New Testament Doctrine: John 4:1-26

Rome would not have tolerated any trouble between the Jews and Samaritans. The spite remained, but things were generally peaceful. According to the Law of Moses, Jesus would later restrain His disciples from preaching to Samaritans the message meant to give Israel one last chance to recover her original mission of revelation, before the Covenant was closed on them. Yet it was clear that Jesus bore the Samaritans no ill will when He referred to the Good Samaritan.

On the one hand, we have some reports that, during some periods of tension between the two nations, Jews would cross to the East Bank of the Jordan to avoid passing through Samaria. We have no way of ascertaining how prevalent this practice was, nor even if it were true at all. It need not be taken as a factor at this point. When Jesus realized that the Sanhedrin were aware that John’s controversial ministry was now passing to Him — and this was about the time John was arrested by Herod Antipas — it was time to leave Judea. He also needed to avoid provoking Antipas, so passing through Samaria was about the only way.

We get the feeling that Antipas was more strict in Perea where he actually lived most of the time. His fortress of Macaerus was down near the tense border with the Nabatean Kingdom; Rome never conquered them. But his domain in Galilee was the tourist trap, and he kept a gentler hand there for the sake of keeping a friendly face to the rest of the world. It was important for him to avoid being too much like his notorious father.

Nothing demonstrates Jesus’ lack of hatred for Samaritans more clearly than this episode we call the Woman at the Well. It also represents His lack of rabbinical spite for women in general. In other words, Jesus had more animus towards the Jewish leadership than just about anyone else. Still, it’s obvious that He remained somewhat aloof, which is what the Covenant had in mind for such occasions. This would explain His use of the third person.

Shechem never stood precisely between the Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. It was a little to the east of the narrow gap. Just outside that ancient city was Jacob’s Well on the southeast, and Sychar was a suburb lying on the northeast, which put it directly east of the peak of Ebal. Jesus stopped at Jacob’s Well, and the smaller village of Sychar was clearly visible across the fields there in the valley. We note that John seems to mix using Roman time and Jewish reckoning of the hours of the day, but it seems to make the most sense that here he means noon. They’ve been walking half the day and it’s time to take a break.

Most such wells offered something like a picnic area; it was a common eastern courtesy since ancient times. John notes that the disciples had gone into “the city” to buy food, which almost certainly refers to the main city of Shechem. A woman came walking out of Sychar from the north to draw water at the wrong time of day. Women typically did this just after dawn, making it a big social occasion to chatter and gossip with no men around. This woman came out at noon when only mostly male travelers were likely to be there.

Whether she was merely a social outcast unwelcome among the more respectable women, or something closer to a hooker checking if there were any clients, is hard to estimate. Maybe it was some of both. Either way, she found something totally unexpected. Normally at least one person in a traveling entourage would carry a soft leather bucket to get water from wells they passed while traveling, but they must have taken it with them. Thus, Jesus sitting alone there asked the woman if He could have some water from her draw. This was common enough, an acceptable variation from the routine of never speaking to non-family females in public.

So, her remark was about the tension between Jews and Samaritans. It says much about her — brassy and sarcastic. Perhaps she expected some self-righteous indignation, but was caught off guard by what Jesus said. Referring to Himself in the third person, He disarms her completely, even while retaining the upper hand. John translates a common Semitic expression for a surface spring of flowing water — “living water” — versus a deep well of more stagnant water. It was a parable.

Sticking with the literal, she missed the point. This was the only public drinking water for quite some distance, and one of the deepest wells in the land, and Jesus must not have had a traveler’s skin bucket on Him to get even this water. Where was He going to get spring water? Keeping up the sarcasm, she poked at Him some more by claiming Jacob as her forefather, referring to him as the one who dug this well in the first place, now the inheritance of Samaritans.

Jesus persisted with His parabolic riddles to get her into a different frame of mind. In a literal sense, drinking from this well was a body maintenance task that needed frequent repetition. He had water of a different type, something that would flow from within the soul, a source of eternal life. Again with the sarcasm, she said she would be glad to have it so she could stop taking that hike to draw from the well every day. Few men would have ever thought this was a pleasant woman.

Jesus tried a different tack. To her, it might seem He was going to provide her with something through a gift to her husband. He told her to go and bring her husband back. This sounded almost normal to her, but not normal for her. She claimed to have no husband. To which Jesus answered she was quite right. She was not married now, but had been married to five different men in the past, and was living with yet another at this moment. Her brassy demeanor in that culture was enough to explain such a bad record with marriage.

Now she was spooked, because it was an accurate assessment. Without admitting anything, she said that Jesus must be some kind of prophet. “So tell me this, all-seeing prophet: What’s up with this argument over where we should worship Jehovah? Where is God’s real home?” She was referring to Mount Gerizim just a short distance to the southwest of where they were having this conversation, versus Mount Zion. We can still see the ruins of a Samaritan temple on Gerizim today.

If this was one of the questions burning in her soul, she got a far better answer than anyone else might have given her. Someday the place would no longer matter; the Covenant was about to end soon. Jesus referred to how the Samaritans had embraced a portion of that Covenant without ever having been fully a part of it in the first place. The covenant claimed by the Jews was the true revelation of Jehovah, whereas the Samaritans had a highly excised version of it. Still, such as the Samaritan “covenant” was, it would be all the more dead when the Israeli Covenant from which it was derived was gone.

The Heavenly Father was no mere earthly king, but was a spirit being. Those who were going to connect to Him must do so on a spiritual plane. Historical human disputes have no place there.

It was over her head. She simply remarked that when the Messiah shows up — something the Samaritans believed in — she was sure everyone would have the final spiritual truth about things. Again, Jesus refers to Himself in the third person, but this time claiming to be this Messiah.