Luke 10

28. he said, &c.--"Right; THIS do, and life is thine"--laying such emphasis on "this" as to indicate, without expressing it, where the real difficulty to a sinner lay, and thus nonplussing the questioner himself.

29. willing--"wishing," to get himself out of the difficulty, by throwing on Jesus the definition of "neighbor," which the Jews interpreted very narrowly and technically, as excluding Samaritans and Gentiles [ALFORD].

30. A certain man--a Jew.
from Jerusalem to Jericho--a distance of nineteen miles northeast, a deep and very fertile hollow--"the Temple of Judea" [TRENCH].
thieves--"robbers." The road, being rocky and desolate, was a notorious haunt of robbers, then and for ages after, and even to this day.

31, 32. came down a . . . priest . . . and a Levite--Jericho, the second city of Judea, was a city of the priests and Levites, and thousands of them lived there. The two here mentioned are supposed, apparently, to be returning from temple duties, but they had not learnt what that meaneth, 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice' [TRENCH].
saw him--It was not inadvertently that he acted.
came and looked--a further aggravation.
passed by--although the law expressly required the opposite treatment even of the beast not only of their brethren, but of their enemy ( Deuteronomy 22:4 , Exodus 23:4 Exodus 23:5 ; compare Isaiah 58:7 ).

33. Samaritan--one excommunicated by the Jews, a byword among them, synonymous with heretic and devil ( John 8:48 ;
had compassion--His best is mentioned first; for "He who gives outward things gives something external to himself, but he who imparts compassion and tears gives him something from his very self" [GREGORY THE GREAT, in TRENCH]. No doubt the priest and Levite had their excuses--It is not safe to be lingering here; besides, he's past recovery; and then, may not suspicion rest upon ourselves? So might the Samaritan have reasoned, but did not [TRENCH]. Nor did he say, He's a Jew, who would have had no dealings with me ( John 4:9 ), and why should I with him?

34. oil and wine--the remedies used in such cases all over the East ( Isaiah 1:6 ), and elsewhere; the wine to cleanse the wounds, the oil to assuage their smartings.
on his own beast--himself going on foot.

35. two pence--equal to two day's wages of a laborer, and enough for several days' support.

36. Which . . . was neighbour?--a most dexterous way of putting the question: (1) Turning the question from, "Whom am I to love as my neighbour?" to "Who is the man that shows that love?" (2) Compelling the lawyer to give a reply very different from what he would like--not only condemning his own nation, but those of them who should be the most exemplary. (3) Making him commend one of a deeply hated race. And he does it, but it is almost extorted. For he does not answer, "The Samaritan"--that would have sounded heterodox, heretical--but "He that showed mercy on him." It comes to the same thing, no doubt, but the circumlocution is significant.

37. Go, &c.--O exquisite, matchless teaching! What new fountains of charity has not this opened up in the human spirit--rivers in the wilderness, streams in the desert! What noble Christian institutions have not such words founded, all undreamed of till that wondrous One came to bless this heartless world of ours with His incomparable love--first in words, and then in deeds which have translated His words into flesh and blood, and poured the life of them through that humanity which He made His own! Was this parable, now, designed to magnify the law of love, and to show who fulfils it and who not? And who did this as never man did it, as our Brother Man, "our Neighbor?" The priests and Levites had not strengthened the diseased, nor bound up the broken ( Ezekiel 34:4 ), while He bound up the brokenhearted ( Isaiah 61:1 ), and poured into all wounded spirits the balm of sweetest consolation. All the Fathers saw through the thin veil of this noblest of stories, the Story of love, and never wearied of tracing the analogy (though sometimes fancifully enough) [TRENCH]. Exclaims GREGORY NAZIANZEN (in the fourth century), "He hungered, but He fed thousands; He was weary, but He is the Rest of the weary; He is saluted 'Samaritan' and 'Demoniac,' but He saves him that went down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves," &c.

Luke 10:38-42 . MARTHA AND MARY.

38. certain village--Bethany ( John 11:1 ), which Luke so speaks of, having no farther occasion to notice it.
received him . . . her house--The house belonged to her, and she appears throughout to be the older sister.

39. which also--"who for her part," in contrast with Martha.
sat--"seated herself." From the custom of sitting beneath an instructor, the phrase "sitting at one's feet" came to mean being a disciple of any one ( Acts 22:3 ).
heard--rather, "kept listening" to His word.

40. cumbered--"distracted."
came to him--"presented herself before Him," as from another apartment, in which her sister had "left her to serve (or make preparation) alone."
carest thou not . . . my sister, &c.--"Lord, here am I with everything to do, and this sister of mine will not lay a hand to anything; thus I miss something from Thy lips, and Thou from our hands."
bid her, &c.--She presumes not to stop Christ's teaching by calling her sister away, and thus leaving Him without His one auditor, nor did she hope perhaps to succeed if she had tried.

41. Martha, Martha--emphatically redoubling upon the name.
careful and cumbered--the one word expressing the inward worrying anxiety that her preparations should be worthy of her Lord; the other, the outward bustle of those preparations.
many things--"much service" ( Luke 10:40 ); too elaborate preparation, which so engrossed her attention that she missed her Lord's teaching.

42. one thing, &c.--The idea of "Short work and little of it suffices for Me" is not so much the lower sense of these weighty words, as supposed in them, as the basis of something far loftier than any precept on economy. Underneath that idea is couched another, as to the littleness both of elaborate preparation for the present life and of that life itself, compared with another.
chosen the good part--not in the general sense of Moses' choice ( Hebrews 11:25 ), and Joshua's ( Joshua 24:15 ), and David's ( Psalms 119:30 ); that is, of good in opposition to bad; but, of two good ways of serving and pleasing the Lord, choosing the better. Wherein, then, was Mary's better than Martha's? Hear what follows.
not be taken away--Martha's choice would be taken from her, for her services would die with her; Mary's never, being spiritual and eternal. Both were true-hearted disciples, but the one was absorbed in the higher, the other in the lower of two ways of honoring their common Lord. Yet neither despised, or would willingly neglect, the other's occupation. The one represents the contemplative, the other the active style of the Christian character. A Church full of Marys would perhaps be as great an evil as a Church full of Marthas. Both are needed, each to be the complement of the other.