This study began as a paper which I presented at the March 2018 Annual Meeting of the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society (SBL) in Akron, Ohio. The attached version is my final peer-reviewed pre-publication manuscript prior to Brill publication formatting in Novum Testamentum 62.1 (2020). Scholarly use should reference the actual published article, which is available at https://doi.org/10.1163/15685365-12341650.

Here I examine the name and role of the poor man in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31. Evidence developed from an intertextual reading of the parable through the lens of Septuagint Genesis and Job reveals the character of Lazarus to be a seamless weave of suffering Job and Eliezer the Servant of rich man Abraham. The nexus in Genesis 22-24 of divine testing, death and burial, and long journeys commissioned, undertaken, and denied, involving the closely bound characters Abraham and Eliezer, is discovered to be the base template for Luke’s closely bound Abraham and Lazarus, with key supplementation from sore‑covered Job who experienced sequential reversals from rich to poor and back again. In Luke 16, Eliezer was sent in the guise of Job-like Lazarus to give the Rich Man a final opportunity to repent and show mercy, in a test to see if he would heed Moses and the Prophets. His mission completed, Lazarus returned to his special place in Abraham's bosom, atop the same thigh by which he had sworn to faithfully execute Abraham's final spoken words in Genesis.