Dives and Lazarus by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1882

Dives and Lazarus

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

MANY persons wonder why the rich man, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, is often spoken of as Dives (di-vees), since no name is given him in the Bible. The word dives is not a proper name, but is the Latin word for rich, "a rich man." Pictorial representations of this parable, by the old masters, were named in Latin, Dives et Lazarus, "The Rich Man and Lazarus." People who were unacquainted with Latin, knowing that Lazarus was the name of the beggar, supposed that Dives was the name of the rich man, and the title so acquired, has been continued to the present time. E. J. W.