The term “good samaritan” has become common usage for someone who goes out of their way to do a good deed. But it has become so common that we can lose sight of how astonishing the parable was when Jesus first told it.

The Parable

The context of the parable comes in Luke 10:25-29. A lawyer trying to test Jesus asked what he had to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus answered that he was simply to obey the Law that they all knew: to love God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, then to love his neighbor as himself. The lawyer, hoping for a way to put that into a neat box that he could check off as “complete”, asked “Well, just exactly who counts as my neighbor?” (my paraphrase).

Jesus answered with the story told in Luke 10:30-37. When a man desperately needed help, the priest and the Levite passed by but the Samaritan did not. To understand the shocking part of that story, we need to know who the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan represented to his listeners.

The Priest

As with many other of the world’s religions, the priests were the ones who interceded between God and the people. Individuals did not offer sacrifices themselves; they took their offering to the priest, who then performed the sacrifice on their behalf (Leviticus 1:1-5).

The Jewish priesthood began with Moses’ brother Aaron during the Exodus. Moses and Aaron were born to a husband and wife who were both of the tribe descended from Levi, the third son of patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham (Genesis 29:31-35, Exodus 2:1-2). When Moses protested his assignment from God to confront the Pharaoh and demand that the Hebrew slaves be set free, God commissioned Aaron to be his brother’s spokesman (Exodus 4:10-16). Later, God made that commission permanent to Aaron and his descendants (Exodus 28:40-43, Exodus 29:8-9).

The Levite

The rest of Moses and Aaron’s tribe, the Levites, were designated to serve in the tabernacle during the Exodus and later in the temple after it was built in Jerusalem. They did not act as intermediaries or spokesmen, as the priests did, but they cared for the temple and its furnishings. For example, they were the only ones allowed to carry the Ark of the Covenant while the people traveled (Numbers 1:47-51, Numbers 3:5-9, Deuteronomy 10:8).

The Samaritans

Samaritans were a people group despised by the Jews of Jesus’ day. A thousand years earlier, all of the Israelites were ruled by one king. First there was Saul, then David, then David’s son Solomon. Next was Solomon’s son Rehoboam, but he made a foolish choice that resulted in a permanent split in the nation. As a result of Rehoboam’s harsh and arrogant rule, there was a revolt led by a man named Jeroboam. It ended with the northernmost ten tribes becoming “Israel” led by Jeroboam, with its capital located in Samaria. Only the two southern tribes — named “Judah” after one of those tribes — were still led by Rehoboam, with the capital in Jerusalem where the temple was located (1 Kings 12:1-24).

Fast forward a couple of hundred years, to 721 B.C. when the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria. Most of its people were deported, while Assyria imported its own people to replace them. The remaining Israelites intermarried with the Assyrian imports. That meant that they were no longer pure descendants of the people God rescued from Egypt (2 Kings 17:1-6 and 2 Kings 17:24). Plus, they didn’t worship in the Jerusalem temple, the one place that God had established as where His presence was with His people (Deuteronomy 12:5-6, John 4:19-20).

The southern kingdom of Judah lasted a few more years before they were conquered by Babylon in 598 B.C. (2 Kings 25:1-11). Kings Cyrus and Artaxerxes of Persia (which had conquered Babylon) allowed them to return in 538 B.C. and rebuild Jerusalem and its temple (Ezra 1:1-4 and Nehemiah 2:1-6). The events of Jesus’ life recorded in the Gospels take place in Judah, with Samaria (old Israel) as a hated next-door neighbor. They were regarded as traitors, sell-outs, and interlopers, not to be associated with by upstanding observant Jews (John 4:9).

The Neighbor

There were three people with opportunity to help the injured man in Jesus’ parable. One was a priest, the closest link the people had to God; one was a Levite, who was dedicated to serving in the temple; and one was a Samaritan, a hated mixed-breed apostate. Who ignored him? The ones whose profession was to serve God. Who helped him? The (gasp!) Samaritan.

The Samaritan didn’t just offer a quick word of sympathy, either. He “bandaged up his wounds“, “put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him“, and paid the innkeeper for his further care. He went to effort and expense in his help to an enemy.

Hmm, that sounds familiar. I wonder if the Samaritan had heard Jesus teach to “love your enemies“? (Luke 6:27-28, 35)

Jesus asked the lawyer which of the three was a neighbor to the needy man. The lawyer answered “the one who helped him“. Jesus then told him “You do the same.” This took the wind out of the lawyer’s sails. 😁 It was also another example of Jesus teaching that obeying the spirit of the law, rather than simply the letter of the law, is what matters to God (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28).

Our Neighbors

I guess the next question we all need to ask ourselves is: Who is my neighbor? Then we need to go out there and be neighborly!