What is Abraham’s bosom?

Question 10118.

Abraham’s bosom is the expression used in Luke 16 for the place of comfort where the righteous dead waited before the resurrection of Jesus. The ESV renders it Abraham’s side, which is closer to the picture Jesus was drawing, and the picture is of reclining next to Abraham at a feast rather than of being cradled in his arms.

It is a phrase that has largely dropped out of use, which is a pity, because it opens up one of the most interesting corners of biblical teaching about death. Where did Old Testament believers go, and what changed at the cross?

The account in Luke 16

Jesus tells of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. Both die. The beggar is carried by the angels to Abraham’s side, and the rich man is buried and finds himself in Hades, in torment.

The two are within sight of each other and can converse, but a great chasm is fixed between them so that nobody can cross. The rich man asks for a drop of water, then for a warning to be sent to his brothers, and Abraham refuses both.

That is the whole of the biblical data on Abraham’s bosom. Everything else we say about it is inference, and the inference needs to be held more loosely than the text.

Is this a parable?

It is often called one, and it may be. But Jesus does something here that he does nowhere else in a parable: he gives a character a name. That has led many, including me, to treat it as a real account rather than a constructed illustration.

Either way the theological force is the same. Jesus is not in the habit of teaching truth by means of false pictures. If the details of Abraham’s bosom did not correspond to reality, the story would mislead rather than instruct.

So I take the description seriously as a description, while remaining careful about pressing the physical details of a realm we cannot see.

It is worth adding that the label matters less than we sometimes think. Whether we call it a parable or an account, Jesus is the speaker, and he is describing the state of the dead to people who would shortly be dead themselves. Nobody in that audience walked away thinking he had been given a fairy story about Abraham’s bosom.

What the word bosom means

The Greek is kolpos, meaning the chest or the fold of a garment, and by extension the place next to someone at table. In the ancient world diners reclined on their left side, so the guest of honour lay in front of the host, effectively leaning against him.

John uses the same word of the beloved disciple at the last supper, reclining at Jesus’s side, and of the Son who is in the bosom of the Father. It is the language of intimacy and favour.

So Abraham’s bosom is banquet imagery. The beggar who lay at a gate hoping for scraps is now in the place of honour at the table of the father of the faithful, which is precisely the reversal Jesus was driving at.

Where was Abraham’s bosom?

The text places it within sight of the place of torment, and both are in Hades in the wider sense, the realm of the dead. The Old Testament word for that realm is Sheol, and I have written on it separately in my answer on Sheol.

So the traditional picture has Hades divided into two compartments, one of comfort and one of torment, with an impassable chasm between. The comforted side is Abraham’s bosom, sometimes also called paradise.

I would not want to draw a diagram. The realm of the dead is not a place we can map, and the language of up and down and across is accommodated to our understanding. What the text insists on is separation, consciousness and permanence.

Why the righteous were not yet in heaven

This is the question underneath the whole subject. Why were Old Testament believers in a place of waiting rather than in the presence of God?

The answer usually given, and I think it is right, is that the price had not yet been paid. Their sins were covered by sacrifice in anticipation, and Romans 3 speaks of God passing over former sins in his forbearance until the cross demonstrated his righteousness. They were saved by faith in a promise not yet kept.

So Abraham’s bosom was a place of genuine comfort and genuine incompleteness. Comfort, because God does not deceive those who trust him. Incomplete, because the work that would open the way had not yet been done.

Did Abraham’s bosom empty at the ascension?

Many dispensational writers hold that when Jesus ascended he took the righteous dead with him into the immediate presence of God, so that Abraham’s bosom is now empty. The text usually cited is Ephesians 4:8, where Paul quotes the psalm about ascending on high and leading a host of captives.

I find that persuasive, though I would not divide from anyone over it. What is certain is that since the resurrection the believer who dies goes immediately to be with the Lord, which is a different situation from the one Jesus described in Luke 16.

Paul never speaks of going to Abraham’s bosom. He speaks of departing to be with Christ, and of being at home with the Lord. Something changed, and the change is what Easter accomplished. I have written on where believers go when they die.

The other side of the chasm

We should not pass over the rich man too quickly. He is conscious, in torment, in full possession of his memory, and concerned about his family. He is also still giving orders, asking Abraham to send Lazarus on errands, which is a small and devastating detail.

Nothing in the account suggests his condition is temporary in a hopeful sense. Hades holds the unsaved dead until the second resurrection and the Great White Throne, after which comes the lake of fire.

The chasm is the hardest part. Abraham says none may cross from either side, and the reason given is not divine reluctance but fixed reality. Whatever we make of the details, Jesus is teaching that the decisions of this life are not revisable in the next.

What Jesus was teaching through it

The story sits in a chapter about money, addressed to Pharisees whom Luke describes as lovers of money and who were ridiculing him. The reversal is the point: the man who had everything ends in torment and the man who had nothing ends at the banquet.

The closing exchange is the sting. If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. Jesus said that before he rose from the dead, and the outcome proved him right.

So Abraham’s bosom is not given to us to satisfy curiosity about the geography of the afterlife. It is given to warn the comfortable and console the poor, and to say that Scripture is sufficient for anyone willing to hear it.

What we should take from it today

That the state of the dead is conscious. That it is fixed. That comfort and torment are both real. And that the deciding factor is not wealth, status or religion but a faith that Abraham himself modelled long before the law was given.

It also tells us that the righteous dead are never alone. The beggar is carried by angels, received by Abraham, and given the seat of honour. Nobody who belongs to God dies unattended.

I have set the wider framework out in my answer on the intermediate state, which is where this doctrine now belongs.

There is one further lesson in the way Abraham addresses the rich man. He calls him child, and he speaks with courtesy rather than triumph. Even at that distance, across an unbridgeable chasm, there is no gloating. If that is how Abraham speaks about the lost, it ought to shape how we speak about them too, and a good deal of Christian conversation about hell would be improved by copying his tone.

So, now what?

If you have been reading the Old Testament and wondering where its believers are now, take the comfort of Ephesians 4. Wherever the details land, they are with Christ, and the waiting is over.

If you are poor, overlooked or ill, notice who the named character is in this account. Not the wealthy man with the fine linen. The beggar at the gate, and God knew his name.

And if you have been waiting for some dramatic evidence before you take God seriously, hear the last line of the story again. They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. What more are you waiting for?

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.

Luke 16:22, ESV