RICH MAN and LAZARUS

The situation is ironic. The rich man seemed not to notice Lazarus on earth, but now he appeals through Abraham for the poor man’s aid. The use of Lazarus’s name in his appeal suggests that the rich man knew about Lazarus all along, making his neglect of the poor man that much worse.

Darrell L. Bock

The name Lazarus means God is my help. God is my salvation. Lazarus has a name, because God is his help. The rich man has nothing but the designation “rich man.”

Timothy Keller

The point is that both Lazarus and the rich man know where each other are.

Darrell L. Bock

3) The rich man’s view of Lazarus has not changed since his death. He still views him as beneath him, as someone who might to be sent to give him relief. This reveals the lack of heart in the rich man.

Darrell L. Bock

Lazarus was carried above by the angels, because his heart was in heaven; and the rich man lifted up his eyes in hell, because he had never lifted them up towards God and heavenly things.

Charles Spurgeon

The request is a small one, but it recalls Lazarus’s similar small request for scraps of food. Just as there were no crumbs for Lazarus, there will be no water for the rich man. The difference is that now the rich man has no hope of reversing his fortune. He sealed his own fate by his actions.

Darrell L. Bock

By placing the rich man in hell and Lazarus in a state of bliss, the story assumes that for these two persons, the final judgment has happened already—at death, rather than at the last day.

Stanley J. Grenz

No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

Henry Ward Beecher (Congregational Clergyman)

Lazarus means “one whom God helps.” The rich man needs no help, but Lazarus must depend completely on God. This is the central point of the whole story.

Grant R. Osborne

We should not think that Lazarus was saved by his poverty, any more than we should think that the rich man was damned by his wealth. Lazarus must have had a true relationship of faith with the true God, and the rich man did not.

David Guzik

4541 God himself is made rich by man’s necessity.

George Macdonald (Scottish Novelist and Poet)

To be content makes a poor person rich, but to be malcontent makes a rich man poor.

—Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Poor and content is rich and rich enough.

William Shakespeare

Even in the afterlife the rich man thought of himself as superior and as Lazarus as his servant.

David Guzik

The contented man is never poor, the discontented never rich.

George Eliot

Men do not desire merely to be rich, but to be richer than other men. —John Stuart Mill, Essay on Social Freedom

John Stuart Mill (Utilitarian Philosopher)

A man once asked Diogenes what was the proper time for supper, and he made answer, “If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can.”3

Ibid.

Diogenes Laertius

Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.

Robert Green Ingersoll (American Lawyer and Lecturer)

11867 There is nothing that makes men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. Wealth is of the heart, not of the hand.

John Milton (Poet and Controversialist)

“was laid” (passive) each day outside the rich man’s gate. The rsv and nrsv translate “at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus” (Lk 16:20). The passive is overlooked. The cultural point is that Lazarus was too sick to walk.

Kenneth E. Bailey

Riches have made more covetousness than covetousness has made rich men.

Thomas Fuller