Luke 17:14

When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

From Background Notes [BN] for November 17^th & 18^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

What complicates — and illuminates — this text is the case of “one of them.” He is specifically indentified as “a Samaritan” and “this foreigner.” The question about this one healed leper is: to what priest was he supposed to go?

 
It is unlikely that a Jewish priest would receive him for examination. After all, Samaritans were, in the eyes of their Jewish contemporaries, already excluded from the community of Israel (see John 4:9) — treated like lepers! Samaritans didn’t need to be literal lepers to be considered unclean! We know that Samaritans had their own place of worship on Mount Gerizim, and their theology was founded entirely only on the first five books of Moses which would have included the instructions about lepers found in Leviticus 13-14. Samaritan priests, like their Jewish counterparts, would have followed the same practices involving the examination of lepers and the declaration of their fitness to return to society after their leprosy left.  [BN, 6]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am