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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
First, we must needs pity the ill fortune of the man who fell unarmed and helpless among robbers, and who was so rash and unwise as to choose the road in which he could not escape the attack of robbers. For the unarmed can never escape the armed, the heedless the villain, the unwary the malicious. Since malice is ever armed with guile, fenced round with cruelty, fortified with deceit, and ready for fierce attack. …
Basil of Caesarea
This interpretation corresponds to the places, if any one will examine them. For Jericho lies in the low parts of Palestine, Jerusalem is seated on an eminence, occupying the crest of a mountain. The man then came from the high parts to the low, to fall into the hands of the robbers who infested the desert. As it follows, And he fell among thieves. Or it may be understood that they stripped us after first inflicting wounds; or wounds precede nakedness, as sin precedes the absence of grace.
Theophylact of Ohrid
And in addition to this, he brings forward the Samaritan as an example. As it follows, And Jesus answering him said, A certain man went down, &c. Now he says not "descended," but "was descending." For human nature was ever tending downwards, and not for a time only, but throughout busied about a life liable to suffering. Or man after sin is said to be half dead, because his soul is immortal, but his body mortal, so that the half of man is under death. …
Western Saints
Augustine of Hippo
For that man is taken for Adam himself, representing the race of man; Jerusalem, the city of peace, that heavenly country, from the bliss of which he fell. Jericho is interpreted to be the moon, and signifies our mortality, because it rises, increases, wanes, and sets. …
Ambrose of Milan
Jericho is an image of this world. Adam, cast out from Paradise, that heavenly Jerusalem, descended to it by the mistake of his transgression, that is, departing from the living to hell, for whom change not of place but of conduct made the exile of his nature. He was greatly changed from that Adam who enjoyed eternal blessedness. When he turned aside to worldly sins, Adam fell among thieves, among whom he would not have fallen if he had not strayed from the heavenly command and made himself vulnerable to them. …
Bede
And after inflicting wounds, they went away, leaving him half-dead. The wounds are sins, by which, violating the integrity of human nature, they implanted a kind of seedbed of increasing death (so to speak), into the wearying bowels. But they went away, not ceasing from ambushes at all, but by concealing the frauds of the same snares. They left him half-dead because they could strip away the happiness of immortal life, but could not abolish the sense of reason. For in that part where he can understand and know God, man is alive. …
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