Luke 16:27

Luk_16:27-31. What riches lead to when they are not applied according to Luk_16:9, is shown Luk_16:19-26. In order, however, to escape from this perdition while there is still time, repentance is necessary, and for this the law and the prophets are the appointed means (comp. Luk_16:16-17); and, indeed, these are so perfectly sufficient that even the return of a dead person to life would not be more effectual.

Luk_16:28. ὅπως] Purpose of the sending; ἔχω … ἀδελφ. is a parenthetic clause; his style is pathetic.

διαμαρτύρ.] that he may testify to them, to wit, of the situation in which I am placed, because I have not repented. Ὅρα πῶς ὑπὸ τῆς κολάσεως εἰς συναίσθησιν ἦλθεν, Theophylact.

Luk_16:29. ἀκουσάτωσαν αὐτῶν] they should give heed (listen) to them!

Luk_16:30. οὐχί] nay! they will not hear them. The echo of his own experience gained in the position of secure obduracy!

ἀπὸ νεκρῶν] belongs to πορευθῇ.

Luk_16:31. οὐδὲ ἐάν] not even (not at all), if.

πεισθήσονται] not immediately πιστεύσουσιν (Vulg. Euthymius Zigabenus, Luther, and others), but: they will be moved, will be won over, namely, to repent.

A reference to the resurrection of Jesus (Olshausen), or to the manifestation of Elias (Baumgarten-Crusius), is altogether remote, although the word of Abraham has certainly approved itself historically even in reference to the risen Christ. The illustration, moreover, by the example of Lazarus of Bethany, who brought intelligence from Hades, and whom the Jews would have killed, Joh_12:10, is not to the point (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius Zigabenus).

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk 16:27-31 . Dives intercedes for his brethren .

Luk 16:27 . οὖν = if no hope for me , there may be for those still dear to me. Possibility of transit from Paradise to earth is assumed. That this is desired reveals humane feeling. No attempt to show that Dives is utterly bad. Is such a man a proper subject for final damnation?

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 27-31. The second Conversation.

The rich man acquiesces so far as his own person is concerned. But he intercedes for his brethren still in life. And again it is Lazarus who must busy himself on their behalf!

What is the thought contained in this conclusion? Starting from the standpoint that the idea of the parable is the condemnation of wealth, De Wette, the Tübingen School, and Weizsäcker himself find this last part entirely out of keeping with the rest of the description. For it is their impenitence face to face with the law and the prophets which exposes the five brethren to danger, and not their being rich men. They allege, therefore, that Luke at his own hand has added this conclusion, with the view of transforming a doctrine which was originally Ebionite and Judeo-Christian into one anti-Judaic or Pauline. The rich man who, in the original meaning of the similitude, simply represented riches, becomes in this conclusion the type of Jewish unbelief in respect of the resurrection of Jesus. Weizsäcker goes the length of regarding Lazarus as the representative of the Gentiles despised by the Jews. This last idea is incompatible with the Jewish name Lazarus, as well as with the place awarded to him in Abraham’s bosom, the gathering place of pious Jews. As to the rich man, from the beginning he represents not the rich in general, but the rich man hardened by well-being, the Pharisee, whose heart, puffed up with pride, is closed to sympathy with the suffering. This appears from the expressions: Father Abraham, my son, Luk 16:24-25, which are as it were the motto of Israelitish formalism (Mat 3:7-9; Joh 8:39). This conclusion is thus nothing else than the practical application of the parable, which, instead of being presented to his hearers in the form of an abstract lesson, is given as the continuation of the scene itself. It is exactly the same in the parable of the prodigal son, in which the elder son exhibits the Pharisees with their murmurings, and the divine answer. The first portrait, Luk 16:19-21, depicted the sin of the rich man; the second, Luk 16:22-26, his punishment. In this appendix Jesus unveils to His hearers the cause of this misery, the absence of μετάνοια, repentance, and for those who wished to profit by the warning, the means of preventing the lot which threatens them at the moment of their death: taking to heart Moses and the prophets very differently from what they have ever done. There must pass within them what took place in the prodigal son, the figure of the publicans (Luk 15:17: he came to himself), and in the steward, the type of the new believers (Luk 16:3: he said within himself): that act of solemn self-examination in which the heart is broken at the thought of its sins, and which impresses an entirely new direction on the life, and on the employment of earthly goods in particular. To reject this conclusion is therefore to break the arrow-point shot by the hand of Jesus at the consciences of His hearers.

Ver. 27. The five brethren cannot represent the rich of this world in general, and as little the Jews who remained unbelieving in respect of Jesus Christ. They are Jews living in a privileged, brilliant condition, like that of the rich man—the Pharisees, whom this man represented; this relation is the idea expressed by the image of the kinship which connects them. Some have imagined that those five brethren are the five sons of the high priest Annas. Would Jesus have condescended to such personalities? The forms of address: father, Luk 16:27, father Abraham, Luk 16:30, continue to define the meaning of this principal personage very clearly. Διαμαρτύρεσθαι, Luk 16:28, does not signify only: to declare, but to testify in such a way that the truth pierces through the wrappings of a hardened conscience (διά). In putting this request into the rich man’s mouth, Jesus undoubtedly alludes to that thirst for miracles, for extraordinary and palpable manifestations, which He never failed to meet among His adversaries, and which He refused to satisfy. Such demands charge with insufficiency the means of repentance which God had all along placed in Israel. Some commentators, unable to allow any good feeling in one damned, have attributed this prayer of the rich man to a selfish aim. According to them, he dreaded the time when his own sufferings would be aggravated by seeing those of his brethren. But would not even this fear still suppose in him a remnant of love? And why represent him as destitute of all human feeling? He is not yet, we have seen, damned in the absolute sense of the word. If we must seek a selfish alloy in this prayer, it can only be the desire to excuse himself, by giving it to be understood, that if he had been sufficiently warned he would not have been where he is.

Abraham teaches all his sons by his reply, Luk 16:29, with what earnestness they should henceforth listen to the reading of that law and those prophets, the latter of which they had, up till now, heard or even studied in vain (Joh 5:38-39). The subject has nothing to do with unbelief regarding Jesus; the situation of this saying is purely Jewish.

The rich man insists. His answer, Nay, father Abraham, Luk 16:30, depicts the Rabbinical spirit of disputation and pharisaic effrontery. Repentance would produce, he fully acknowledges, a life wholly different from his own (such as it has been described, Luk 16:19); but the law without miracles would not suffice to produce this state of mind.

Jesus unveils, Luk 16:31, the complete illusion belonging to this idea of conversion by means of great miraculous interpositions. He whom the law and the prophets bring not to the conviction of his sins, will be as little led to it by the sight even of one raised from the dead. After the first emotion of astonishment and terror, criticism will awake saying, Hallucination! and carnal security, shaken for a moment, will reassert itself. Jesus not having showed Himself, and not having preached to the Jews after His resurrection, this saying cannot be an invention of Luke borrowed from that event.

Such is the terrible answer of Jesus to the derision of His adversaries, the proud and covetous Pharisees, Luk 16:14. He shows them their portrait, the likeness of their present life, and their lot after death. Now they know what they are in the eyes of God (19-21), and what awaits them (23-35); they know also the real cause of their near perdition, and the only means which can yet avert it (27-31).

From this study it follows: 1. That all the indications of the preface (Luk 16:14-18) are entirely justified; in particular, that the Φαρισαῖοι (the Pharisees), Luk 16:14, is the real key of the parable. 2. That there reigns throughout this description a perfect unity of idea, and that the context furnishes no well-founded reason for distinguishing between an original parable and a later re-handling. 3. That the piece as a whole, and all its details, are in direct correspondence with the historical situation in which Jesus was teaching, and find their natural explanation without any need of having recourse to the later circumstances of apostolic times. 4. That this passage furnishes no proof of an Ebionite document anterior to our Gospel, and forming one of the essential materials employed by the author. Hilgenfeld says (Die Evangel. p. 102): “Nowhere does our Gospel allow us to distinguish so clearly the original writing of which it is the anti-Jewish and Pauline handling.” Nowhere so clearly! This passage proving nothing, it follows that the others prove less than nothing.

This character, not anti-Jewish, but certainly anti-pharisaic, belongs equally to the whole series of pieces which we have just surveyed (comp. Luk 11:37 to Luk 12:12); then (after an interruption), Luk 13:10-31, Luk 14:1, Luk 15:2, Luk 16:14. The parable of the unfaithful steward is also connected with this series by the law of contrast. Here, then, is the time of the most intense struggle between Jesus and pharisaism in Galilee, like the contemporaneous period, John 7-10, in Judaea.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Seeing that we have a most sure rule to live by, laid forth unto us in the word of God, rashly and vainly do men seek for other revelation.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Then he said--now abandoning all hope for himself.

send him to my father's house, &c.--no waking up of good in the heart of the lost, but bitter reproach against God and the old economy, as not warning him sufficiently [TRENCH]. The answer of Abraham is, They are sufficiently warned.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(27) I pray thee therefore, father.—The re iterated appeal to Abraham as “father” is suggestive in many ways: (1) as speaking out that in which too many of the rich man’s class put an undue trust, resting on the fatherhood of Abraham rather than on that of God (Mat_3:9); (2) as showing that the refusal of the previous verse had been accepted, as it were, submissively. There is no rebellious defiance, no blasphemous execration, such as men have pictured to themselves as resounding ever more in the realms of darkness. Abraham is the sufferer’s father still, and he yet counts on his sympathy.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27. that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house] It is difficult not to see in this request the dawn of a less selfish spirit in the rich man’s heart.

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.

For I have five brethren,.... Meaning his brethren and countrymen, according to the flesh; who when he was alive, stood in such a relation to him; said to be "five", in allusion it may be to the children of Israel coming out of Egypt, "by fives", or five in a rank, Exo 13:18 as a learned man (m) conjectures, to whom I am beholden for several hints, in the explanation of this parable; and certain it is, that these five brethren were Jews, since they had the writings of Moses and the prophets with them, Luk 16:29. Wherefore I shall venture to propose another conjecture, though it may be liable to exception, as all conjectures usually are: it is plain that there were "six" brethren in all; let it be observed then, that the Jewish nation were usually divided into "three" parts, "priests, Levites, and Israelites"; of these three the great sanhedrim usually consisted (n); and these read the law every sabbath day; first a priest, then a Levite, and then "five Israelites" (o); (let that number also be remarked;) now these were again divided into "three" sects, "Pharisees, Sadducees", and "Essenes". The former of these are represented in this parable; this I only propose, I lay no stress on it: it may be, that the twice five, or ten tribes of Israel, which were not known where they were, nor are they to this day, may be designed by a "synechdoche", of a part for the whole; whose return the Jews are yet expecting, and for whose welfare they are greatly concerned.

That he may testify unto them: that is, preach unto them, as the word is used in Act 2:40. Christ, when here on earth, did testify to that people of their sins, showed them the heinousness of them, inveighed against them, and reproved for them; and of their righteousness, and showed the hypocrisy, deficiency, and insufficiency of it to justify them; of himself as the Messiah; of truth in general; and of their ruin, temporal and eternal; but he had now finished his testimony, and which, though faithful, was not heard nor received by them; the reason of this request is,

lest they also come into this place of torment; as hell is, and which these brethren of his, he left behind, were deserving of, and in danger of coming into; and his concern for them did not arise from any regard to Christ, and the enlargement of his interest; nor from any love to his testimony, the Gospel; nor from any real notion or desire of converting grace for his brethren; nor from true love to them; but from a selfish principle, lest his own torments should be aggravated by their coming: this, as it may regard the Jews in their affliction, and if the ten tribes should be meant by the five brethren, may design the very passionate concern the Jews had, and still have for them, who yet, to this day, hope for the return of them; see Manasseh ben Israel's book, called, "Spes Israelis".

(m) Teelmannus. (n) Maimon Hilchot Sanhedrin, c. 2. sect. 2. (o) Ib. Hilchot Tephilla, c. 12. sect. 16.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:

Ver. 27. I pray thee therefore] Are not the Popish doctors hard driven, when they allege this text to prove that the dead do take care of the living, and pray for them?

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.

Five brethren - The number “five” is mentioned merely to preserve the appearance of verisimilitude in the story. It is not to be spiritualized, nor are we to suppose that it has any hidden or inscrutable meaning.

May testify unto them - May bear “witness” to them, or may inform them of what is my situation, and the dreadful consequences of the life that I have led. It is remarkable that he did not ask to go himself. He knew that he could not be released, even for so short a time. His condition was fixed. Yet he had no wish that his friends should suffer, and he supposed that if one went from the dead they would hear him.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

In this parable we are taught an important truth, viz. that we must not expect to learn our duty from the dead returning to life, nor by any other extraordinary or miraculous means, but from the revelation of truths, which have already been made known to us in the Scriptures, and from those to whom the tradition of the Church has been committed, as a most sacred deposit. These, say the Fathers, are the masters from whom we are to learn what we are to believe, and what to practise. (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).

Him that the rich man would not hear, when he lay at his gate full of sores, exhorting him to do good and to distribute, to give alms of all that he had, and to make himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, he would now have restored to the earth again, his soul before the general resurrection reunited to His body, that he might go unto his father’s house, and give them warning, that they might not come into the misery which he felt. But is there any charity in hell? Is there any there that wish well to souls upon earth? Or rather, are not damned souls, like persons infected with the plague, desirous that others might be made as miserable as themselves? A grave and acute author saith, he prayeth not for them, but for himself, that he might not be the note miserable by the company of those who upon the earth were his near relations, and dear unto him. But we must remember that our Saviour here speaketh all in a figure, and that which our Saviour by these expressions designs to instruct us in is no more than this, That although atheistical and proud and haughty souls in this life make a mock at hell, and at the wrath of God to be revealed after this life, and despise the poor servants of God, who by their doctrine, or holy life and example, would teach them better things, yet they shall find the fire of hell so hot, the wrath of God so terrible and intolerable, that if you could imagine that souls under those miseries could have the least dram of charity and good nature left it, them, though they apprehend themselves past all hopes of recovery to a better state, yet they would beg that some of those faithful ministers, or godly people, whom they have rejected, despised, and abused, might be sent to every friend they have in the world, to warn them from doing as they have done, and running the hazard of those torments they feel for doing of such things. The papists, who idly go about from hence to prove a sense in departed souls of the state of their friends that are yet alive upon the earth, can derive very little comfort from that speculation out of this text; which if it could prove any thing of that nature could prove no more than that damned souls have such a sense, and might by the same argument also evince their charity. But figurative expressions must not be so closely applied. I have showed what I judge to be the true instruction from this passage.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 27, 28. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father"s house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them; lest they also come into this place of torment. The condemned acquiesces in this dread fact; convinced of the utter impossibility of any interchange of sympathy between him and the dwellers in the realms of bliss, he ceases to pray for any alleviation of his own sad and wretched state. But another wail of woe quickly rises from the awful solitude. What means this second prayer of the doomed man? Are we to read in it the first signs of a new and noble purpose in the lost soul, the first dawning of loving thoughts and tender care for others? It seems, perhaps, unkind not to recognize this; but the Divine Speaker evidently had another purpose here when he put these words into the mouth of the lost rich man he would teach the great lesson to the living that a selfish life is inexcusable. On first thoughts, the rich man"s request to Abraham appears prompted alone by his anxiety for the future of his brothers who were still alive; but on examination it would seem, to use the striking words of Professor Bruce, that he wished rather to justify his own sad past by some such. reflection as this: "Had only some one come from the dead with the calm, clear light of eternity shining in his eyes, to inform me that this life beyond is no table, that Paradise is a place or state of unspeakable bliss, and Gehenna a place or state of unspeakable woe, I should have renounced my voluptuous, selfish ways, and entered on the path of piety and charity. If one had come to me from the dead, I had surely repented, and so should not have come to this place of torment.

Vers. 27-31. A dangerous delusion.

The rich man found himself undergoing the penalty of a selfish and worldly life, and, bethinking himself of his five brethren, he desired for them the advantage which he himself had not possessed; he prayed that a visitant from the unseen world might appear to them and warn them of the danger in which they stood. He thought this extraordinary privilege would accomplish for them what the ordinary influences around them had not wrought. He was assured that in this notion he was mistaken; if they were not hearing "Moses and the prophets, neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.

I THE ONE HOPE FOR ERRING AND SINFUL MEN that they may be persuaded. They are living in sin; for selfishness and worldliness are such in the sight of God that they may be said to be sin itself; they are the soul turning from the living God to find its centre, its sphere, its satisfaction, in its own poor self, in the material and transitory good of this present world. And living in sin, men are living under God"s high displeasure, under his solemn and awful condemnation, in peril of final banishment and penalty in the future. The one hope for them is that they will be persuaded:

1. To consider. To consider whence they came, whose they are, unto whom they owe their powers and their possessions, what is the true end and aim of human life, their accountableness to the God whom they have neglected and displeased, the nearness of death, the greatness of eternity.

2. To repent. That is, not to be convulsed with a strong and passing agony of soul, nor to use the current and approved language of contrition, but to change their minds, their views, their feelings; to have in their hearts a deep sense of shame and of regret that they should have so sadly misspent their powers and. lost their opportunities.

3. To resolve. To come to a deliberate and fixed resolution to live henceforth unto God their Saviour.

II THE REFUGE OF THE DISOBEDIENT, There are many who, when they thus recognize their duty, are "not disobedient to the heavenly vision;" they say, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" and proceed without delay to do his holy will. But there are others who weakly and wrongly postpone the hour of decision and of return. They think that the time will come for them to enter the kingdom of God, but it has not yet arrived. There has not happened to them any great visitation. God has not appeared in any striking and overwhelming form. There will come an hour when it will be made manifest to them that they must no longer delay; when they will be mightily constrained to yield themselves to the service of the Supreme; then they will freely and gladly respond; meantime they will pursue the old path of selfishness and worldly pleasure.

III THE VANITY AND THE FOLLY OF THIS RESORT,

1. The vanity of it. Jesus Christ taught that men, if they were unmoved by the sacred truths they learned in Deuteronomy and Isaiah, would not be stirred to newness of life even by an apparition flora the unseen world; that it was not by the extraordinary and the startling, but by the divinely true, that souls were to be saved. And this doctrine is in conformity with the known facts of our human experience. Men that know their Lord"s will but delay to do it will find some excuse for disobedience when the unusual or even when the supernatural is before them. The disobedient heart goes on in sinful procrastination, with a vague and feeble hope that this hour will come; but it does not arrive. He has a vision of sudden death, but he rises from the sick-bed to pursue the old path; he loses some companion and is powerfully admonished of his own mortality, but he returns from his friend"s grave the same man that he was before; he goes to hear the wonderful preacher and listens with admiration not unmixed with fear or even trembling, but he awakes on the morrow with a closed mind, with an unbroken heart. Some great trouble overtakes and overthrows him, but his soul is hardened, and the "sorrow of the world worketh death" and not life in his case. His hope is a vain one.

2. The folly of it. Why should he wait for the extraordinary, the supernatural? Has he not at hand everything he needs to convince him and to induce him to take the step of spiritual decision? Why want some one from heaven to bring down the word of truth or the Saviour himself? (Rom_10:6) All that we want we have.

(1) Our conscience is urging us to a life of holy service.

(2) Our reason tells us that our present and eternal welfare is bound up with the forgiveness and the favour of the living God, in whose power we stand and who holds all our future in his sovereign hand.

(3) Our Divine Father is summoning us to his side, to his hearth, to his table, and is waiting to welcome us.

(4) Our gracious Saviour is inviting us to an immediate and to an absolute trust in himself.

(5) The Holy Spirit of God is pleading and striving with us. There is no reason, there is no excuse, for a single day"s delay. Every one to whom it is right to listen, everything to which it is wise to yield attention, says, "Come." It is only the evil voices around us and from below that say, "Wait." Delay means the doom of Dives; immediate obedience leads along the paths of heavenly wisdom and holy service to the home of the blessed. C.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hearing Moses and the Prophets:

v. 27. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house;

v. 28. for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

v. 29. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.

v. 30. And he said, Nay, Father Abraham; "but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

v. 31. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.

A strange change has come upon the former rich man. Formerly he cared only for himself and the gratification of his own desires, but now, when it is ’too late,’ he remembers duties and kindnesses which he should formerly have shown to his relatives. The repentance of the damned in hell may be sincere and comprehensive a thousand times over, but then it is too late! A second petition the poor wretch sends across the chasm. He wants Lazarus sent back, as a spirit from the land of death, to warn his five brothers, lest they share his own awful fate. Where faith and belief have been thrown out, unbelief and superstition are rife and rampant. When the Word of God in Law and Gospel has been declared insufficient for the would be enlightenment of a twentieth century, there spiritualism, real and imitated, is hailed as a solution and salvation. Abraham therefore gives him a bit of much-needed information. The old sound doctrine, the written Word of God, is the one and only safe norm and rule of doctrine and life. Moses and the Prophets were accessible to the brothers, they were read in all the synagogues on the Sabbath-day; let the brothers seek for the truth there, nothing more would be needed. If the brothers at that time, if the people of our time, will not heed Moses and the Prophets, if they will not obey the Word and heed its lessons and warnings, as well as its admonitions and promises, then there is no more hope. The Word is a lamp unto the feet of every searcher of truth, Psa 119:105. Note: Hell is not a figment of a diseased imagination, but hell is real! Its torments are terrible: A consuming and yet never destroying flame; thirst that cannot be alleviated by so much as a tiny drop of water; the ability to see the bliss of the saints in heaven, but no possibility of ever becoming partakers of that happiness; no deliverance or salvation from hell’s tortures, all hope forever gone.

Summary.Jesus tells the parable of the unjust steward and adds several lessons for the disciples and for the Pharisees, and relates the story of the rich man and of Lazarus, the beggar.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Here the rich man is represented as retaining even in hell some tenderness for his relations on earth; yet others think, that the kindness intended, was rather to himself than to his relations; fearing that their sinning by his example should be an aggravation of his own torments.

Note thence, that the presence of sinful relations and companions in hell, may be supposed to make a considerable addition to the miseries of the damned: the sight of those whom they have sinned with, is a fresh revival of their own guilt; all the circumstances of their past and profligate lives are upon this occasion continually in their remembrance.

Note farther, this miserable wretch is convinced that he could not get out of hell, therefore he desires that no friend of his might come in. He knew well enough, that if they were once there, they would come out no more. Indeed, God will at the great day send forth his writ to the graves to bring out the bodies of the wicked that are shut up there; and will send out his writ to hell, to bring forth the spirits that are shut in there; but it is in order to this, that both soul and body together may receive an eternal sentence for an everlasting imprisonment with the devil and his angels, and there will be no more opening for ever.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27–31. Send him to my father's house. This is introduced. not to show an interest in his brethren, but to call out the reply:

They have Moses and the prophets. If they would refuse to hear the word of God, they would refuse to repent at the bidding of a ghost.

Neither will they be persuaded, etc. This was demonstrated in the case of Jesus himself. The Jews refused to accept Christ, though Moses and the prophets testified of him. They asked for a sign, and “the sign of the prophet Jonah,” his resurrection from the dead, was given. Still they refused to repent. Unbelief is due, not to a lack of evidence, but to a rebellious heart. The seat of skepticism is in the moral nature.

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.

that you would send him to my father's house

"that you would tell Lazarus to go to my father's house" or "please, send him to my father's house"

my father's house

This refers to the people in the house. AT: "my family" (See: Metonymy)

in order that he may warn them

"so that Lazarus may warn them"

this place of torment

"this place where we suffer torment" or "this place where we suffer terrible pain"

translationWords

beg

house

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

27. εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρός μου. It is difficult not to see in this request the dawn of a less selfish spirit in the rich man’s heart.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27.] This is the believing and trembling of Jas 2:19. His eyes are now opened to the truth; and no wonder that his natural sympathies are awakened for his brethren.

That a lost spirit should feel and express such sympathy, is not to be wondered at; the misery of such will be very much heightened by the awakened and active state of those higher faculties and feelings which selfishness and the body kept down here.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27. But perhaps there is no χάσμα between paradise and the other world; and Dives makes another request, which, if less selfish than the first, is also less humble. It implies that he has scarcely had a fair chance. If God had warned him sufficiently, he would have escaped this place of torment.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Send him to my father 's house. Compare Dante, where Ciacco, the glutton, says to Dante :

"But when thou art again in the sweet world, I pray thee to the mind of others bring me." Inferno, 6, 88.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.