Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 16:20

"and a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores," — Luke 16:20 (ASV)

And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus.—The word for “beggar,” it may be noted, is the same as the “poor” of Luke 6:20. The occurrence in this one solitary instance of a personal name in our Lord’s parables suggests the question, What was meant by it? Three answers present themselves, each of which is more or less compatible with the other two:

1. There may have been an actual beggar of that name known both to the disciples and the Pharisees.
2. The significance of the name, the current Greek form of Eleazar (=“God is the helper”), may have been meant to symbolise the outward wretchedness of one who had no other help.
3. As that which seems most probable, the name may have been intended as a warning to Lazarus of Bethany.

He was certainly rich. We have seen some reason to identify him with the young ruler that had great possessions. (See Notes on Matthew 19:18.) In any case he was exposed to the temptations that wealth brings with it.

What more effectual warning could be given him than to hear his own name brought into a parable, as belonging to the beggar who was carried into Abraham’s bosom, while his own actual life corresponded more or less closely to that of the rich man who passed into the torments of Hades? Was he not taught in this way, what all else failed to teach him, that if he wished for eternal life he must strip himself of the wealth which made it impossible for him to enter the Kingdom of God?

It may be noted that almost every harmonised arrangement of the Gospel history places the parable almost immediately before the death and raising of Lazarus (see Note on John 11:1), while in some of them the question of the young ruler comes between the two. The combination, in either case, suggests the thought of a continuous process of spiritual education, by which the things that were impossible with men were shown to be possible with God (Matthew 19:26). First the picture of the unseen world drawn in symbolic imagery, so as to force itself upon his notice, then an actual experience of the realities of that life; this was what he needed, and this was given him.

Laid at his gate, full of sores, . . .—Literally, at his porch, or gateway. The Greek word for “full of sores” is somewhat more technical than the English one; literally, ulcerated, one which a medical writer like St. Luke would use to express a generally ulcerous state of the whole body. The description led, over time, to the application of the leper’s name to those who suffered from leprosy, as producing an analogous condition, and so we get the terms, lazar, lazar-house, lazaretto. In the Italian lazzaroni the idea of the beggary is prominent without that of the sores.