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. Besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from here to you are not able, and that no one may cross over from there to us.’
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v23 Heavenly and spiritual things are expressed, and set forth…
Heavenly and spiritual things are expressed, and set forth under colors and resemblances fit for our senses.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv23–26 23 And in hell he lift up his eyes,…
23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
Ver. 23. Being in torments] Having punishment without pity, misery without mercy, sorrow without succour, crying without compassion, mischief without measure, torments without end, and past imagination.
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And Lazarus in his bosom] Which more vexed him than his own torments, saith Chrysostom.
He lifted up his eyes] So often lifted up (saith one) in a false devotion.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv23, 25 καὶ ἐν τῷ ᾅδῃ, And in hell. The world…
καὶ ἐν τῷ ᾅδῃ, And in hell. The world hath been filled with disputes about the true signification of the word αδης, which is here translated hell. The most probably true notion of it is, that it signifies, the state of the dead, both of the dead body, and so it often signifieth the grave, and of the departed soul. A very learned man saith, that if he mistakes not, this is the only text in Scripture in which by it is to be understood the place of torments. The Hebrew word which is translated by this, far more often signifying the place of the blessed, whither the saints and patriarchs went when they died, than the place whither sinners went; but Luk 16:24 makes it appear, that here it signifies hell, properly so called, as it imports the place of the damned. We must understand our Saviour in this whole διατυπωσις to speak to us figuratively, that by things which we understand we might comprehend spiritual things. Heaven and hell are at too great a distance for souls in each to discourse one with another: neither have souls any eyes to lift up. We are by this taught:
1. That as the souls of good men, when they leave their bodies, go into a state of eternal bliss, where are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and enjoy a felicity which we are not able to express, but is set out to us under the notion of Abraham’s bosom, to let us know that it is a place of rest, and communion with saints, and the same felicity which Abraham the friend of God doth enjoy: so the souls of wicked men, when they leave their bodies, shall go into a place of torments, the greatness of which being such as we are not able to conceive, they are expressed to us under the notion of being tormented by fire.
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2. That it will be a great part of the misery of damned souls, to understand those to be in a state of happiness whom they in this life have scorned, despised, and abused, and, it may be, have been instruments to hasten them to those blessed mansions.
3. That there will come a time when the proudest sinners will be glad of the help of the meanest saints, if they could obtain it. Father Abraham, ( saith the rich man), send Lazarus, that Lazarus whom when alive I suffered to lie at my gate full of sores, and would not relieve.
4. That the state of the damned will be void of the least degrees of comfort and satisfaction. The rich man desireth but a cooling of his tongue with so much water as could be brought upon the tip of Lazarus’s finger.
5. That the tongue is a member, the abuse of which will in another life lie very heavy upon lost souls.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv24–26 Observe here, 1. The place where the rich man…
Observe here, 1. The place where the rich man suffers, it is in hell: the souls of wicked men, when they leave their bodies, do certainly go into a place of torment, which is not only beyond expression, but our apprehension also; Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, those dreadful things which God hath prepared for them that hate him.
Observe, 2. The sin for which he suffers: it is the sin of unmercifulness.
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Thence learn, that uncharitableness and unmercifulness to the poor, is a very great sin, and such a sin as alone, and without any other guilt, is sufficient to ruin a man forever; there is found in this sin great impiety towards God, and great inhumanity towards our own nature.
Observe, 3. The nature and quality of his sufferings; they are exceedingly painful, and void of the least degree of comfort; not a drop of water is granted to cool an inflamed tongue.
Learn thence, that the least refreshments are impatiently desired by the damned souls in hell, but righteously denied and withheld from them: a drop of water was desired, but not granted. No cup of water, no bowls of wine in hell; there is but one full cup in hell, and that is the cup of God’s wrath, without any mixture of mercy or pity. That throat will be forever parched with thirst then, which is drenched and drowned with excess now: the songs of the drunkard here, will be turned into howlings and lamentations there.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv23–26 And he cried and said, father Abraham,.... The Jews…
And he cried and said, father Abraham,.... The Jews used to call Abraham their father, and were proud of their descent from him, Mat 3:9 and so persons are after death represented by them, as speaking to, and discoursing with him; as in the passage cited in the note See Gill on Luk 16:22 to which the following may be added (c);
"says R. Jonathan, from whence does it appear that the dead discourse with each other? it is said, Deu 34:4 "And the Lord said unto him, this is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying", &c. what is the meaning of the word "saying?" the holy blessed God said to Moses, "go say to Abraham", &c.''
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And here the Jews, in their distress, are represented as applying to him, saying,
have mercy on me, and send Lazarus; which seems to have respect to the mercy promised to Abraham, the covenant made with him, and the oath swore unto him, to send the Messiah, Luk 1:70 and which now, too late, these wretched Jews plead, the Messiah being sent already:
that he may dip the tip of his finger in water; in allusion to the washings and purifications among the Jews, and the sprinkling of blood by the finger of the high priest; which were typical of cleansing, pardon, comfort, and refreshment, by the grace and blood of Christ:
and cool my tongue; which had spoken so many scurrilous and blasphemous things of Christ; saying that he was a sinner, a glutton, and a winebibber, a Samaritan, and had a devil; that he cast out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils; and that he was a seditious person, and guilty of blasphemy: so the Jews represent persons in hell, desirous of cooling water, and as sometimes favoured with it, and sometimes not: they say (d), he that reads "Keriat Shema, (i.e. hear, O Israel", &c.) and very accurately examines the letters of it, "they cool hell for him", as it is said, Psa 68:14. And elsewhere (e), they speak of a disciple, or good man, that was seen after death amidst gardens, and orchards, and fountains of water; and of a publican, or wicked man, seen standing by the bank of a river, seeking , "to come to the water, but could not come at it". So Mahomet (f) has a passage that is somewhat like to this text;
"the inhabitants of hell fire, shall call to the inhabitants of paradise, saying, pour upon us some water, or of those refreshments God hath bestowed on you.''
This man could not so much as get a drop of water to cool his tongue, not the least refreshment, nor mitigation of the anguish of his conscience, for the sins of his tongue:
for I am tormented in this flame; in the destruction of Jerusalem, and calamities at Bither, and other afflictions; together with the wrath of God poured into the conscience, and the bitter remorses of that for speaking against the Messiah; and which are still greater in hell, where the worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.
(c) T. Bab. Beracot, fol. 18. 2. (d) Ib. fol. 15. 2. (e) T. Hieros. Sanhedrin, fol. 23. 3. & Chagiga, fol, 77. 4. (f) Koran, c. 7. p. 121. (sura 7:50)
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv23–26 He seeth Abraham afar off - And yet knew…
He seeth Abraham afar off - And yet knew him at that distance: and shall not Abraham's children, when they are together in paradise, know each other!
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv23, 24, 26 Luk 16:23. And in hell — Εν τω αδη,…
Luk 16:23. And in hell — Εν τω αδη, in hades; that is, in the unseen, or invisible world. It must be observed, that both the rich man and Lazarus were in hades, though in different regions of it: he lifted up his eyes, being in torments — Our Saviour adapts this circumstance of the parable, says Lightfoot, to the popular opinion of the Jews. The rabbins say, that the place of torment and paradise are so situated, that what is done in the one may be seen from the other. “Because the opinions, as well as the language, of the Greeks,” says Dr. Macknight, “had by this time made their way into Judea, some imagine that our Lord had their fictions about the abodes of departed souls in his eye when he formed this parable: but the argument is not conclusive. At the same time it must be acknowledged, that his descriptions of those things are not drawn from the writings of the Old Testament; but have a remarkable affinity to the descriptions which the Grecian poets have given of them. They, as well as our Lord, represent the abodes of the blessed as lying contiguous to the regions of the damned, and separated only by a great impassable river, or deep gulf, in such a sort that the ghosts could talk with one another from its opposite banks. In the parable, souls, whose bodies were buried, know each other, and converse together, as if they had been imbodied. In like manner, the Pagans introduce departed souls talking together, and represent them as having pains and pleasures analogous to what we feel in this life. It seems, they thought the shades [spirits] of the dead had an exact resemblance to their bodies. The parable says, the souls of wicked men are tormented in flames; the Grecian mythologists tell us they lie in a river of fire, where they suffer the same torments they would have suffered while alive had their bodies been burned.” It will not, however, at all follow from these resemblances, that the parable is formed on the Grecian mythology, or that our Lord approved of what the common people thought or spake concerning those matters, agreeably to the notions and language of the Greeks. “In parabolical discourses provided the doctrines inculcated are strictly true, the terms in which they are inculcated may be such as are most familiar to the ears of mankind, and the images made use of such as they are best acquainted with.” What we are here taught with certainty is, that as the souls of the faithful, immediately after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity; so, unholy and unsanctified souls, immediately after they are forced from the pleasures of the flesh by death, are in misery and torment, ceaseless, remediless, and endless torment, to be much increased and completed at the general resurrection. And seeth Abraham afar off — And yet knew him at that distance; and shall not Abraham’s children, when they are together in paradise, know each other? and Lazarus in his bosom — Having a view of the seats of the blessed at a distance, the first object that he beheld was Lazarus, the beggar, (who had so often been laid naked, and hungry, and covered with sores, at his gate,) sitting next to Abraham, in the chief place of felicity. In consequence of which, doubtless, the stings of his conscience were greatly multiplied, and he was racked with envy and self-accusing reproaches.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv23–26 In hell - The word here translated hell (“Hades”)…
In hell - The word here translated hell (“Hades”) means literally a dark, obscure place; the place where departed spirits go, but especially the place where “wicked” spirits go. See the Job 10:21-22 notes; Isa 14:9 note. The following circumstances are related of it in this parable:
It is “far off” from the abodes of the righteous. Lazarus was seen “afar off.” It is a place of torment. There is a great gulf fixed between that and heaven, Luk 16:26. The suffering is great. It is represented by “torment” in a flame, Luk 16:24. There will be no escape from it, Luk 16:26.
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The word “hell” here means, therefore, that dark, obscure, and miserable place, far from heaven, where the wicked shall be punished forever.
He lifted up his eyes - A phrase in common use among the Hebrews, meaning “he looked,” Gen 13:10; Gen 18:2; Gen 31:10; Deu 8:3; Luk 6:20.
Being in torment - The word “torment” means “pain, anguish” Mat 4:24; particularly the pain inflicted by the ancients in order to induce people to make confession of their crimes. These “torments” or tortures were the keenest that they could inflict, such as the rack, or scourging, or burning; and the use of the word here denotes that the sufferings of the wicked can be represented only by the extremest forms of human suffering.
And seeth Abraham ... - This was an aggravation of his misery. One of the first things that occurred in hell was to look up, and see the poor man that lay at his gate completely happy. What a contrast! Just now he was rolling in wealth, and the poor man was at his gate. He had no expectation of these sufferings: now they have come upon him, and Lazarus is happy and forever fixed in the paradise of God. It is more, perhaps, than we are authorized to infer, that the wicked will “see” those who are in paradise. That they will “know” that they are there is certain; but we are not to suppose that they will be so near together as to be seen, or as to make conversation possible. These circumstances mean that there will be “a separation,” and that the wicked in hell will be conscious that the righteous, though on earth they were poor or despised, will be in heaven. Heaven and hell will be far from each other, and it will be no small part of the misery of the one that it is far and forever removed from the other.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv25–26 It appears from Philo, (de Execrat. p. 9, 37…
It appears from Philo, (de Execrat. p. 9, 37 b.) that the Jews not only acknowledged the existence of souls, and their state of happiness or misery after this life, but also that the souls of the saints and patriarchs interceded with God for their descendants, and obtained from them the succour they stood in need of. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv23–26 in hell--not the final place of the lost (for…
in hell--not the final place of the lost (for which another word is used), but as we say "the unseen world." But as the object here is certainly to depict the whole torment of the one and the perfect bliss of the other, it comes in this case to much the same.
seeth Abraham--not God, to whom therefore he cannot cry [BENGEL].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv23–26 23. In hell—In hades, or the great unseen. That…
23. In hell—In hades, or the great unseen. That is, the invisible place or region of disembodied spirits. While the body of man is in the grave, his soul is in hades. So taught the Jewish Church; and Jesus here confirms the teaching. But hades, it is said, consists of two regions, namely, Paradise, or Abraham’s bosom, the abode of the righteous; and Tartarus, the abode of the wicked. But though hades is thus the abode of the blessed spirits, still it is overshadowed by the power of death, and the happiness of the blessed is incomplete until the resurrection. And because it is thus under the power of death, and is the place of detention, even for the good, the word hades is sometimes, as here, used as the proper name of the compartment of the wicked only. But when the day of resurrection shall come, the righteous shall, after the judgment, ascend body and soul to heaven, and the wicked be cast into the lake of fire, gehenna, or the second death. And death and hades shall be merged into the same lake of fire. Rev_20:14.
These views of future retribution, more or less clearly, have been taught among all the nations of the earth; as if they were written by the finger of God upon the human heart. It is not, indeed, possible in the present parable to draw the line between the figurative and the literal. The conversation between the two parties embraces doubtless the truths it suggests in dialogue form. But the true conclusion is, that the Great Teacher here opens as true a picture of the world beyond death as our present inexperienced minds can receive, conceive, and truly understand. The commentator who by a natural unforced construction arrives at the most literal interpretation, attains probably the nearest to the essential if not to the physical truth.
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Eyes—But has the disembodied spirit eyes, tongue, finger, etc.? We answer, a spirit possesses sight; for even in life it is the soul that sees, and the eye is but its instrument. So also it is the soul that hears, feels, tastes, and smells, through its sensorial organs. And so our entire present sensitive system is in the human form, extending from within to the surface of the body. Our sensitive skin is a dress of and in the human form; our bone system is a skeleton in human form; and so our nerve system and blood system are so many outline sketches of the same figure. The sensible soul, extending its power and apparent presence, is limited by the skin to the same shape. How know we that it carries the same limitations and the same shape when emancipated from the outward world?
He lifted up his eyes— No angel bearers carry him to hades; but, as if the transition were instant, as soon as he closes the eyes of the body upon earth, he opens those of the soul in hell.
Being in torments—The word here rendered torments is used in Matt, Mat_4:24 and signifies bodily pangs from disease. The rich man is not in the final hell, but in the place of intermediate woe.
And seeth Abraham— The Jewish Church believed Abraham to be the master-spirit of the blessed Israelite dead. “In the future world,” says one of their writers, “Abraham will sit at the gate of hell; nor will he permit a circumcised man to descend thither.” Jesus teaches that no Abrahamic descent will save a man from woe.
Afar off—The Jews believed that Paradise and Hades were so near as to be in sight.
And Lazarus in his bosom—We are not to figure here one man as in another’s bosom; but both as reclining at table, in such a way as that the guest next to the host reclines his head on the bosom of the host.
In order to unfold the lesson of the parable, our Lord uses the conception of an actual banquet, with the actual Abraham at the head and Lazarus next. The lesson is, that the poorest being on earth may be exalted by the purest piety to the highest place in Paradise. He sits not only at the banquet, but after his first arrival he at least takes his turn in occupying the highest seat. Yet more truly we may say that Lazarus represents humble Christianity on its way to eternal glory; while Abraham represents the ancestral Church of past ages. The humble latter-day Church joins the eternal banquet and reclines in the bosom of the Church that has gone before.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv23–26 23. in hell] Rather, in Hades. Hades, which is…
23. in hell] Rather, in Hades. Hades, which is represented as containing both Paradise and Gehenna, and is merely the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol, ‘the grave,’ is the intermediate condition of the dead between death and the final judgment. The scene on earth is contrasted with the reversed conditions of the other world. The entire scenery and phraseology are Jewish, and are borrowed from those which were current among the Rabbis of Christ’s day. Beyond the awful truth that death brings no necessary forgiveness, and therefore that the retribution must continue beyond the grave, we are not warranted in pressing the details of the imagery which was used as part of the vivid picture. And since the scene is in Hades, we cannot draw from it any safe inferences as to the final condition of the lost. The state of Dives may be, as
Tertullian says, a praelibatio sententiae, but it is not as yet the absolute sentence.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv23–26 (23) And in hell.—The Greek word is Hades, not…
(23) And in hell.—The Greek word is Hades, not Gehenna; the unseen world of the dead, not the final prison of the souls of the lost. (See Note on Mat_5:22.) It lies almost on the surface of the parable that it describes an earlier stage of the life after death than that in Mat_25:31-46. There is no mention here of the Advent of the Judge. As far as the parable itself is concerned, there is nothing to exclude the thought that the torments might have in part the character of a discipline as well as of retribution.
In torments.—The Greek word was applied originally to the test or touchstone of metals, then to the torture to which men had recourse as the one sure test of the veracity of witnesses, than to torments generally. The nature of the “torments” here is suggested by the “flame” of the next verse, but that word has to be taken with all its symbolic associations, and does not necessarily imply the material element of fire. (See Notes on Mar_9:43-49.) What is meant is that there shall be for the soul of the evil-doer, when brought face to face with that holiness of God which is as a consuming fire (Heb_12:29), an anguish as intolerable as the touch of earthly flame is to the nerves of the mortal body. The thought is expressed with great beauty in Dr. Newman’s Dream of Gerontius:—
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“And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.”
Seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.—Here again we are in a region of symbolic imagery, under which we discern the truth that the souls of those who have yielded to selfish indulgence will discover after death that those whom they have scorned and neglected during their life are admitted, if worthy of admission, to the enjoyment of a rest and refreshment from which they themselves are, by their own act and deed, excluded.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv23–26 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being…
And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments; more accurately, in Hades (the unseen world of the dead) he lift up his eyes. The idea of suffering does not lie in these first words, but in the participle "being in torments," which immediately follows. It is noticeable that, in this Divine picture of unhappy life in the other world there is no coarse, vulgar word-painting such as we meet with so often in mediaeval human works. The very fact of the man"s being unhappy is gently represented. The graver aspect of the torments we learn from the hapless one"s own words. Still, it is all very awful, though the facts are so gently told us. "Being in torments:" How could it be otherwise for such a one as Dives? The home of the loving, where Abraham was, would be no home for that selfish man who had never really loved or cared for any one save himself. What were the torments? men with hushed voices ask. A little further on the doomed one speaks of a flame and of his tongue apparently burning, owing to the scorching heat; but it would be a mistake to think of a material flame being intended here. There is nothing in the description of the situation to suggest this; it is rather the burning never to be satisfied, longing for something utterly beyond his reach, that the unhappy man describes as an inextinguishable flame. Were it desirable to dwell on these torments, we should remind men how lustful desires change rapidly into torture for the soul when the means for gratifying them exist not. In the case of Dives, his delight on earth seems to have been society, pleasant jovial company, the being surrounded by a crowd of admiring friends, the daily banquet, the gorgeous apparel, the stately house, these details more than hint at the pleasure he found in the society of courtier-friends; but in the other world he seems to have been quite alone. Whereas among the blessed there appears to be a sweet companionship. Lazarus is in the company of Abraham, who, of course, only represents a great and goodly gathering. "Abraham"s bosom" is simply the well-known expression for that feast or banquet of the happy souls judged worthy of an entrance into Paradise. But in that place where the rich man lifted up his eyes there seems a strange and awful solitariness. A total absence of everything, even of external causes of trouble, is very noticeable. He was alone; alone with his thoughts. And seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv23–26 23. In Hades. The abode of departed spirits, and…
23. In Hades. The abode of departed spirits, and to the wicked, a place of punishment. Being in torments. His wealth has failed him; his good things have departed. Seeth Abraham … and Lazarus. A proof of recognition beyond the grave. Afar off. Widely apart in condition, character, and space.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv25–26
Luke
DIVES AND LAZARUS
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MEMORY IN ANOTHER WORLD
Luk 16:25.
It is a very striking thought that Christ, if He be what we suppose Him to be, knew all about the unseen present which we call the future, and yet was all but silent in reference to it. Seldom is it on His lips at all. Of arguments drawn from another world He has very few. Sometimes He speaks about it, but rather by allusion than in anything like an explicit revelation. This parable out of which my text is taken, is perhaps the most definite and continuous of His words about the invisible world; and yet all the while it lay there before Him; and standing on the very verge of it, with it spread out clear before His gaze, He reads off but a word or two of what He sees, and then shuts it in in darkness, and says to us, in the spirit of a part of this parable, ‘You have Moses and the prophets-hear them: if these are not enough, it will not be enough for you if all the glories of heaven and all the ghastliness of hell are flashed and flamed before you.’ We, too, if we are to ‘prophesy according to the proportion of faith,’ must not leave out altogether references to a future life in its two departments, and such motives as may be based upon them; only, I think, we ought always to keep them in the same relative amount to the whole of our teaching in which Christ kept them.
This parable, seeing that it is a parable, of course cannot be trusted as if it were a piece of simple dogmatic revelation, to give us information, facts, so as to construct out of it a theory of the other world. We are always in the double danger in parables, of taking that for drapery which was meant to be essence, and taking that for essence which was meant to be drapery. And so I do not profess to read from this narrative any very definite and clear knowledge of the future; but I think that in the two words which I have ventured to take as a text, we get the basis of very impressive thoughts with regard to the functions of memory in another world.
‘Son, remember!’ It is the voice, the first voice, the perpetual voice, which meets every man when he steps across the threshold of earth into the presence chamber of eternity. All the future is so built upon and interwoven with the past, that for the saved and for the lost alike this word might almost be taken as the motto of their whole situation, as the explanation of their whole condition. Memory in another world is indispensable to the gladness of the glad, and strikes the deepest note in the sadness of the lost. There can be no need to dwell at any length on the simple introductory thought, that there must be memory in a future state. Unless there were remembrance, there could be no sense of individuality. A man cannot have any conviction that he is himself, but by constant, though often unconscious, operation of this subtle act of remembrance. There can be no sense of personal identity except in proportion as there is clearness of recollection. Then again, if that future state be a state of retribution, there must be memory. Otherwise, there might be joy, and there might be sorrow, but the why and the wherefore of either would be entirely struck out of a man’s consciousness, and the one could not be felt as reward, nor the other as punishment. If, then, we are to rise from the grave the same men that we are laid in it, and if the future life has this for its characteristic, that it is a state either of recompense and reward, or of retribution and suffering, then, for both, the clearness and constant action, of memory are certainly needed. But it is not to the simple fact of its existence that I desire to direct your attention now. I wish, rather, to suggest to you one or two modifications under which it must apparently work in another world. When men remember there, they will remember very differently from the way in which they remember here. Let us look at these changes-constituting it, on the one hand, an instrument of torture; and, on the other, a foundation of all our gladness.
I. First, in another state, memory will be so widened as to take in the whole life.
We believe that what a man is in this life, he is more in another, that tendencies here become results yonder, that his sin, that his falsehood, that his whole moral nature, be it good or bad, becomes there what it is only striving to be here. We believe that in this present life our capacities of all sorts are hedged in, thwarted, damped down, diluted, by the necessity which there is for their working through this material body of ours. We believe that death is the heightening of a man’s stature-if he be bad, the intensifying of his badness; if he be good, the strengthening of his goodness. We believe that the contents of the intellectual nature, the capacities of that nature also, are all increased by the fact of having done with earth and having left the body behind. It is, I think, the teaching of common-sense, and it is the teaching of the Bible. True, that for some, that growth will only be a growth into greater power of feeling greater sorrow. Such an one grows up into a Hercules; but it is only that the Nessus shirt may wrap round him more tightly, and may gnaw him with a fiercer agony. But whether saved or lost-he that dies is greater than when yet living; and all his powers are intensified and strengthened by that awful experience of death and by what it brings with it.
Memory partakes in the common quickening. There are not wanting analogies and experiences in our present life to let us see that, in fact, when we talk about forgetting we ought to mean nothing more than the temporary cessation of conscious remembrance. Everything which you do leaves its effect with you for ever, just as long-forgotten meals are in your blood and bones to-day. Every act that a man performs is there. It has printed itself upon his soul, it has become a part of himself: and though, like a newly painted picture, after a little while the colours sink in, why is that? Only because they have entered into the very fibre of the canvas, and have left the surface because they are incorporated with the substance, and they want but a touch of varnish to flash out again! We forget nothing, in the sense of not being able, some time or another, to recall it; we forget much in the sense of ceasing for a time to have it in our thoughts.
For we know, in our own case, how strangely there come swimming up before us, out of the depths of the dim waters of oblivion-as one has seen some bright shell drawn from the sunless sea-caves, and gleaming white and shapeless far down before we had it on the surface-past thoughts, we know not whence or how. Some one of the million of hooks, with which all our life is furnished, has laid hold of some subtle suggestion which has been enough to bring them up into consciousness. We said we had forgotten them. What does it mean? Only that they had sunk into the deep, beneath our consciousness, and lay there to be brought up when needful. There is nothing more strange than the way in which some period of my life, that I supposed to be an entire blank-if I will think about it for a little while, begins to glimmer into form. As the developing solution brings out the image on the photographic plate, so the mind has the strange power, by fixing the attention, as we say {a short word which means a long, mysterious thing} upon that past that is half-remembered and half-forgotten, of bringing it into clear consciousness and perfect recollection. And, there are instances, too, of a still more striking kind, familiar to some of us how in what people call morbid states, men remember their childhood, which they had forgotten for long years. You may remember that old story of the dying woman beginning to speak in a tongue unknown to all that stood around her bed. When a child she had learned some northern language, in a far-off land. Long before she had learned to shape any definite remembrances of the place, she had been taken away, and not having used, had forgotten the speech. But at last there rushed up again all the old memories, and the tongue of the dumb was loosed, and she spake! People would say, ‘the action of disease.’ It may be, but that explains nothing. Perhaps in such states the spirit is working in a manner less limited by the body than in health, and so showing some slight prelude of its powers when it has shuffled off this mortal coil. But be that as it may, these morbid phenomena, and the other more familiar facts already referred to, unite to show us that the sphere of recollection is much wider than that occupied at any given moment by memory. Recollection is the servant of Memory, as our great poet tells us in his wise allegory, and
‘does on him still attend,
To reach whenever he for ought does send.’
We cannot lay aside anything that we have ever done or been so utterly but that that servant can find it and bring it to his lord. We forget nothing so completely but that we shall be able to recall it. Of that awful power we may say, without irreverence, ‘Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.’
The fragmentary remembrances which we have now, lift themselves above the ocean of forgetfulness like islands in some Archipelago, the summits of sister hills, though separated by the estranging sea that covers their converging sides and the valleys where their roots unite. The solid land is there, though hidden. Drain off the sea, and there will be no more isolated peaks, but continuous land. In this life we have but the island memories heaving themselves into sight, but in the next the Lord shall ‘cause the sea to go back by the breath of His mouth,’ and the channels of the great deep of a human heart’s experiences and actions shall be laid bare. ‘There shall be no more sea’; but the solid land of a whole life will appear when God says, ‘Son, remember!’ So much, then, for my first consideration-namely, that memory in a future state will comprehend the whole of life. Another thing is, that memory in a future state will probably be so rapid as to embrace all the past life at once. We do not know, we have no conception of, the extent to which our thinking, and feeling, and remembrance, are made tardy by the slow vehicle of this bodily organisation in which the soul rides. But we have in our own lives instances enough to make us feel that there lie in us dormant, mysterious powers by which the rapidity of all our operations of thought and feeling will be enhanced marvellously, like the difference between a broad-wheeled waggon and an express train! At some turning point of your life, when some great joy flashed, or some great shadow darkened upon you all at once; when some crisis that wanted an instantaneous decision appeared-why, what regions of thought, purpose, plan, resolution; what wilderness of desolate sorrow, and what paradises of blooming gladness, your soul has gone through in a moment. Well, then, take another illustration: A sleeper, feeling a light finger laid upon his shoulder, does not know what it is; in an instant he awakes and says, ‘Is it you?’ but between that touch and that word there may be a whole life run through, a whole series of long events dreamt and felt. As on the little retina of an eye there can be painted on a scale inconceivably minute, every tree and mountain-top in the whole wide panorama-so, in an instant, one may run through almost a whole lifetime of mental acts. Then, again, you remember that illustration, often used on this subject, about the experience of those who have been brought face to face with sudden death, and escaped it. The drowning man, when he comes to himself, tells us, that in the interval betwixt the instant when he felt he was going and the passing away of consciousness, all his life stood before him; as if some flash in a dark midnight had lighted up a whole mountain country-there it all was! Ah, brethren! we know nothing yet about the rapidity with which we may gather before us a whole series of events; so that although we have to pass from one to another, the succession may be so swift, as to produce in our own minds the effect of all being co-existent and simultaneous. As the child flashing about him a bit of burning stick, may seem to make a circle of flame, because the flame-point moves so quickly-so memory, though it does go from point to point, and dwells for some inconceivably minute instant on each part of the remembrance, may yet be gifted with such lightning speed, with such rapidity and awful quickness of glance, as that to the man himself the effect shall be that his whole life is spread out there before him in one instant, and that he, Godlike, sees the end and the beginning side by side. Yes; from the mountain of eternity we shall look down, and behold the whole plain spread before us. Down here we get lost and confused in the devious valleys that run off from the roots of the hills everywhere, and we cannot make out which way the streams are going, and what there is behind that low shoulder of hill yonder: but when we get to the summit peak, and look down, it will all shape itself into one consistent whole, and we shall see it all at once. The memory shall be perfect-perfect in the range of its grasp, and perfect in the rapidity with which it brings up all its objects before us at every instant.
Once more: it seems as if, in another world, memory would not only contain the whole life, and the whole life simultaneously; but would perpetually attend or haunt us. A constant remembrance! It does not lie in our power even in this world, to decide very much whether we shall remember or forget. It does not come within a man’s will to forget or to remember. He cannot say, ‘I will remember’; for if he could, he would have remembered already. He cannot say, ‘I will forget’; for the very effort fixes his attention on the obnoxious thing. All that we can do, when we seek to remember, is to wander back to somewhere about that point in our life where the shy thing lurks, and hope to catch some sight of it in the leafy coverts: and all we can do, when we want to forget, is to try and fill our mind with other subjects, and in the distractions of them to lose the oppressive and burdensome thoughts. But we know that that is but a partial remedy, that we cannot succeed in doing it. There are presences that will not be put by. There are memories that will start up before us, whether we are willing or not. Like the leprosy in the Israelite’s house, the foul spot works its way out through all the plaster and the paint; and the house is foul because it is there. Oh, my friend! you are a happy and a singular man if there is nothing in your life that you have tried to bury, and the obstinate thing will not be buried, but meets you again when you come away from its fancied grave. I remember an old castle where they tell us of a foul murder committed in a vaulted chamber with a narrow window, by torchlight one night; and there, they say, there are the streaks and stains of blood on the black oak floor; and they have planed, and scrubbed, and planed again, and thought they were gone-but there they always are, and continually up comes the dull reddish-black stain, as if oozing itself out through the boards to witness to the bloody crime again! The superstitious fable is a type of the way in which a foul thing, a sinful and bitter memory-gets ingrained into a man’s heart. He tries to banish it, and gets rid of it for a while. He goes back again, and the spots are there, and will be there for ever; and the only way to get rid of them is to destroy the soul in which they are.
Memory is not all within the power of the will on earth: and probably, memory in another world is still more involuntary and still more constant. Why? Because I read in the Bible that there is work in another world for God’s servants to do; but I do not read that there is work for anybody else but God’s servants to do. The work of an unforgiven sinner is done when he dies, and that not only because he is going into the state of retribution, but because no rebel’s work is going to be suffered in that world. The time for that is past. And so, if you will look, all the teachings of the Bible about the future state of those who are not in blessedness, give us this idea-a monotonous continuance of idleness, shutting them up to their own contemplations, the memories of the past and the agonies of the future. There are no distractions for such a man in another world. He has thought, he has conscience, he has remembrance. He has a sense of pain, of sin, of wrong, of loss. He has one ‘passive fixed endurance, all eternal and the same’; but I do not read that his pain is anodyned and his sorrow soothed by any activity that his hand finds to do. And, in a most tragic sense, we may say, ‘there is neither work, nor labour, nor device,’ in that dark world where the fruits of sin are reaped in monotonous suffering and ever-present pain. A memory, brethren, that will have its own way-what a field for sorrow and lamentation that is, when God says at last, ‘Now go-go apart; take thy life with thee; read it over; see what thou hast done with it!’ One old Roman tyrant had a punishment in which he bound the dead body of the murdered to the living body of the murderer, and left them there scaffolded. And when that voice comes, ‘Son, remember!’ to the living soul of the godless, unbelieving, impenitent man, there is bound to him the murdered past, the dead past, his own life; and, in Milton’s awful and profound words,
‘Which way I fly is hell-myself am hell!’
There is only one other modification of this awful faculty that I would remind you of; and that is, that in a future life memory will be associated with a perfectly accurate knowledge of the consequences and a perfectly sensitive conscience as to the criminality of the past. You will have cause and consequence put down before you, meeting each other at last. There will be no room then to say, ‘I wonder how such and such a thing will work out,’ ‘I wonder how such a thing can have come upon me’; but every one will have his whole life to look back upon, and will see the childish sin that was the parent of the full-grown vice, and the everlasting sorrow that came out of that little and apparently transitory root. The conscience, which here becomes hardened by contact with sin, and enfeebled because unheeded, will then be restored to its early sensitiveness and power, as if the labourer’s horny palm were to be endowed again with the softness of the infant’s little hand. If you will take and think about that, brother, there is enough-without any more talk, without any more ghastly, sensual external figures-there is enough to make the boldest tremble; a memory embracing all the past, a memory rapidly grasping and constantly bringing its burden, a judgment which admits of no mistakes, and a conscience which has done with palliations and excuses!
It is not difficult to see how that is an instrument of torture. It is more difficult to see how such a memory can be a source of gladness; and yet it can. The old Greeks were pressed with that difficulty: they said to themselves, If a man remembers, there can be no Elysium for him. And so they put the river of forgetfulness, the waters of Lethe, betwixt life and the happy plains. Ah, we do not want any river of oblivion betwixt us and everlasting blessedness. Calvary is on this side, and that is enough! Certainly it is one of the most blessed things about ‘the faith that is in Christ Jesus,’ that it makes a man remember his own sinfulness with penitence, not with pain-that it makes the memory of past transgressions full of solemn joy, because the memory of past transgressions but brings to mind the depth and rushing fullness of that river of love which has swept them all away as far as the east is from the west. Oh, brother, brother! you cannot forget your sins; but it lies within your own decision whether the remembrance shall be thankfulness and blessedness, or whether it shall be pain and loss for ever. Like some black rock that heaves itself above the surface of a sunlit sea, and the wave runs dashing over it, and the spray, as it falls down its sides, is all rainbowed and lightened, and there comes beauty into the mighty grimness of the black thing;-so a man’s transgressions rear themselves up, and God’s great love, coming sweeping itself against them and over them, makes out of the sin an occasion for the flashing more brightly of the beauty of His mercy, and turns the life of the pardoned penitent into a life of which even the sin is not pain to remember. So, then, lay your hand upon Christ Jesus. Put your heart into His keeping. Go to Him with your transgressions, He will forget them, and make it possible for you to remember them in such a way that the memory will become to you the very foundation of all your joy, and will make heaven’s anthem deeper and more harmonious when you say, ‘Now unto Him that hath washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God, unto Him be glory for ever and ever!’ And, on the other hand, if not, then, ‘Son, remember!’ will be the word that begins the future retribution, and shuts you up with a wasted past, with a gnawing conscience, and an upbraiding heart: to say,
‘I backward cast my ee
On prospects drear!
And forward, though I canna see,
I guess and fear!’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v23 (Greek - ᾅδης, "the unseen world," is revealed as…
hell
(Greek - ᾅδης, "the unseen world," is revealed as the place of departed human spirits between death and resurrection). The word occurs, Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18; Luk 10:15; Act 2:27; Act 2:31; Rev 1:18; Rev 6:8; Rev 20:13; Rev 20:14 and is the equivalent of the O.T. "sheol." (See Scofield "Hab 2:5"). The Septuagint invariably renders sheol by hades.
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Summary:
(1) Hades before the ascension of Christ. The passages in which the word occurs make it clear that hades was formerly in two divisions, the abodes respectively of the saved and of the lost. The former was called "paradise" and "Abraham’s bosom." Both designations were Talmudic, but adopted by Christ in Luk 16:22; Luk 23:43. The blessed dead were with Abraham, they were conscious and were "comforted" Luk 16:25. The believing malefactor was to be, that day, with Christ in "paradise." The lost were separated from the saved by a "great gulf fixed" Luk 16:26. The representative man of the lost who are now in hades is the rich man of Luk 16:19-31. He was alive, conscious, in the full exercise of his faculties, memory, etc., and in torment.
(2) Hades since the ascension of Christ. So far as the unsaved dead are concerned, no change of their place or condition is revealed in Scripture. At the judgment of the great white throne, hades will give them up, they will be judged, and will pass into the lake of fire Rev 20:13; Rev 20:14. But a change has taken place which affects paradise. Paul was "caught up to the third heaven.. .into paradise" 2Co 12:1-4. Paradise, therefore, is now in the immediate presence of God. It is believed that Eph 4:8-10 indicates the time of the change. "When he ascended up on high he led a multitude of captives." It is immediately added that He had previously "descended first into the lower parts of the earth," i.e. the paradise division of Hades. During the present church-age the saved who died are "absent from the body, at home with the Lord." The wicked dead in hades, and the righteous dead "at home with the Lord," alike await the resurrection; Job 19:25; 1Co 15:52. (See Scofield "Mat 5:22").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv24–25 he cried out and said
he cried out and said
"the rich man called out to say" or "he shouted out to Abraham"
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Father Abraham
Abraham was the ancestor of all the Jews, including the rich man.
have mercy on me
"please have pity on me" or "please be merciful to me"
and send Lazarus
"by sending Lazarus" or "and tell Lazarus to come to me"
he may dip the tip of his finger
This indicates the smallness of the amount requested. AT: "he may wet the tip of his finger"
I am in anguish in this flame
"I am in terrible pain in this flame" or "I am suffering terribly in this fire"
translationWords
ancestor
Abraham
mercy
anguish
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv23, 24, 26 16:23 The place of the dead (Greek Hades) can…
16:23 The place of the dead (Greek Hades) can refer to the grave (death) generally, or to the place where the wicked go after death, as here.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.