The Greatest Commandment (Mark 12:28-34 *, Matthew 22:34-40 *), and the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. only). The inquirer puts his question in a different form, but the meaning is the same. And in Lk. Jesus elicits the answer from the questioner, and commends him. Luke 10:29 is thought by some to be merely Lk.'s device, a peg on which to hang the parable, which existed in an independent form. For the parable answers the question Whose neighbour am I? not Who is my neighbour? (cf. Luke 7:41-43 *). But the question Whose neighbour am I? is after all the more important, and it would be like Jesus to turn the problem round so as to emphasise this. True, one would have expected a story showing how Jew should help Samaritan, not Samaritan a Jew, but neighbourliness is independent of nationality, and here the Samaritan puts the Jew to shame. If we consider the parable apart from the context the moral is that people despised by the Jews may be much better than they and much nearer the Kingdom. The Samaritans, as such, are not put above the priests and Levites, but a charitable Samaritan is worth more than a priest without charity (Loisy). Halé vy thinks that in the original story the three men were priest, Levite, and Israelite, a frequent and familiar collocation. A Samaritan was not likely to be passing and repassing between Jericho and Jerusalem or to be friendly with the innkeeper. There would certainly be point in a simple layman doing what the clergy had failed to do. Perhaps for his Gentile readers, to whom priest and Levite were Israelites, Lk. has corrected (and exaggerated) the third term. But, as Montefiore (p. 936f.) says, the Samaritan is in the parable now and the world will not easily let him go. And rightly. The parable is one of the simplest and noblest of all. Love, it tells us, must know no limits of race and ask no inquiry. Who needs me is my neighbour. Nowhere in OT is this doctrine so exquisitely and dramatically taught.
Luke 10:25. tempted: tested. eternal life: cf. 1 John 1:2 *.
Luke 10:30. going down: Jericho is nearly 4000 feet lower than Jerusalem; the distance is twenty miles, and the road is full of caves and gorges.
Luke 10:37. showed mercy: lit., did mercy.