They stood at a distance from him ¹³ and raised their voice, saying, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” ¹⁴ And when he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” As they were going they were cleansed. ¹⁵ And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; ¹⁶ and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. ¹⁷ Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸ Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”

The telling of this encounter seems straight forward: (a) Jesus encounters a group of lepers on the road to Jerusalem, (b) they ask for his mercy,  (c) they are cured, but (d) only one returns to thank Jesus and that one is a Samaritan. A simple miracle story, yes? A narrative about faith as the foundation of healing? Such simple summaries, even if true, miss several key aspects of the encounter and the chance to reflect further on our own life of faith in Jesus.

The Boundaries.  The account begins with Luke’s vague geographical reference which introduces a theme of boundaries. The attentive reader is reminded of the divided tribes of Israel. The ten northern tribes had revolted against the throne of David after the death of King Solomon (ca. 920 BC).  These tribes were conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC with most of the Israelites killed or taken into exile. However, a few of them, who were so unimportant that nobody wanted them, were left in the north (that area called Samaria in the NT). 2 Kings 17:24 tells us that the conquering king forced people from five foreign cities/nations to settle in Samaria. These foreigners inter-married with the Jews and they brought in the worship of their own gods. By Jesus’ time, Samaritans were not considered true Israelites. They had perverted the race. They had perverted the religion. The northerners looked to Mt. Gerizim as the place to worship God, not Jerusalem. They interpreted the Torah differently than the Jews in the south. The animosity between the Jews and Samaritans were so great that some Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid walking on Samaritan territory.

As clear as this boundary is, so too does the account raise other boundaries. Where the first boundary was geo-political, the other boundary is leprosy whose medical, social and spiritual implications are made clear by the simple passage: “They stood at a distance from him” (v.12). The listeners of Luke’s time (and ourselves as well) may have already begun to place the lepers in the category of the poor to whom the news of the kingdom is proclaimed. At this point the text does not tell us that one of the lepers is a Samaritan. The boundary of “other” or perhaps even “enemy” is not revealed until the end of the narrative.

The group of lepers that hails Jesus is composed of both Jews (Galileans) and Samaritans. The companionship of these usually bitter enemies indicates the desperation of their condition, which led them to depend on one another, letting boundaries fall to the wayside. Their mutual banishment from their native “camps” lead them to band together as they mutually depended on charity for survival. Even as the narrative is pointing out boundaries, it also shows that some boundaries are set aside.

What about the rest of us? The Talmud teaches: “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” The faithfulness of the listeners (and ourselves) is also slowly revealed within this text. The truly faithful of God are those willing to cross boundaries, despite the way we perceive things, despite preconceptions about the “otherness” of those we encounter.  The faithful cross such boundaries because of their faith/trust in God.

Luke 17:11 his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee: the expression dia meson (“through” in our translation) is literally “in the middle of” – strictly speaking there is no region between Samaria and Galilee. Since Galilee lay above Samaria, Jesus may have traveled near the border between the two regions as he made his way down to the Jordan to skirt around Samaria.  In any case, the geographical reference is vague at best.

Luke 17:12 lepers: literally leprós andres, scabby men.  The adjective leprós (from the verb root meaning “to scale or peel off”) has the sense of “scaly,” “scabby,” “not smooth on the surface.” It can be used of uneven and stony ground, but also of leprosy, in which the skin becomes rough and scabby. The related noun lépra and its derivatives etc. are used only of leprosy. The LXX uses lépra for צָרַעַת, which is found especially in Leviticus 13 ff, or נֶגַע־צָרַעַת, Lv. 13:20.

In the NT lépra and leprós refer to the same ailment, or group of ailments, as the words denote in the OT or LXX. This is shown by the reference to the OT in Luke 4:27; Mt. 11:5 and paralles, and to the OT ritual of purification in Mk. 1:44 (Luke 17:14). Whether this sickness is what we now call leprosy may be questioned. But the precise medical identification of the disease does not affect our estimation of the accounts of healing. If the tradition emphasizes particularly that Jesus healed lepers, this is linked with the fact that Judaism expected the removal of this affliction in the time of Messianic salvation, cf. the reply of Jesus to the Baptist in Mt. 11:5 and the power given to the disciples in Mt. 10:8. Accounts of such healings are to be found in Mk. 1:40 ff. and parallels as well as Luke 17:12 ff. (cf. also Mt. 10:8). [TDNT]

Luke 17:16 He was a Samaritan: In the parable of the Good Samartian the foreigner is the example of Godly love and mercy. Here the Samaritan is the foreigner who is the exemplar of faith.

Luke 17:17 foreigner: This is the only place in the NT that the word allogenḗs is used.  The same word was used in an inscription in the temple in Jerusalem: “no foreigner is to enter.” The same word was used in the Septuagint in laws that forbade outsiders from coming near the tabernacle, with a penalty of death for those who did (Numbers 1:51; 3:10, 38; 16:40; 18:4, 7; Ezekiel 44:7, 9).

Related articles

• Boundaries, Faith, and Gratitude – Context (friarmusings.wordpress.com)
• On Mission and Crossing Over Boundaries (friarmusings.wordpress.com)