What is Abraham's bosom?

Abraham their forefather was believed by the Jews to be in the highest place of happiness, and their writings show that 'to be with Abraham' and to be in his bosom were terms they used to express the highest security and happiness. Our Lord therefore used an expression that was well understood by His hearers and needed no explanation. Luke 16:23. It stands in contrast to hell, or hades, and was therefore figurative of heaven.

Is there a life beyond the grave? Often and anxiously the question is agitated amongst men. The Son of God answers it for us here. The beggar died, and was forthwith, not extinguished nor consigned to centuries of insensibility, but carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The position is described from the Jewish point of view. Conscious blessedness and that in the company of the father of the faithful, is plainly set forth. The rich man also died, and of him it is said, "he was buried." Why is this added in his case? Clearly because the Lord would carefully distinguish between body and soul. The man's body was buried, doubtless with all the pomp and circumstance that suited so wealthy a person; but immediately afterwards we read "in Hell (Hades) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments." Let me repeat, his body was laid in the tomb, but his soul went to Hades. Beyond all just controversy, this is the Saviour's meaning in the passage before us.

Hades is not Gehenna. The latter is the lake of fire, to which the lost are despatched after the judgment of the Great White Throne (the mass being preceded by the Beast and the False Prophet, and Satan); Hades is the term divinely employed to designate the intermediate unclothed state.

However, what a reversal at death! "The rich man died and was buried." The poor man, Lazarus, died also. The rich man's name is not told us: it was not worth remembering. Whether Lazarus had a burial or not is of no importance, for, as to his spirit and soul, he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. This tells us that his faith had been in the living God, for he is "blessed with faithful Abraham" (Gal.3:9). Jews considered this their natural title, but the rich man found he had no such title at all, as many Jews will find to their regret. The rich man may have had a beautiful, imposing funeral, but it made no difference to his condition of torment after death.

The rich man's body was in a grave, but he lifted up his eyes in "hades," which speaks of the condition of his soul and spirit as separated from his body. Hades is an unseen state, and does not refer to a place, just as death refers to a state, not a place (as is popularly believed). But there was a great distance between him and Abraham. Each was in a place, but the place of the rich man was a place of torment, and that of Lazarus a place of blessing. The rich man pled for mercy, but too late! He asked only that Lazarus might be sent to merely dip his finger in water and cool his tongue, for the heat of the judgment he must bear was tormenting. Did he remember that he had shown no mercy to Lazarus in his lifetime?

Abraham reminded him that in his lifetime he had had his good things and Lazarus evil things. He had lived only for this life. How fatal a mistake! Now Lazarus was comforted and he was tormented. The body had no part in this, for it is the intermediate state between death and resurrection that is involved here -- the time the body is in the grave. But there was conscious comfort for the spirit and soul of one, conscious torment for the other.

Such was man, such the Jew in present life, according to his thoughts of earthly good; but when death comes, when that stands revealed which was beyond the grave, the difference at once appears in all its solemnity. Then we have things in their true light. "And it came to pass that the poor man died." And how different! There is not a word of his burial: perhaps, indeed, he was not buried; but he "was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom,"417 the place of especial blessedness according to a Jew, in the unseen world, with the most honourable of God's servants waiting on him.

"The rich man also died, and was buried." Here there might be splendour of retinue and ample show of grief in the eyes of men. But "in Hades418 lifting up his eyes, being in torments, he sees Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom." This is not a picture of the final state of judgment, but of a certain condition after death. This is of great importance. Luke gives us both, confirming what is seen in the Old Testament and even adding to it. He gives its full prominence to the resurrection elsewhere; but here it was of consequence to know what would be even now for man's profit here below. In Hades, then, "lifting up his eyes, being in torments, he sees Abraham afar off." We are not judges, save so far as Scripture speaks and we are subject to it, of what is entirely outside our experience. How far those who are lost can have the knowledge of the condition of those who are saved, it is not for us to pronounce on. Scripture is plain as to the distance between them. There is no mingling of the two together. But what would be incredibly distant to man living on the earth may be simply far off to those in the separate state, and the difference between them mutually known. Lazarus, then, according to the Word, was seen in Abraham's bosom by him who was in torment. "And he, crying out, said, Father Abraham, have compassion on me: and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering in this flame." I lay no stress on the bare fact or statement that man became "a living soul," but on the momentous difference of the way in which man alone, according to the Scripture, became such. What purpose had Jehovah Elohim in breathing into the nostrils the breath of life? To say that the fallen child of Adam derives the immortality of his soul from Christ as distinct from this, or in any way but this, does not to me seem sound doctrine; it rather approaches the crochet of the learned but eccentric H. Dodwell. (B.T.)

Lazarus was in Abraham's bosom; the rich man was in torments. The Lord was speaking from the Jewish standpoint when He spoke of "Abraham's bosom." Abraham was the father of the Jewish nation, and the depositary of the promises; to be blessed in company with him was the expectation and hope of his seed. But since the day of Luke 16 Christ has died and risen again, and has gone up as Man into God's glory. Accordingly the blessedness of sleeping believers is now described in wholly different terms: "to depart and to be with Christ is far better": "absent from the body, present with the Lord" (Phil. 1:23; 2 Cor. 5:8). Neither the rich man nor Lazarus had yet reached eternal circumstances. The rich man was in Hades, not yet in Gehenna: and neither he nor Lazarus had yet experienced resurrection. The one will be as a complete man (spirit and soul and body) in the lake of fire for ever: and the other, as a complete man, will find his everlasting home in the Father's house. Every believer is predestinated to be with, and like, the First-born Son on high.

I admit then freely it is a parable. I do not press the letter of the parable, nor say that, when the rich man's body was in the grave, he had literally a tongue to his soul so that water could have cooled it. I go farther, I admit that the parable is adapted to Jewish notions. Abraham's bosom is clearly a figure for the best possible place in another world, according to Jewish ideas. All this seems to me very clear. But then the parable is surely meant to convey something. You say that the sense is, supposing these three men brought into each other's presence, when the probationary scene was over, such as is here described would be the character and circumstances of their interview. Be it so. But why would it have this character? Was it not what happened after death that produced such sentiments? Was it not the misery, the unhappiness, consequent on death in another world, which was to produce the conviction Christ desired in the living? Did the Lord mean by such a picture to convey the idea that men suffered and enjoyed nothing after death? He does not say the man rose, and had his place in Abraham's bosom; He says he died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. Would not this sanction the idea that the just after death (i.e., when he died) subsisted still? "He died and was carried into Abraham's bosom." Does that mean — is it consistent with the idea — that when he died he ceased to exist (and so also the rich man), but afterwards he arose and went into Abraham's bosom? Does it not contradict the idea, that on dying he ceased to exist? And, however useless, does not the torment of the rich man, his body being in the grave, teach that he existed while his body was there? He was buried, and lifted up his eyes in Hades, being in torment — a figure, no doubt, but a figure of something which was to act on the conscience. He was buried, say you, and thereon ceased to exist. Can the Lord's statements fall in with yours?

324 To return to Dr. Milner's proofs. I need not notice 1 Corinthians 15:29, because the apostle does not give a hint that he is speaking of Jews; he is speaking of being baptized. And supposing he were, I know not what Jewish superstitions have to do with Christians. We are all baptized unto death, and of that's being the sense (comparing verse 28) I have no doubt. The only thing such a quotation proves is that they are very hard run for a passage. The proof from the expression, "Abraham's bosom," is soon answered: the Catechism of the Council of Trent contrasts it with purgatory. How Dr. Milner reconciles it with honesty to quote it for purgatory I cannot tell. The force of the expression, however, is evident. Abraham had for the Jew the highest and most blessed place in the other world, and to be in his bosom was to be in the next best place to him, as the beloved disciple in Jesus' bosom, when at the table. Besides, Dr. Milner says Lazarus reposed there. Is it repose to be in purgatory? All this is too bad.

325 Again, Christ in spirit went and preached to the spirits in prison. This is the prison above mentioned — Abraham's bosom. He says, But Christ went into paradise. This day, He said to the thief, thou shalt be with Me in paradise. Do they preach in paradise? or is Abraham's bosom (and, still more, is paradise) a prison? It is perfectly evident that the Lord uses Abraham's bosom as a place of special favour and blessedness. The poor man died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And again, Now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. Did the angels carry him to the fire of purgatory to comfort him, after his sorrowful life on earth?

The Lord presents the truth here in unmistakable language. The beggar’s body lay in the grave, whilst his spirit passed into happiness. Abraham’s bosom is symbolic of the happy portion of the departed saints of God in old times.

The Lord framed His discourse in a Jewish setting, suitable to His hearers—hence the symbolism— “Abraham’s bosom.” But the companionship of Abraham and the bliss of his condition were not symbolical. And just as plainly as Scripture tells us hades is for the believer a state of bliss, so does the Lord tell us that hades is for the unbeliever a condition of torment. Can we believe the one statement and refuse the other? Surely not. How infinitely kind, because infinitely solemn, so that the hearers might escape such a doom, were the warnings the Lord gave when on earth.

He died. His body was buried. Was that all? Did his soul die? There is no hint of this from our Lord. On the contrary the beggar was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom, a figure of speech well-known to His hearers, that the beggar—his soul—had gone to Heaven.