Jesus told his disciples the following story about a rich man and a beggar: "There was a certain rich man, and he clothed himself in purple and fine linen, making merry every day in splendor. And a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores [...] And the beggar died and he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades he lifted his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham from afar and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in anguish in this flame" (Luke 16:19-20,22-24).
It is sometimes remembered that this story has traits which do not appear in other Gospel parables. It gives names of real people to two of its characters (Lazarus and Abraham) and mentions a specific place where they go after death (hades). This is something to be considered. But Jesus told so many parables and so few stories on real facts of the present that it seems unlikely that the text on Lazarus and the beggar was not one of his allegoric stories.
In fact, as our knowledge of ancient literature grows, the number of texts interpreted as parables increases. And it increases so wildly that, in modern exegesis, the Old Testament proverbs and Jesus’ saying about the unclean spirit who returns to his house are considered parables. Not only them, but many other examples, comparisons, maxims, figurative stories of the Bible also are. And in this transformed picture of the holy texts, there remains little doubt that the story of the rich man and Lazarus should be considered a parable, though of a special kind.
In it, the precise allusions to hades and the after death must be due to the preexistence of teachings about them. They also show that the object of the parable is not the actions of its characters, but precisely those teachings. They are the main symbols employed to indicate spiritual realities. For instance, the rich man’s statements about his eyes, tongue and finger echo the first century belief that the soul survived death. The same is true of the disposition of the two sections of hades, implicit in the statements that the rich man looked up to see Abraham and Lazarus, and that a chasm separated the two sections. These data were part of the teaching about the intermediate state, which was adopted as a symbol of after death's sufferings and rewards.
At the same time, the Pharisaic teaching of the postmortem state also echoed the Bible’s numerous allusions to death as a kind of sleep. If we add the teaching behind those allusions to the representation of hades we see in the parable, the resultant doctrine will be that the intermediate state is totally dominated by creations of the mind, which are similar to dreams. From this viewpoint, the torment of the rich, his visualization of Abraham and Lazarus, the dialogue he held with the first are not real experiences, but imaginative creations of his mind after death.
Jesus referred to all these doctrines and implications of doctrines that circulated at his time, in order to add the teaching that the sort of life the rich man lived filled his mind with thoughts that would later explode in the form of suffering. We are told that the rich man, when alive, saw Lazarus, but did not help him. This was surely his fault. But the verb tense used to describe Lazarus’ lying at the door of the rich man is the pluperfect (“more than perfect” in Greek). That tense was considered a luxury in the language of the New Testament (koiné), for people felt no need of expressing what it was supposed to express (TAYLOR, W. C. Introduction to the study of the Greek New Testament. 6ª ed., Rio de Janeiro: JUERP, 1980. p. 332). Huckabee says the pluperfect used to indicate that both the action and its effect were past(www.palavraprudente.com.br/estudos/dw_ huckabee/hermeneutica/cap05.html). This implies that both the rich man’s action of seeing Lazarus and its effect had ceased at the decisive time of Lazarus' death.
This verb tense is in sharp contrast with the rich man’s habitual feasting, which is indicated by the verb in the imperfect. The imperfect tense conveys the idea of a continuous action, which in the parable is exaggerated by the addition of the expression every day (kat emeran). Rienecker and Rogers explain the meaning of this tense in the following way: “imperfect of habit, [meaning] habitually dressed” (RIENECKER, Fritz and ROGERS, Cleon. Linguistic key to the Greek New Testament. Sao Paulo: Vida Nova, 1988. p. 141).
If all this is right, and we have good reasons to think it may be, the teaching of Jesus is that the action that makes the rich man blamed is not having seen Lazarus at his door in the past, but feasting and merrying continuosly. It is not so much the social aspect of the story, or the man’s relation with Lazarus, but his action of continually directing his whole life to pleasure.
Psalms 73 describes the consequences of such a life: “I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs in their death, and their body is well nourished. They do not find themselves in the hardship of men, nor are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride is a necklace for them, violence covers them like a garment. Their eyes bulge out from fatness; the imaginations of their heart overflow […] And they say, How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High? Behold, these are the wicked; and always at ease, they heap up riches” (Psalms 73:3-7,11-12).
When uttered the story about Lazarus, Jesus had just told two other parables of rich men, who were wise and represented God (those of the prodigal son and of the prudent steward). It would be strange to make the man of the third parable evil, just because he was rich. So he was said evil, not because he had much money, but because he lived to pleasures. Jesus also called Mammon unrighteous, in Luke 16:11, not in itself, but because fortunes were usually accumulated by means of unrighteous deeds.
The flame that the rich man mentions in 16:24 appears in other parables. In all of them, it represents judgment. Particularly in the parable of the tares, Jesus says that “the angels will gather the stumbling blocks and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire” (Matthew 13:41-42), and in the text on the great fishing, he again says the angels will cast the evil ones into the furnace of fire, where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:50).
Weeping may indicate distress, but also grief or sadness. And the gnashing of teeth sometimes accompanies pain, sometimes anger. So the furnace of Matthew 13:50 can be variously interpreted as a place of suffering and pain or of sadness and anger. In children, crying most commonly relate to suffering, but in adults, it usually indicates sadness. If we understand that the furnace is designed for adults, it is more consistent to interpret crying as a sign of sorrow, and gnashing of teeth as the anger for being disqualified.
So, even in the judgment that will be carried out with the aid of angels, suffering will be a consequence of the state of mind of sinners, represented by the weeping and gnashing of teeth, not something infused into them. How much more in the judgment of the intermediate state portrayed in Luke 16! As in a nightmare produced by the mind packed up with strife and challenges, the wicked will suffer because of their own proud thoughts and of the vain imaginations of their heart.
However, when that happens, the soul starts to judge things under a new light. When saw it was impossible to receive even a water drop from the other part of hades, the rich man asked Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers. The plead indicates a change of perspective. It can be argued that the change came too late, but the parable does not develop this point. It rather leaves the question unanswered.
Abraham only said that those who lived like the rich man would not be persuaded, if someone rose from the dead. As we have seen, the life that leads to torment is a consequence of day by day attachment to pleasures. Change of behavior can happen without anyone ressurrecting. Age produces it much more simply. But the weight of sensations, lusts, unbelief and pride cannot be easily removed from the heart. They are like the root of a tree, that remains under the ground, when the leaves and fruits fall. And which causes the tree to awake and bring forth new rotten fruits.
