Hallucination! and carnal security, shaken for a moment, will reassert itself. Jesus not having showed Himself, and not having preached to the Jews after His resurrection, this saying cannot be an invention of Luke borrowed from that event.
Such is the terrible answer of Jesus to the derision of His adversaries, the proud and covetous Pharisees, Luk 16:14. He shows them their portrait, the likeness of their present life, and their lot after death. Now they know what they are in the eyes of God (19-21), and what awaits them (23-35); they know also the real cause of their near perdition, and the only means which can yet avert it (27-31).
From this study it follows: 1. That all the indications of the preface (Luk 16:14-18) are entirely justified; in particular, that the (the Pharisees), Luk 16:14, is the real key of the parable. 2. That there reigns throughout this description a perfect unity of idea, and that the context furnishes no well-founded reason for distinguishing between an original parable and a later re-handling. 3. That the piece as a whole, and all its details, are in direct correspondence with the historical situation in which Jesus was teaching, and find their natural explanation without any need of having recourse to the later circumstances of apostolic times. 4. That this passage furnishes no proof of an Ebionite document anterior to our Gospel, and forming one of the essential materials employed by the author. Hilgenfeld says (Die Evangel. p. 102): Nowhere does our Gospel allow us to distinguish so clearly the original writing of which it is the anti-Jewish and Pauline handling. Nowhere so clearly! This passage proving nothing, it follows that the others prove less than nothing.
This character, not anti-Jewish, but certainly anti-pharisaic, belongs equally to the whole series of pieces which we have just surveyed (comp. Luk 11:37 to Luk 12:12); then (after an interruption), Luk 13:10-31, Luk 14:1, Luk 15:2, Luk 16:14. The parable of the unfaithful steward is also connected with this series by the law of contrast. Here, then, is the time of the most intense struggle between Jesus and pharisaism in Galilee, like the contemporaneous period, John 7-10, in Judaea.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
16:27 {7} Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
(7) Seeing that we have a most sure rule to live by, laid forth for us in the word of God, men seek rashly and vainly for other revelations.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Clearly the testimony of the Old Testament (Luk 16:16) was more convincing than any testimony from a person who might return to the living with a message from Hades. This statement condemned the Pharisees who were listening to Jesus but had explained away the Old Testament revelation about Messiah and had asked Jesus for more signs (Luk 11:16). It also implied that they would not believe on Jesus even though Jesus would rise from the dead (cf. Luk 9:22; Luk 11:29-30; Luk 13:32). The testimony of the Scriptures is powerful because that is what God has chosen to use to bring conviction of spiritual need (cf. Heb 4:12). Angels had appeared to people in Old Testament times, but hardhearted people did not believe them either (Gen 19:14). Evidently people in Hades have a concern for the lost on earth, but they can do nothing about it.
"There is an implication that the rich man’s unpleasant situation was due not to his riches (after all, Abraham had been rich), but to his neglect of Scripture and its teaching. But the rich man does not agree. He knows how he had reacted to the possession of the Bible." [Note: Morris, p. 154.]
Not long after this teaching Jesus did raise someone from the dead who bore witness to Jesus’ identity, another Lazarus. What was the reaction of the Pharisees? They tried to kill both Jesus and Lazarus (Joh 11:45-53; Joh 12:10-11). Perhaps this is the key to why Jesus gave the poor man in this parable the name Lazarus. Perhaps he wanted the Pharisees to remember the lesson of the Lazarus in this parable when He raised the other Lazarus from the dead.
These verses should warn us against putting too much hope in signs and wonders as what will persuade people to believe in Jesus (cf. Joh 10:41-42). The Word of God is a more convincing witness to Him than any miracle. This does not mean that miracles are valueless. God used them to corroborate the testimony of Scripture in the past, and He may do so occasionally today, but Scripture is the Holy Spirit’s primary tool in bringing people to repentance (cf. Joh 16:7-15).
This teaching concerning greed warned the disciples and the Pharisees. They should serve God as faithful servants rather than serving mammon. We should also beware of the possibility of disbelieving Scripture and explaining it away if we make mammon our god, as the Pharisees did.
"Two themes dominate: the idea of divine evaluation in the afterlife and the hardness of heart that cannot be overcome even by resurrection." [Note: Bock, Luke, p. 432.]
"The dialogues from the afterlife in this passage reveal a series of vital truths that serve as correctives to some modern erroneous doctrines. (1) There is immediate consciousness after death; therefore soul sleep is not taught in the Bible. (2) Post-death destinies are irreversible; therefore there is no purgatory or second chance of salvation after death. (3) No one can lose or gain salvation after death. The decisions of this life are final and determinative. (4) The judgments that determine the eternal destinies of either torment or blessing are just. (5) Signs should never be sought as a substitute for the Word of God. The Word of God is the only adequate basis for faith (Luk 16:29; see Rom 10:17)." [Note: M. Bailey, p. 137.]