‘And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men who were skin diseased, who stood afar off,'
Approaching a certain village (Luke's source may not have known its name) Jesus came across ten men who ‘stood afar off'. They were skin diseased and therefore unclean and were thus forbidden to join themselves with crowds. They were outcasts from Israel, ever on the periphery of things. They did not have the forthrightness of the skin diseased man in Luke 5:12-15 who actually approached Jesus. On the other hand they were in fact were being more obedient to the Law. The men would, however, want to maintain their proximity to villages in order to receive alms from them. They had no other honest means of survival.
But Luke may well have intended a hint here that God's mercy was available to those who are ‘afar off' (compare Ephesians 2:13).