Luke 16:21 Commentary and Bible Study

Lazarus was very ill, and he was required to beg. He was ‘desiring to be fed’. You could translate that more accurately by saying, ‘longing or craving to be fed’. He didn't just desire it. He presumably has no family. He has just got enough people who are interested in him to carry him every day from wherever he sleeps to the gate of the rich man, where he has his pitch and can beg. There was no welfare state in those days, and if you were unfortunate enough to be destitute and penniless, then you would have a kind of pitch, and you would be dependent on public charity, and people would give some assistance. But the thing that we read about Lazarus is this he was so very ill that he was covered in sores, and they are licked by the dogs, which suggests that his wounds were not dressed. Perhaps you can see that even this poor crippled man had a tender heart and affection for animals. The animals would come and they would be together. In the East in those days, it wouldn't have been considered so unhygienic as we might consider it today, to allow the dogs to come and nestle alongside some poor individual sat by the roadside perhaps with sores and boils. But, says Matthew Henry, it isn't every cripple or sufferer lying by the roadside who would attract the sympathy even of the dogs. Doesn't this suggest to you, he says, something of the disposition and the kindliness of this man, this poor destitute sufferer. Here he was, taken very ill with nobody in the world to care for him, dependent on the public giving to support himself. Doesn't it say something for his manner that the dogs are not afraid of him, but even seem to be sympathetic? It may almost seem a trivial observation but there is something in that. Although the world had brought him low and he was sick and dependent upon the public charity, the dogs would still go alongside and would sit with him and comfort him. But you see this contrast of poverty and need and ill health, compared to the luxury of the rich man, so close together.