Lazarus: The Beggar at the Gate

A man of four verses

Lazarus is a man living at the time of the New Testament, placed in the era around 4 BC to AD 33 (era placed on Ussher's chronology, 1650). Everything Scripture says about him fits in four verses, all of them in one chapter of one book: Luke 16. He has no recorded parents, no recorded children, no recorded tribe. He has a name, a condition, a location, and an outcome. That is the whole of it, and it is worth slowing down over, because four verses given to a beggar is four verses more than most beggars receive in any literature of the ancient world.

Named at the gate

The first word we get about him is his poverty and his name together: "A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was taken to his gate, full of sores," (Luke 16:20). Notice what the verse gives and what it withholds. It gives the name. The gate belongs to someone else, unnamed here; Lazarus is the one carried to it. He does not walk there under his own strength; he "was taken." His body is described in one phrase, "full of sores," and that is his entire physical description in the Bible.

He says nothing. In the whole of Scripture, Lazarus of Luke 16 never speaks a word. He performs no action of his own. Every verb attached to him in this first verse is something done to him or a condition he carries. He is the most passive named figure you may ever study, and Scripture still gives him a name while the man with the gate, in these verses, has none.

Seen from Hades

The second and last passage does not follow him forward so much as show him from a distance, through the eyes of another: "In Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his bosom. He cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue! For I am in anguish in this flame.' \"But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in the same way, bad things. But here he is now comforted, and you are in anguish\"" (Luke 16:23-25).

Lazarus is at Abraham's bosom. Still he does not speak. He is spoken about by the man in torment, who wants him sent as an errand runner with a wet fingertip, and he is spoken about by Abraham, who answers with a memory: "you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in the same way, bad things." The reversal is stated without any explanation of merit. Abraham does not say Lazarus was righteous or that the other man was cruel. He names what each one received in his lifetime, and then he names where each one is now: "here he is now comforted, and you are in anguish."

The man in torment still speaks of Lazarus as someone beneath him, someone to be sent. The gate is gone, but the assumption behind it is not.

No failures on the record

Honesty about this man means saying that Scripture records no sin of his, and also that Scripture records no virtue of his. He commits no failure in these four verses because he does nothing at all in them. Anyone who makes Lazarus a model of patient faith is adding to the text. What the passages actually show is a man who received bad things in his lifetime (Luke 16:25) and who is found comforted at Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:23). The comfort is not explained as a wage. It is simply where he is.

What we do not know

Scripture does not name his parents. No children are named. No tribe or people is given. We are not told how long he lay at that gate, how he died, who carried him there, or whether anyone ever answered his need in life. We do not know his age, his trade before his sores, or whether he had any household. The dossier of his life is four verses long, and every attempt to lengthen it is invention.

The line to Christ

The only New Testament ground we have for Lazarus is Luke 16:20 and Luke 16:23-25, and the line must be drawn from those verses and no others. They stand in the Gospel of Luke, and what they hold out is a reversal announced by Abraham: the man who received good things is in anguish, and the man who received bad things is comforted (Luke 16:25). Lazarus contributes nothing to this outcome within the text. He is carried to the gate (Luke 16:20), and he is found at Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:23). For a reader who knows where the Gospel of Luke is going, that shape is familiar: the comfort belongs to the one who could not fetch it for himself. These verses do not name Christ, and so this article will not claim more of them than they say.