‘Love of Neighbour’
25. On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Yahushua. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26. "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
27. He answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'"
28. "You have answered correctly, "Yahushua replied, "Do this and you will live."
29. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Yahushua, "And who is my neighbour?"
30. In reply, Yahuwah said: "A man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jerico when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
31. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side,
32. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33. But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
34. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.
35. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36. “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37. The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him,"
Luke 10:25-37
The lawyer's first question was intended to 'tempt' Yahushua, which here seems to mean, rather, 'to test', that is, to ascertain His orthodoxy or His ability. Yeshua Ha Mashiach walks calmly through the snare, as if not seeing it. His answer is unimpeachably orthodox and with just hints in the slightest way that the question was needless since one so learnt in the law knew well enough what were the conditions of inheriting everlasting life. The lawyer knew the letter of the law too well to be at a loss what to answer. But it is remarkable that he gives the same combination of two passages which Yahushua gives in His last duel with the Pharisees. Did Yahushua adopt this lawyer's summary? Or is Luke's narrative condensed, omitting stages by which Yahushua led the man to such a wise answer?
Our Elohim’s rejoinder has a marked tone of authority, which puts the lawyer in his right place. His answer is commended, as by one whose estimation has weight and his practice is implicitly condemned, as by one who knows and has a right to judge. ‘This does’ is a sharp sword-thrust. It also unites the two ‘loves’ as essentially one, by saying ‘This’- not ‘these '- 'do.’
The lawyer feels the prick, and it is his defective practice, not his question, which he seeks to ‘justify.’ He did not think that his love to Yahuwah needed any justification. He had fully done his duty there, but about the other half, he was less sure. So, he tried to ride off, lawyer-like, on a question of the meaning of words. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is the question answered by the lovely story of the kindly Samaritan.
The main purpose, then, is to show how far off men may be and yet be neighbours.
The lawyer’s question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is turned around the other way in Yeshua Hamahiach’s form of it at the close. It is better to ask, ‘Whose neighbour, am I?’ than ‘Who is my neighbour?’ The lawyer meant by the word ‘a person whom I am bound to love.’ He wanted to know how far an obligation extended which he had no mind to recognise an inch farther than he was obliged. Probably he had in his thought the Rabbinical limitations which made it as much duty to ‘hate thine enemy’ as to ‘love thy neighbour.’ Probably, too, he accepted the national limitations, which refused to see any neighbours outside the Jewish people.
‘Neighbourhood,’ in his judgment, implied ‘nearness,’ and he wished to know how far off the boundaries of the region included in the command lay. There are a great many of us like him, who think that the obligation is a matter of geography, and that love, like force, is inverse as the square of the distance. A good deal of the so-called virtue of ‘patriotism’ is of this spurious sort. But Yeshua Ha Mahiach’s way of putting the question sweeps all such limitations aside. ‘Who became a neighbour to’ the wounded man? ‘He who showed mercy on him,’ said the lawyer, unwilling to name the Samaritan, and by his very reluctance giving the point to his answer which Yeshua Ha Mashiach wished to bring out.
The story is not, properly speaking, a parable, or imaginary narrative of something in the physical world intended to be translated into something in the spiritual region, but it is an illustration {by an imaginary narrative} of the actual virtue in question. Every detail is beautifully adapted to bring out the lesson that the obligation of neighbourly affection has nothing to do with nearness either of race or religion, but is as wide as humanity. The wounded man was probably a Jew, but it is significant that his nationality is not mentioned. He is ‘a certain man,’ that is all. The Samaritan did not ask where he was born before he helped him. So Yeshua Ha Mashiach teaches us that sorrow and need and sympathy and help are of no nationality.
That lesson is still more strongly taught by making the helper a Samaritan. Perhaps, if Yahushua had been speaking in America, he would have made him a; or, if in France, a German; or, if in England, a ‘foreigner.’ It was a daring stroke to bring the despised name of ‘Samaritan’ into the story, and one sees what a hard morsel to swallow the lawyer found it, by his unwillingness to name him after all.
The nations have not yet learned the deep, simple truth of this parable. It absolutely forbids all limitations of mercy and help. It makes every man the neighbour of every man. It carries in germ the great truth of the brotherhood of the race. ‘Humanity’ is a purely a follower’s word, and a conception that was never dreamed of before Yeshua Ha Mashiach had shown us the unity of mankind. We slowly approximate to the realisation of the teaching of this story, which is oftener admired than imitated, and perhaps often on the lips of people who obey at least.
Another aspect of the parable is its lesson as to the true manifestations of neighbourliness.
The minutely detailed account of the Samaritan’s care for the half-dead man is not only graphics but carries large lessons. Compassionate sentiments are very well. They must come first. The help that is given as a matter of duty, without the outgoing of heart, will be worth little, and soon cease to flow, but the emotion that does not drive the wheels of action, and set to work to stanch the sorrows which cause it to run so easily, is worth still less. It hardens the heart, as all feeling unexpressed inaction does. If the priest and Levite had gone up to the man, and said, ‘Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! how sorry we are for you! somebody ought to come and help you,’ and so had trudged on their way, they would have been worse than they are painted as being.
The various acts are enumerated as showing the genius of true love. We notice the swift, cool-headed deftness of the man, his having at hand the appliances needed, the business-like way in which he goes about his kindness, his readiness to expend his wine and oil, his willingness to do the surgeon’s work, his cheerful giving up of his ‘own beast,’ while he plodded along on foot, steadying the wounded man on his ass; his care for him at the inn; his generosity, and withal his prudence, in not leaving a great sum in the host’s hands, but just enough to tide over a day or two, and his wise hint that he would audit the accounts when he came back.
Jericho was one of the priestly cities so that there would be frequent travellers on ecclesiastical errands. The priest was ‘going down’ {that is from Jerusalem} so he could not plead a ‘pressing public engagement’ at the Temple. The verbal repetition of the description of the conduct of both him and the Levite serves to suggest its commonness. They two did exactly the same thing, and so would twenty or two hundred ordinary passers’ by. They saw the man lying in a pool of blood, and they made a wide circuit, and, even in the face of such a sight, went on their way. Probably they said to themselves, ‘Robbers again, the sooner we get past this dangerous bit, the better.’
It is not spiritualizing this narrative when we say that Jesus is Himself the great pattern of the swift compassion and effectual helpfulness which it sets forth. Many unwise attempts have been made to tack on spiritual meanings to the story. These areas irreverent as destructive of its beauty and significance. But to say that Yeshua Ha Mashiach is the perfect example of that love to every man which the narrative portrays has nothing in common with these fancies. It is only when we have found in Him the pity and the healing which we need, that we shall go forth into the world with love as wide as His.
We are not to love because we are neighbours in any geographical sense, but we become neighbours to the man farthest from us when we love and help him. The relation has nothing to do with proximity. If we prove ourselves neighbours to any man by exercising love to him, then the relation intended by the word is as wide as humanity. We recognise that everyone is our neighbour when a throb of pity shoots through our heart, and thereby we become neighbours to him.
This man's quick compassion was blended with plenty of shrewdness and was as practical as the hardest, least compassionate man could have been. There is a need for organisation, 'faculty' and the like, in the work of loving our neighbour. A thousand pities that sometimes Yeshua Ha Mashiach's charity and a common-sense dissolve partnership. The Samaritan was a man of business and he did his compassion in a business-like-fashion, as we should try to do.
Another lesson inwrought into the parable is the divorce between religion and neighbourliness, as shown in the conduct of the priest and Levite.
We see that they were heartless, but they did not see it, We do the same thing ourselves, and do not see that we do, for who of us has not known of many miseries which we could have done something to stanch and have left untouched because our hearts were unaffected? The world would be a changed place it every believer attended to the sorrow that is plain before him.
Let professing follower’s especially taken to heart the solemn lesson that there does lie in their very religion the possibility of their being culpably unconcerned about some of the world’s wounds, and that, if their love to Yahuwah does not find a field for its manifestation in active love to man, worship in the Temple will be mockery. Philanthropy is, in our days, often substituted for religion. The service of man has been put forward as the only real service of Yahuwah.
37. The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him,"
Luke 10:25-37
The lawyer's first question was intended to 'tempt' Yahushua, which here seems to mean, rather, 'to test', that is, to ascertain His orthodoxy or His ability. Yeshua Ha Mashiach walks calmly through the snare, as if not seeing it. His answer is unimpeachably orthodox and with just hints in the slightest way that the question was needless since one so learnt in the law knew well enough what were the conditions of inheriting everlasting life. The lawyer knew the letter of the law too well to be at a loss what to answer. But it is remarkable that he gives the same combination of two passages which Yahushua gives in His last duel with the Pharisees. Did Yahushua adopt this lawyer's summary? Or is Luke's narrative condensed, omitting stages by which Yahushua led the man to such a wise answer?
Our Elohim’s rejoinder has a marked tone of authority, which puts the lawyer in his right place. His answer is commended, as by one whose estimation has weight and his practice is implicitly condemned, as by one who knows and has a right to judge. ‘This does’ is a sharp sword-thrust. It also unites the two ‘loves’ as essentially one, by saying ‘This’- not ‘these '- 'do.’
The lawyer feels the prick, and it is his defective practice, not his question, which he seeks to ‘justify.’ He did not think that his love to Yahuwah needed any justification. He had fully done his duty there, but about the other half, he was less sure. So, he tried to ride off, lawyer-like, on a question of the meaning of words. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is the question answered by the lovely story of the kindly Samaritan.
The main purpose, then, is to show how far off men may be and yet be neighbours.
The lawyer’s question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is turned around the other way in Yeshua Hamahiach’s form of it at the close. It is better to ask, ‘Whose neighbour, am I?’ than ‘Who is my neighbour?’ The lawyer meant by the word ‘a person whom I am bound to love.’ He wanted to know how far an obligation extended which he had no mind to recognise an inch farther than he was obliged. Probably he had in his thought the Rabbinical limitations which made it as much duty to ‘hate thine enemy’ as to ‘love thy neighbour.’ Probably, too, he accepted the national limitations, which refused to see any neighbours outside the Jewish people.
‘Neighbourhood,’ in his judgment, implied ‘nearness,’ and he wished to know how far off the boundaries of the region included in the command lay. There are a great many of us like him, who think that the obligation is a matter of geography, and that love, like force, is inverse as the square of the distance. A good deal of the so-called virtue of ‘patriotism’ is of this spurious sort. But Yeshua Ha Mahiach’s way of putting the question sweeps all such limitations aside. ‘Who became a neighbour to’ the wounded man? ‘He who showed mercy on him,’ said the lawyer, unwilling to name the Samaritan, and by his very reluctance giving the point to his answer which Yeshua Ha Mashiach wished to bring out.
The story is not, properly speaking, a parable, or imaginary narrative of something in the physical world intended to be translated into something in the spiritual region, but it is an illustration {by an imaginary narrative} of the actual virtue in question. Every detail is beautifully adapted to bring out the lesson that the obligation of neighbourly affection has nothing to do with nearness either of race or religion, but is as wide as humanity. The wounded man was probably a Jew, but it is significant that his nationality is not mentioned. He is ‘a certain man,’ that is all. The Samaritan did not ask where he was born before he helped him. So Yeshua Ha Mashiach teaches us that sorrow and need and sympathy and help are of no nationality.
That lesson is still more strongly taught by making the helper a Samaritan. Perhaps, if Yahushua had been speaking in America, he would have made him a; or, if in France, a German; or, if in England, a ‘foreigner.’ It was a daring stroke to bring the despised name of ‘Samaritan’ into the story, and one sees what a hard morsel to swallow the lawyer found it, by his unwillingness to name him after all.
The nations have not yet learned the deep, simple truth of this parable. It absolutely forbids all limitations of mercy and help. It makes every man the neighbour of every man. It carries in germ the great truth of the brotherhood of the race. ‘Humanity’ is a purely a follower’s word, and a conception that was never dreamed of before Yeshua Ha Mashiach had shown us the unity of mankind. We slowly approximate to the realisation of the teaching of this story, which is oftener admired than imitated, and perhaps often on the lips of people who obey at least.
Another aspect of the parable is its lesson as to the true manifestations of neighbourliness.
The minutely detailed account of the Samaritan’s care for the half-dead man is not only graphics but carries large lessons. Compassionate sentiments are very well. They must come first. The help that is given as a matter of duty, without the outgoing of heart, will be worth little, and soon cease to flow, but the emotion that does not drive the wheels of action, and set to work to stanch the sorrows which cause it to run so easily, is worth still less. It hardens the heart, as all feeling unexpressed inaction does. If the priest and Levite had gone up to the man, and said, ‘Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! how sorry we are for you! somebody ought to come and help you,’ and so had trudged on their way, they would have been worse than they are painted as being.
The various acts are enumerated as showing the genius of true love. We notice the swift, cool-headed deftness of the man, his having at hand the appliances needed, the business-like way in which he goes about his kindness, his readiness to expend his wine and oil, his willingness to do the surgeon’s work, his cheerful giving up of his ‘own beast,’ while he plodded along on foot, steadying the wounded man on his ass; his care for him at the inn; his generosity, and withal his prudence, in not leaving a great sum in the host’s hands, but just enough to tide over a day or two, and his wise hint that he would audit the accounts when he came back.
Jericho was one of the priestly cities so that there would be frequent travellers on ecclesiastical errands. The priest was ‘going down’ {that is from Jerusalem} so he could not plead a ‘pressing public engagement’ at the Temple. The verbal repetition of the description of the conduct of both him and the Levite serves to suggest its commonness. They two did exactly the same thing, and so would twenty or two hundred ordinary passers’ by. They saw the man lying in a pool of blood, and they made a wide circuit, and, even in the face of such a sight, went on their way. Probably they said to themselves, ‘Robbers again, the sooner we get past this dangerous bit, the better.’
It is not spiritualizing this narrative when we say that Jesus is Himself the great pattern of the swift compassion and effectual helpfulness which it sets forth. Many unwise attempts have been made to tack on spiritual meanings to the story. These areas irreverent as destructive of its beauty and significance. But to say that Yeshua Ha Mashiach is the perfect example of that love to every man which the narrative portrays has nothing in common with these fancies. It is only when we have found in Him the pity and the healing which we need, that we shall go forth into the world with love as wide as His.
We are not to love because we are neighbours in any geographical sense, but we become neighbours to the man farthest from us when we love and help him. The relation has nothing to do with proximity. If we prove ourselves neighbours to any man by exercising love to him, then the relation intended by the word is as wide as humanity. We recognise that everyone is our neighbour when a throb of pity shoots through our heart, and thereby we become neighbours to him.
This man's quick compassion was blended with plenty of shrewdness and was as practical as the hardest, least compassionate man could have been. There is a need for organisation, 'faculty' and the like, in the work of loving our neighbour. A thousand pities that sometimes Yeshua Ha Mashiach's charity and a common-sense dissolve partnership. The Samaritan was a man of business and he did his compassion in a business-like-fashion, as we should try to do.
Another lesson inwrought into the parable is the divorce between religion and neighbourliness, as shown in the conduct of the priest and Levite.
We see that they were heartless, but they did not see it, We do the same thing ourselves, and do not see that we do, for who of us has not known of many miseries which we could have done something to stanch and have left untouched because our hearts were unaffected? The world would be a changed place it every believer attended to the sorrow that is plain before him.
Let professing follower’s especially taken to heart the solemn lesson that there does lie in their very religion the possibility of their being culpably unconcerned about some of the world’s wounds, and that, if their love to Yahuwah does not find a field for its manifestation in active love to man, worship in the Temple will be mockery. Philanthropy is, in our days, often substituted for religion. The service of man has been put forward as the only real service of Yahuwah.
But philanthropic unbelievers and philanthropic believers are equally monstrosities. What Yahuwah hath joined let not man put asunder. That simple ‘and,’ which couples the two great commandments, expresses their indissoluble connection. Well for us if in our practice they are blended in one!
Comments
Post a Comment