Luke 23:43

43. Today A few interpreters have referred the phrase to-day to the verb say; making Jesus mean, Today I say unto thee. Nothing can relieve the vapidness of such a construction. It is with hardly less truth than severity that Alford says of this interpretation, “considering that it not only violates common sense, but destroys our Lord’s meaning, it is surely something worse than silly.” It would be scarce less absurd in Luke 19:9 to render the words, Jesus said unto him this day. Where did Jesus ever use the expression, I say unto thee to-day? Compare the language of the risen Samuel to Saul: “ Tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me.”

Paradise The word Paradise was originally Armenian, and was thence adopted by the Arabic and later Hebrew, to signify a park planted with trees and flowers. It was then appropriated by the Greeks, and was used in the (Septuagint) Greek translation of the Old Testament. Thus the Septuagint has in Genesis 2:8: God planted a paradise in Eden. This primeval paradise was lost, and the name was transferred by the Jewish Church to the blessed section of Hades, or the intermediate state between death and the resurrection. Beyond all doubt it was the intention of Jesus to designate this, by the term Paradise, to the dying thief. The passage, therefore, presents an unanswerable proof of the existence, both of a human soul separate from the body, and a state of happy consciousness of the justified soul immediately after death and before the resurrection.