This story resembles a rabbinic story of uncertain date, except that there the rich man did a good deed and made it into the world to come; here he allows starvation while he lives in luxury, and thus inherits hell. Some details about the afterlife here are standard features of Jewish tradition; a few are simply necessary to make the story line work (acceptable practice in the telling of parables).
16:19. Purple was an especially expensive form of apparel (cf. comment on Acts 16:14); the lifestyle Jesus describes here is one of ostentatious luxury. Although this man may have become rich by immoral means (as people often did), the only crime Jesus attributes to him is that he let Lazarus starve to death when he could have prevented it.
16:20. Some Jewish parables (including the rabbinic one mentioned at the beginning of this section) named a character or two.
16:21. The crumbs here may be regular crumbs or the pieces of bread used to sop up the table. Had Lazarus gotten to eat them, these leftovers would still have been insufficient to sustain him. The dogs here appear to be the usual kind Palestinian Jews knew: scavengers, viewed as if they were rats or other unhealthy creatures (also in the Old Testament, e.g., 1 Kings 14:11; 16:4; 21:24; 22:38). They were unclean, and their tongues would have stung his sores.
16:22-23. Jewish lore often speaks of the righteous being carried away by angels; Jesus spares his hearers the traditional corresponding image of the wicked being carried away by demons. Every person, no matter how poor, was to receive a burial, and not to be buried was seen as terrible (e.g., 1 Kings 14:13). But Lazarus, having neither relatives nor charitable patron, did not receive one, whereas the rich man would have received great eulogies. True Israelites and especially martyrs were expected to share with Abraham in the world to come. The most honored seat in a banquet would be nearest the host, reclining in such a way that one’s head was near his bosom.
16:24-26. Jewish literature often portrayed hell as involving burning. The formerly rich man hopes for mercy because he is a descendant of Abraham (see comment on 3:8), but the judgment here is based on a future inversion of status. Jewish people expected an inversion of status, where the oppressed righteous (especially Israel) would be exalted above the oppressing wicked (especially the Gentiles), and also believed that charitable persons would be greatly rewarded in the world to come. But this parable specifies only economic inversion, and its starkness would have been as offensive to most first-century hearers of means as it would be to most middle-class Western Christians today if they heard it in its original force.
16:27-31. If those who claimed to believe the Bible failed to live accordingly, even a resurrection (Jesus points ahead to his own) would not persuade them. Jewish literature also emphasized the moral responsibility of all people to obey whatever measure of light they already had.
(Adapted from The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)
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