On his way to Jerusalem, our Lord passed through the region between Samaria and Galilee. This was never a pleasant place for a Jew to travel. There was just too much animosity with the Samaritans. The Jews preferred to avoid them. Travel in the region of the Samaritans was simply distasteful.

As Jesus walked, a group of ten lepers approached him. The group contains a curious mixture. For one thing, both leprous Jews and leprous Samaritans were traveling together.[1] The illness permitted them to rise above their mutual dislike and to bond as suffering human beings. Tragedy, illness, accident, and crisis will sometimes do that.

It needs to be noted that even though they were all called "lepers" in ancient times, the group probably mixed people of differing diseases.[2] In that group might…