Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Luke 10:30 - 10:30
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
30. ἄνθρωπός τις. Clearly, as the tenor of the Parable implies, a Jew.
κατέβαινεν ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλὴμ εἰς Ἱερειχώ. A rocky, dangerous gorge (Jos. B. J. IV. 8, § 3), haunted by marauding Bedawin, and known as ‘the bloody way’ (Adommim, Jerome, De loc. Hebr. and on Jer 3:2). Some explain this name by the dark red colour of the overhanging rocks. The “went down” is strictly accurate, for the road descends very rapidly from Jerusalem to the Jordan valley. The distance is about 21 miles. For Jericho, see Luk 19:1.
λῃσταῖς περιέπεσεν. ‘Fell among robbers, or brigands.’ The phrase is a classical one, Hdt. VI. 105, &c. Palestine was notorious for these plundering Arabs. Herod the Great had rendered real service to the country in extirpating them from their haunts, but they constantly sprung up again, and even the Romans could not effectually put them down (Jos. Antt. XX. 6, § 1; B. J. XI. 12, § 5). On this very road an English baronet—Sir Frederic Henniker—was stripped and murdered by Arab robbers in 1820. “He was probably thinking of the Parable of the Samaritan when the assassin’s stroke laid him low,” Porter’s Palestine, I. 151.
πληγὰς ἐπιθέντες. ‘Laying blows on him.’
ἡμιθανῆ. Some MSS. omit the τυγχάνοντα, ‘chancing to be still alive.’ So far as the robbers were concerned, it was a mere accident that any life was left in him. The τυγχάνοντα with one graphic touch expresses the absolute indifference of these bandits to so small a matter as his living or dying.