16:28a

for I have five brothers: This phrase explains why the rich man wanted Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house. The rich man was concerned for his five brothers who were still living there. Some versions do not translate the word for explicitly.

brothers: The brothers were all the sons of the same man, the rich man’s father. They may or may not have all been the sons of the rich man’s mother.

If you need to make it explicit whether these brothers were younger or older than the rich man, you should say that they were younger.

16:28b

This part of the verse gives the purpose for which Abraham was to send Lazarus to the rich man’s family. In Greek, it is introduced by a word meaning “so that.” For example:

so that he may warn them (Revised Standard Version)

Let him warn them: In this context, the clause Let him warn them means that Lazarus was to urge the brothers to change their way of life. He would warn them about how God would punish them if they did not change. He was to tell them to repent, as 16:30 makes explicit. In some languages it may be helpful to make this information explicit here. For example:

Tell him to warn them ⌊to repent⌋

16:28c

so that they will not also end up in this place of torment: This clause expresses the purpose for which Lazarus was to warn the brothers of the rich man. The purpose of the warning was to prevent the brothers from coming to the place of torment (“so that…not”). Another way to express this purpose is:

lest they also come… (Revised Standard Version)

Consider the most natural way in your language to express this purpose.

this place of torment: The word for torment also occurs in 16:23a. Other ways to translate the phrase this place of torment are:

this place of extreme suffering/pain
-or-
this place where I am suffering terribly

© 2009, 2010, 2013 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.