19 “There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. 20 And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
Culpepper well describes this parable as a drama in three acts (Luke, 316):
- Act 1 – a tableau during which the characters are introduced and their way of life is described, but nothing happens
- Act 2 – the rich become poor and the poor become rich as each character has died and received their eternal reward
- Act 3 – narration give way to dialogue, but between the rich man and Abraham, in three exchanges:
- about the finality of judgment
- about the witness of Moses and the prophets
- about the blindness that prevents even the Resurrection from leading to conversion