Who Is My Neighbour: The Parable Read Through

This reading companions the breakdown Who Is My Neighbour. Nothing is argued here. The parable runs from beginning to end, and the meaning of each part is carried alongside the words it belongs to.

LUKE 10:25–37 — KJV

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, [a man trained in the law of Moses and paid to teach it, putting a test in front of a crowd rather than looking for an answer] Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? [no new teaching is given; the man is sent back to the book he already carries and asked how he reads it] And he answering said, Thou shalt love Yahuah thy Elohim with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; [out of Deuteronomy 6:5, from the passage that says Yahuah is one] and thy neighbour as thyself. [out of Leviticus 19:18, quoted correctly and stopped fifteen verses short of the answer he is about to ask for] And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. [the words are granted him; the instruction is to go and do them] But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Yahushua, And who is my neighbour? [he is asking for a boundary, so that the commandment can be finished at the edge of the people he already loves]

And Yahushua answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, [nothing is left on him to tell anyone who he is or where he belongs] and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. [the man in the road cannot ask and cannot be identified; only the need is visible]

And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: [the man who serves at the altar, whose lips are to keep knowledge, at whose mouth the people seek the law] and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. [he saw it; no reason is given for what he did next, and none is offered anywhere in the passage] And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. [not the same man twice — the priest holds the altar, the tribe of Levi holds the teaching of the law; between them they are both halves of the house, and both go around him]

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: [the one man on that road with no part in the house — his people were settled in Samaria by Assyria, feared Yahuah and served their own gods, and were told at the rebuilding that they had nothing to do with it] and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, [the exact charge Yahuah brought against the shepherds of Israel, who bound not up that which was broken — and the thing He said He would come and do Himself] and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; [the help does not stop when his own road turns; it is paid forward past the day he was there] and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. [no limit is set on the cost, and a limit is the one thing the lawyer came asking for]

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? [the question is turned around — no longer who qualifies to be loved, but which man acted as a neighbour] And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. [the lawyer answers correctly a second time and convicts himself in doing it] Then said Yahushua unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. [the same instruction given before the story began, now given again with a face on it: do it]

A lawyer asked how far the commandment reached, and he was answered with a man who never asked. The law had already named the stranger and even the enemy as the neighbour, in the same chapter he was quoting and in the words of Moses he taught for a living. Two men who held that law between them — the altar and the teaching — saw the need in the road and walked around it. The one man shut out of the house stopped and did what was written, and what he did was what Yahuah said He would do for the broken Himself. A neighbour is not settled before a man acts. It is what he becomes when he acts.

The men who failed here were not unbelievers and were not ignorant. They held the offices, they knew the words, and they could have recited the commandment as well as the lawyer did. What they would not do was stop. Scripture records what they did and gives them no reason for it, because there is no reason that would be accepted. The passage begins with a question about the law and ends with an order to keep it, and anyone who can quote the commandment and still step around the man is standing where the priest and the Levite stood on that road.