Healing the Ten Lepers #9

Healing the ten lepers is the account of Jesus healing ten men with leprosy as he traveled toward Jerusalem, only one of whom, a Samaritan, came back to give thanks. It appears only in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 17:11-19).

The Account

Jesus was passing along the border between Samaria and Galilee when he entered a village and was met by ten men with leprosy. They stood at a distance and called out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (Luke 17:12-13). He did not touch them or announce that they were healed, but told them to go and show themselves to the priests. As they went, they were cleansed (Luke 17:14).

One of them, seeing that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus’s feet and thanked him, and Luke adds, “he was a Samaritan” (Luke 17:16). Jesus asked whether ten had not been cleansed, where the other nine were, and whether no one had returned to give glory to God except this foreigner. He then said to the man, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole” (Luke 17:19).

Setting and Context

Leviticus laid out strict rules for people with serious skin diseases, often translated as leprosy: they lived outside the camp and warned others by calling “Unclean” (Leviticus 13:45-46). The word covers several conditions and is not necessarily the modern Hansen’s disease. Those who believed themselves healed had to be examined by a priest, who could pronounce them clean (Leviticus 14). That is why Jesus sends them to the priests before there is any visible change, a small test of trust.

Samaritans and Jews were at odds over worship, heritage, and land, and John’s Gospel notes that Jews did not associate with Samaritans (John 4:9). The setting on the boundary likely explains why a Samaritan and Jews could be part of the same group, as shared suffering had brought the men together. Luke alone tells this story, and Luke’s Gospel repeatedly includes outsiders as models of faith, including in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

What It Reveals

The story stresses gratitude as a response to grace. All ten were healed, but only one returned to give glory to God, and Jesus commends his faith. Jesus’s words “your faith has made you well” can also be translated as “saved you,” and many readers see a difference between the physical cleansing all ten received and the deeper wholeness given to the one who returned. The scene also echoes the story of Naaman, the foreign commander healed of leprosy through Elisha (2 Kings 5:1-14), which Jesus mentions earlier in Luke (Luke 4:27). Christians of many traditions use the passage in teaching about thanksgiving, and it appears in the lectionary of several churches for that reason.