Parable of the Good Samaritan

The event

A lawyer, testing Jesus, asks what he must do to inherit eternal life, and after agreeing that loving God and neighbor sums up the Law, tries to narrow the scope by asking, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus answers with a story set on the notoriously dangerous road descending from Jerusalem to Jericho — a steep, winding route through desert terrain long infested with bandits, well known to Jesus's Judean listeners.

A man is beaten, robbed, and left half-dead on that road. A priest and then a Levite — both respected religious figures — pass by on the other side, perhaps wary of ritual defilement or simple danger. It is a Samaritan, a man from a people Jews despised and considered ethnically and religiously compromised, who stops, bandages the wounds, and pays for the man's care at an inn out of his own pocket. Jesus turns the lawyer's question back on him: not "who counts as my neighbor" but "who proved to be a neighbor" — and instructs him, and every reader since, to "go and do likewise."

Scripture references

• Luke 10:25-37