Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 10:31

"And by chance a certain priest was going down that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side." — Luke 10:31 (ASV)

By chance.—The passage is the only one in the New Testament in which the phrase occurs. Our Lord seems to use it with a touch of what we have elsewhere termed irony. It seemed so casual, as such opportunities always do to men who neglect them, and yet it was, in the purpose of God, the test-moment of each man’s character and life.

There came down.—Better, as before, there was going down.

A certain priest.—Jericho was at this time a priestly city, and so the journey of the priest from Jerusalem, as if returning from his week of sacerdotal offices there, has a touch of vivid naturalness. He, too, like the questioner, had been doing his duty to God, according to his measure of that duty.

Passed by on the other side.—The priest shrank, perhaps, for these reasons:

1. from the trouble and peril of meddling with a man whom robbers had just attacked, and
2. from the fear of incurring ceremonial defilement by coming into contact with what might possibly be a corpse before he reached it.

He accordingly passed by on the other side, not only of the road, but of the ravine through which the road passed.