to pass by on the opposite side: to go past a person while deliberately keeping to the far edge of the road, avoiding them
This verb appears only in the parable of the Good Samaritan, describing first the priest and then the Levite who come upon a wounded man. It compresses a whole picture into one word: coming up alongside, going past, and crossing to the far side of the road. The result is a single vivid image of someone who sees a need and steers wide of it.
The word is extremely rare in Greek, and in the few other places it survives it means different things. In one Jewish writing (the Wisdom of Solomon) it describes God's mercy coming to the rescue, the exact opposite of what happens here. So Luke was not reaching for a fixed, established term; he built this word to fit the scene of a body lying in the road. Its force comes from that scene, not from any settled dictionary meaning.
Luke uses it twice in a row, at the end of back-to-back sentences, forming a refrain: the priest sees the man and crosses to the other side, then the Levite does exactly the same. That repetition is deliberate. It sets up the Samaritan, who does the reverse, going toward the man rather than away from him.
Disputed
Whether the prefix contributes the spatial "opposite side" nuance or only a plain "past, by".
- majorityThe compound specifically means to pass by on the opposite side, the prefix adding a sideways, antithetical movement to the far edge of the road.; LSJ, s.v. ἀντιπαρέρχομαι; BDAG, s.v. ἀντιπαρέρχομαι; Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon, Domain 15
- minorityThe compound means simply to pass by, without insisting on the antithetical-side nuance.; Pape, Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache, s.v.; Dvoretsky, Ancient Greek-Russian Dictionary, s.v.