And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And desiring to be fed with the crumbs - And it is likely this desire was complied with, for it is not intimated that he spurned away the poor man from the gate, or that his suit was rejected. And as we find, Luke 16:24, that the rich man desired that Lazarus should be sent with a little water to him, it is a strong intimation that he considered him under some kind of obligation to him; for, had he refused him a few crumbs in his lifetime, it is not reasonable to suppose that he would now have requested such a favor from him; nor does Abraham glance at any such uncharitable conduct on the part of the rich man.
We may now observe,
II. In what the punishment of this man consisted.
1. Lazarus dies and is carried into Abraham's bosom. By the phrase, Abraham's bosom, an allusion is made to the custom at Jewish feasts, when three persons reclining on their left elbows on a couch, the person whose head came near the breast of the other, was said to lie in his bosom. So it is said of the beloved disciple, John 13:25. Abraham's bosom was a phrase used among the Jews to signify the paradise of God. See Josephus's account of the Maccabees, chap. xiii.