The Rich Man and Lazarus: The Beggar at the Gate

Short answer: In Luke 16:19–31, a wealthy man feasts daily while a beggar named Lazarus, covered in sores and longing for scraps, lies at his gate. Both die; their positions reverse. From torment, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus with water, then to warn his five brothers. Abraham refuses both, ending with the line that if they will not hear Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.

Lazarus is the only apparently fictional character in any of Jesus' stories given a proper name. (Abraham and Moses are named too, but they are historical figures, not invented ones.) The wealthy man is never named at all — "Dives," which you will sometimes see, is simply the Latin for rich man.

The gate

"There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day."

Purple dye was ruinously expensive, and fine linen describes a costly garment worn close to the skin. Together they establish wealth well beyond ordinary comfort — and "every day" rules out reading it as a feast-day indulgence.

"And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table."

Laid at the gate: someone else put him there. He is at the entrance to the property, not down the road. Whatever else is uncertain, the proximity is not.

And nothing in the parable says the rich man was cruel. He does not drive Lazarus off. The story simply places a starving man at his door and a feast behind it.

The reversal

Both men die, and Luke describes the deaths differently. Lazarus is carried by the angels to Abraham's side. Of the rich man, Luke says only that he died and was buried.

Then the positions invert, and he looks up and sees them.

"Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue."

He uses the name. Whether he had known it in life the story does not say. Many commentators hear something proprietary in the request — Lazarus as someone to be sent, to fetch — though "send" is used of prophets and messengers too, so the reading is an inference rather than a certainty. His second request is on the same terms: send Lazarus to warn my brothers.

He never addresses Lazarus directly. Not once.

"A great gulf fixed"

Abraham's answer is gentle and immovable: "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed."

Two cautions are worth stating plainly here, because this passage gets pressed into service for arguments it was not built for.

It does not give a detailed geography of the afterlife. Jesus is telling a story using a scene his listeners could picture, and pressing its furniture for a map asks more of it than it offers — though Catholic, Orthodox and many Protestant readers do take it as saying something real about judgement and the state of the dead, and Luke never labels this unit a parable, which is part of why interpretations diverge.

And it is not a claim that wealth damns and poverty saves. Reversal-of-fortune stories were a familiar shape in the ancient world; attempts to tie this one to a specific Egyptian or Jewish source remain disputed. What Luke does tell us about the audience is pointed enough: a few verses earlier he says the Pharisees, "who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him." (Luke 16:14)

The ending nobody asks for

The rich man's last request is the most sympathetic thing he says. Send someone back from the dead, so my brothers do not end up here.

"They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them."

"Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent."

"If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

Many readers hear the resurrection in that last line, and it is difficult not to, given who is telling the story and who wrote it down. Whether Luke intended the echo is debated. What the sentence says on its own terms is blunt enough: the problem being described is not a shortage of evidence.

What it asks

The indictment is not simply that the rich man spent money on himself. Abraham's final answer widens it — he and his brothers had Moses and the Prophets, which had a great deal to say about the poor, and it had not moved them.

What the story puts in front of you is a gate, a feast on one side of it, and a man covered in sores on the other.

---

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (public domain).

Sources and further reading

• On purple, fine linen and what the clothing signals about wealth, and on the proposed Egyptian and Jewish reversal-story parallels (all disputed): open-access discussion in HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies (scielo.org.za).
• Luke 16:14, on the audience, and the USCCB commentary notes to Luke (bible.usccb.org).