10:33 a despised Samaritan: This reversal in the story must have left the listeners aghast. Jews and Samaritans hated each other (see 9:52-53; 17:16; John 4:4-42). After the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, Assyrian colonists intermarried with Israelites left in Samaria; these inhabitants became known as Samaritans. After the Judeans returned from Babylon, conflict arose between the Jews and the Samaritans (Ezra 4:1-24), who built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim and used their own version of the Pentateuch (Genesis—Deuteronomy) as their Scripture. Hatred between the two increased dramatically when the Jewish king John Hyrcanus attacked the Samaritans and destroyed the temple on Mount Gerizim (about 128 BC). In this context of mutual animosity, no first-century Jew would expect a despised Samaritan to help a wounded Jew. But in God’s Kingdom, a despised foreigner becomes a helping neighbor!