A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho;
Adam himself is meant; Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose
blessedness Adam fell; Jericho means the moon, and signifies our mortality,
because it is born, waxes, wanes, and dies. Thieves are the devil and his
angels. Who stripped him, namely; of his immortality; and beat him, by
persuading him to sin; and left him half-dead, because in so far as man can
understand and know God, he lives, but in so far as he is wasted and oppressed
by sin, he is dead; he is therefore called half-dead. The priest and the Levite
who saw him and passed by, signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old
Testament which could profit nothing for salvation. Samaritan means Guardian,
and therefore the Lord Himself is signified by this name. The binding of the
wounds is the restraint of sin. Oil is the comfort of good hope; wine the
exhortation to work with fervent spirit. The beast is the flesh in which He
deigned to come to us. The being set upon the beast is belief in the
incarnation of Christ. The inn is the Church, where travelers returning to
their heavenly country are refreshed after pilgrimage. The morrow is after the
resurrection of the Lord. The two pence are either the two precepts of love, or
the promise of this life and of that which is to come. The innkeeper is the
Apostle. The supererogatory payment is either his counsel of celibacy, or the
fact that he worked with his own hands lest he should be a burden to any of the
weaker brethren when the Gospel was new, though it was lawful for him “to live
by the gospel” (Dodd 1961: 13-14; slightly abridged).
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