John Lightfoot on Luke 23:43

[Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.] I. Let us here first consider the phrase in paradise: in common Jewish speech, in the garden of Eden. In what sense we may collect from these following passages: "The Rabbins have a tradition. There are four that went into paradise: namely, Ben Azzai, Ben Zumah, Acher, and R. Akibah. R. Akibah saith unto them, 'When you come to the stones of pure marble, do not ye say Waters, waters [i.e. Alas! these waters will hinder us from going forward]; for it is written, He that telleth lies shall not dwell in my presence [now, it would be a lie to call white marble water].'" "Ben Azzai looked with some curiosity about him, and died: of him the Scripture speaks, 'Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints.' Ben Zumah looked with some curiosity about him, and he was disturbed in his intellectuals: of him the Scripture speaketh, 'Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.'"

Aruch, reciting these words, saith, "It is called paradise, under the signification of the garden of Eden, which is reserved for the just. This place is in the heavens, where the souls of the just are gathered together." And the Talmudical Gloss hath it much to the same sense: "These four, by God's procurement, went up into the firmament."

While we are reading these passages, that story may easily occur to mind of St. Paul's being "caught up into paradise," 2 Corinthians 12; and perhaps the legend before us is but the ape of that story. In the story it is observable, that paradise and the 'third heaven' are one and the same thing: in the legend paradise and the highest heavens. For so the doctors comment upon the word in Psalm 68:5: "There are seven classes or degrees of just persons, who see the face of God, sit in the house of God, ascend up unto the hill of God, &c. And to every class or degree there is allotted their proper dwellingplace in paradise. There are also seven abiding places in hell. Those that dwell in paradise, they shine like the shining of the firmament, like the sun, like the moon, like the firmament, like the stars, like lightning, like the lilies, like burning lamps."

II. Our Saviour, therefore, telling the penitent thief, This day shalt thou be with me in paradise, he speaks in the common dialect, and to the capacity of the thief; viz., that he should be in heaven with Christ, and with all just persons that had left this world. Nor, indeed, would I fetch the explication of that article of our creed, He descended into hell, from any passage in the Scripture sooner than this here: adding this, that we must of necessity have recourse to the Greek tongue for the signification of the word, which they generally use to denote the state of the dead, as well the blessed as the miserable. Those who expound that passage in 1 Peter 3:19, of his going down from the cross into hell to preach to the spirits in prison there, do very little regard the scope of the apostle, and are absolute strangers to his meaning in it. For,

1. In that he shuts up the generation before the flood in an infernal prison, he falls in with the received opinion of that nation, which was, that that generation had no part in the world to come; and that they were condemned to boiling waters in hell.

2. He compares the present generation of the Jews with that generation before the flood; that Christ did of old preach even to that generation, and so he hath done to this; that that generation perished through its disobedience, and so will this. He runs much upon the same parallel in his second Epistle, chapter 3:6, &c. We must observe, that the apostle makes his transition from the crucifixion and resurrection of our Saviour directly to the generation before the flood, passing over all those generations that came between, on purpose that he might make the comparison betwixt that and the age he lived in.