Bible Commentaries

VII

JESUS AT JACOB’S WELL. THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. CHRIST THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE, THE FOUNTAIN OF PEACE. THE WHITE HARVEST FIELD, OR THE FIELD OF EARTH AND THE FIELD OF HEAVEN. THE SOWERS AND THE REAPERS. THE FAITH OF THE SAMARITANS, A PRASAGE OF THE UNIVERSAL SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL

John 4:1-42

1When therefore the Lord [Jesus]¹ knew how [that] the Pharisees had heard that 2 Jesus made [makes] and baptized [baptizes] more disciples than John (Though 3 Jesus himself baptized not [did not baptize], but his disciples), He left Judea, and departed again² into Galilee 4 And he must needs go through Samaria 5 Then cometh he [He cometh, therefore] to a city of Samaria, which is [omit which is] called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground [or piece of land] that Jacob gave to his 6 son Joseph. Now [And] Jacob’s well [fountain]³ was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus [simply sat down] on the well: [.] and [omit and] it was about⁴ the sixth hour.

7There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.⁵ 8(For his disciples were [had] gone away unto the city to buy meat9[food]). Then⁶ saith the woman of Samaria [The Samaritan woman⁷ saith] unto him, How is it that thou being a Jew, askest drink of me, which [who] am a woman of Samaria [a Samaritan woman]? for the [omit the] Jews have no dealings with the [omit the] Samaritans.⁸ 10Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water 11 The woman saith unto him, sir, thou hast nothing to draw with,⁹ and the well is deep: from whence 12 then hast thou that [the] living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which [who] gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children [sons], and his cattle? 13Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever [Every one that] drinketh [πᾶς δ πίνων] of this water shall [will] thirst again: 14But whosoever drinketh [whosoever shall drink, δς δ’ ἅν πίῃ]¹⁰ of the water that I shall give him shall [will] never thirst; but the water that I shall give him¹¹ shall be [become, γενήσεται] in him a well [fountain] of water springing up into everlasting life 15 The woman saith unto him, sir, give me this water, that I thirst not [may 16 not thirst], neither [nor] come [all the way, διέρχωμαι] hither [ἐνθάδε] to draw. Jesus17[He]¹² saith unto her, Go, call thy husband,¹³ and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband [οὐχ ἕχω ἅνδρα]. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband [A husband I have not, or, Husband I have none, ἅνδρα οὐχ ἕχω]: 18For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly [in this thou hast spoken truly, or, truth, τοῦτο ὰληθὲς εἵρηκας]. 19The woman saith unto him, sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet 20 Our fathers worshipped in [or, on] this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship 21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me,¹⁴ the [an] hour cometh [is coming], when ye shall neither in [or, on] this mountain, nor yet [omit yet] at [in] Jerusalem, worship the Father 22 Ye worship ye know not what [that which ye know not]: we know what we worship [we worship that which we know]; for [the] salvation¹⁵ is [or, comes] of [from] the Jews 23 But the [an] hour cometh [is coming], and now is, when the true worshippers shall [will] worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him [for also (καὶ γάρ) such worshippers the Father seeketh], 24God is a Spirit [is spirit]:¹⁶ and they that worship him must worship him [omit him] in spirit and in truth 25 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which26[who] is called Christ:¹⁷ when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.

27And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the [a] woman:¹⁸ yet no man [no one] said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?

28The woman then left her water-pot, and went her way [went away] into the city, and saith to the men, 29Come, see a man, which [who] told me all things that ever¹⁹ 30I did: is not [omit not]²⁰ this the Christ? Then [omit Then]²¹ they went out of the city, and came unto [to] him.

31In the mean while his disciples prayed [asked] him, saying, Master [Rabbi], eat 32 But he said unto them, I have meat [food] to eat that ye know not of 33 Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him aught [any thing] to eat? 34Jesus saith unto them, My meat [food] is to do²² the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work 35 Say not ye [Do ye not say], There are yet four months [it is yet a four-month²³], and then cometh [the] harvest? behold [Lo!] I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already 36 to harvest [white for harvest already]. And [omit And]²⁴ he that reapeth [the reaper] receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that 37 soweth and he that reapeth [the sower and the reaper] may rejoice together. And [For, γάρ] herein [in this spiritual field] is that saying [fully] true, One soweth, and 38 another reapeth. I [have] sent you to reap that whereon ye [have] bestowed no labour: other men [others have] laboured, and ye are [have] entered into their labours.

39And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on [in] him for the saying [because of the word, διὰ τὸν λόγον] of the woman, which [who] testified, He told me 40 all that ever I did. So when [When, therefore] the Samaritans were come [came] unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them [to abide with them]: and he abode there two days 41 And many more believed because of his own [omit own] word [ὁιὰ τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ]; 42And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not [No longer do we believe] because of thy saying [story, διὰ τὴν σὴν λαλίαν]: for we have heard him [omit him] ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ [omit the Christ],²⁵ the Saviour of the world.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

[In this section our Saviour, sitting on Jacob’s well in weariness of body, yet with ever fresh sympathy for man, discourses on the water of eternal life with an ignorant, degraded, semi-heathenish, yet quick-witted, sprightly and susceptible woman, a sort of “Samaritan Magdalene,”²⁶ and teaches her the sublime truths of the true worship of God which broke down the partition wall between Jews and Gentiles. He saw, by super-natural intuition, the dark spots in her character, but also the deeper aspirations of her soul which had not been extinguished by a life of shame; and when she began to repent and believe, He unveiled to her the future of His kingdom, as He had not done to an orthodox Jew. This scene is in striking contrast with the one related in the third chapter, where He instructed a Jew of the highest respectability in Jerusalem on the mystery of regeneration and the divine counsel of redemption. Christianity touches the extremes of society: humbling the lofty, raising the lowly, saving both. Christ’s intercourse with women, “the last at the cross and the earliest at the tomb,” was marked by freedom from Jewish and Oriental contempt of the weaker sex (comp. John 4:27), by elevation above earthly passion, and a marvellous union of purity and frankness, dignity and tenderness. He approached them as a friend and brother, and yet as their Lord and Saviour, while they were irresistibly drawn towards Him with mingled feelings of affection and adoration. He dealt with them as one who condemned even an impure look ( Matthew 5:28), and yet He permitted the sinful woman to wash His feet with tears of repentance ( Luke 7:37 ff.). He partook of the hospitality of practical, busy Martha, while gently reminding her of the better part which her contemplative sister Mary had chosen in reverently listening to His instruction ( Luke 10:38 ff.), and comforted them both at the death of their brother ( John 11); He lent a sympathizing ear to the sorrows of travail and the joy of deliverance ( John 16:21); He remembered His mother in the last agony on the cross ( John 19:26-27); and He appeared first in His resurrection glory to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils.²⁷

[The Samaritans, whether we regard them (with Gesenius and the majority of modern scholars) as the descendants of the remnants of the ten tribes and the heathen colonists introduced by the Assyrians, or (with Hengstenberg, Robinson, and the older writers) as pure heathen in descent, who afterwards adopted certain features of the Jewish religion, such as circumcision, the worship of Jehovah and the hopes of the Messiah (comp. note on John 4:4), were, at all events, in their religion, a mongrel people, at one time more Jewish, at another more heathenish, according to circumstances and policy, much given to deceit and lying, and more cordially hated by the Jews than the pure Gentiles. Christ broke the spell of this long nourished national prejudice. It is true, He forbade the disciples, in their early missionary labors, to go to the Samaritans ( Matthew 10:5-6), and this seems to be inconsistent with His own conduct as related in this chapter. But the prohibition was only temporary and well founded in the divine law of order and progress. The Apostles were first sent to the house of Israel; they must lay the foundation of Christianity in that soil which had been providentially prepared for centuries, before it could be successfully planted among Gentiles. At the same time Christ Himself, though in the days of His flesh “sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” incidentally and by prophetic anticipation, as it were, made an exception, not only in this case, but also in the case of the Syro-Phenician woman ( Matthew 15:21 ff.), and the heathen centurion of Capernaum ( Matthew 8:5 ff.); and, in the parable of the good Samaritan ( Luke 10:30 ff.), He rebuked the pride and prejudice of the Jews with regard to that people. His favorable reception among them is confirmed by the report of Luke 17:11 ff, that of the ten lepers whom He healed on a journey through Samaria, only one returned thanks, and he a Samaritan, putting to shame the remaining nine, who were Jews.

[The discourse here told has all the artless simplicity, freshness, vivacity and truthfulness of historical reality. No one could have invented it. The portrait of the woman is remarkably life-like—every word and act is characteristic. The whole scenery remains to this day almost unchanged; Jacob’s well, though partly in ruins; round about the waving harvests of a fertile and beautiful valley, with abundance of water; the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim; a heap of stones on the spot where the Samaritan temple stood; the flat roofs of the neighboring town, visible through olive trees; veiled women in oriental costume coming for water, bearing a stone pitcher on the head or the shoulder; the weary traveller thirsting for a refreshing drink; the old bigotry and hatred of race and religion still burning beneath the ashes. How often has this chapter been read since by Christian pilgrims on the very spot where the Saviour rested, with the irresistible impression that every ward is true and adapted to the time and place, yet applicable to all times and places. Jacob’s well is no more used, but the living spring of water which the Saviour first opened there to a poor, sinful, yet penitent woman, is as deep and fresh as ever, and will quench the thirst of souls to the end of time.

[On this visit of our Saviour, the seed was sown which, a few years afterwards, as He prophetically foresaw ( John 4:35), grew up into a plentiful harvest and resulted in the conversion of the Samaritans, as related Acts 8:5 ff, and this in turn prepared the way for the conversion of the Gentiles. From Samaria hailed Simon Magus with the first doctrinal corruptions of Christianity by the admixture of heathen notions, but also Justin Martyr, the fearless apologist, who was a native of that very Sychar or Flavia Neapolis, where Christ met the Samaritan woman. But of far greater consequence than the result related in the Acts, is the example here set by Christ for missionary operations, and the doctrines laid down for all ages.—P. S.]

See the Literature in Heubner, p269 et al.; Niedhofer: Jesus und die Samariterin (Homiletic Discourses), Augsburg, 1821. [Archbishop Trench: Christ and the Samaritan Woman, in his Studies in the Gospels, pp83–137. Dr. J. R. Macduff: Noontide at Sychar; or the Story of Jacob’s Well. A N. Test. chapter in Providence and grace. N. York, 1869 (pp263).—P. S.]

John 4:1. When therefore the Lord [Jesus] knew.—The Lord, for the first time in this Gospel.²⁸ Ἔγνω or γνούς no doubt has in John, after what he has previously said of Christ’s immediate knowledge of men’s hearts, a special signification when it relates to human thoughts and purposes connected with Christ.²⁹ Οὗν primarily looks back to the preceding account, of the growing labors of Jesus; but it also points to the insight of Jesus into the spirit of the Pharisees, which was well understood, as natural means of knowledge are not excluded.

The Pharisees had heard.—Their hearing carries with it the idea of their having sought information, and keeping a jealous watch. Hence Jesus, it is true, avoids a premature hindrance to his labors, or, as Meyer says, a danger.³⁰ Yet this one motive, which John states, does not exclude another: that the Baptist was about this time cast into prison, after having labored last in Galilee, and that in answer to the special occasion thus arising for a confirming of hearts in that region, Christ appeared in the place of John in Galilee. Besides, enough for the present had been done for Judea. A third motive probably was, that Jesus had now determined for a while entirely to cease baptizing.

That Jesus made more disciples.—Literally: “makes and baptizes.” The verbal quoting of what they had heard, expressed by the present tense, indicates a very definite or a very well known report. More disciples than John.—Jesus gave the Pharisaic spirit more to fear: His freer address; more public appearance in Jerusalem; His stronger influence; the purification of the temple: His higher authority; miracles; Himself accredited as the Messiah by John.

John 4:2. Though Jesus himself.—Evidently a parenthesis, otherwise it would belong to what the Pharisees had heard.³¹ The Evangelist does not correct the report (Meyer), for it was true; he only states the fact more precisely. The observation no doubt means not that it so happened, but that it was a rule, that Jesus Himself baptized not. Why? (1) Because the work of teaching was more important ( 1 Corinthians 1:17, De Wette [Alford]); (2) because He would have had to baptize into Himself (Tertullian); (3) Bengel: “Baptizare actio ministerialis est … Christus baptizat Spiritu sancto.” [So Godet, Trench. Godet: “Il était le Seigneur, et il se réservait le baptéme de l’ Esprit.”—P. S.] Nonnus follows this: the Lord baptizes not with water. Tertullian’s explanation, too, has warrant. As Christ is the object of baptism, the centre of the new kingdom, He would obscure the idea of baptism, if He should not have the transition from the old system to the new, so far as the baptism was concerned, administered by others.³²

John 4:3. He left Judea.—At the same time giving up baptizing. Why? Because the imprisonment of the Baptist in the midst of the Jewish people had brought a ban of uncleanness again upon the whole congregation of Israel (see my Leben Jesu, II:2, p515). This settled it, that a new baptism could proceed only from the baptism of blood, which at the same time would give it a deeper significance (as the final ideal consecration of death).

Departed again into Galille—As after He was baptized.

John 4:4. Through Samaria.—Samaria lay between Judea and Galilee, and through this province, therefore, the usual route of pilgrimage also passed (Joseph. Antiq. XX:6, 1).³³ The custom of scrupulous Jews, to make a circuit through Peræa, could have no force with Jesus; though afterwards the Samaritans themselves once occasioned His following it. But He then also had probably already come near the boundary of Samaria (see Maier, Commentar., p328), Luke 9:52. Samaria, שׂמְרוֹן; Chald. שָׁמְרָיִן, Ezra 4:10; Ezra 4:17, primarily the name of a city. The city lay in the kingdom of the ten tribes in middle Palestine, on a mountain (Robinson [Germ. ed.] III. p365); built by Omri about922 B. C, and made the seat of the kingdom of Israel ( 1 Kings 16:24, and elsewhere); a chief seat of the worship of Baal during the time of the apostasy, 1 Kings 16:31; as the capital of Ephraim, the counterpart of Jerusalem ( Ezekiel 16:46, and elsewhere). Shalmanezer conquered the city and filled it with colonists, 2 Kings 17:5 sqq. John Hyrcanus destroyed it, but it was soon rebuilt. Herod the Great, to whom Cæsar Augustus gave the city, beautified it, strengthened it, planted a colony of veterans in it, and named it Sebaste [Augusta, in honor of Augustus, Joseph. Antiq. XV:8, 5]. The growth of Sichem [Neapolis] in the vicinity threw back the city to a hamlet, which still exists as Sebustieh, in ruins. From the city of Samaria (Σαμάρεια) the region of Middle Palestine gradually took its name, Σαμαρεῖτις ( 1 Maccabees 10:30); it is a separate province in the time of the Syrian kings (also Σαμαρίς. Σαμάρεια in Josephus). The description which Josephus gives of the country, see in Winer under the word. Samaria appears more friendly than Judea, rich in vegetation and forest-clad hills. In the same article are the accounts of modern tourists respecting the city of Samaria.

By the Samaritans, שֹׁמְרוֹנִים, Σαμαρεῖται, Σαμαρεις, history understands the later post-exilian inhabitants of the country, the Χουθαῖοι (Joseph. Antiq. IX:14, 3, etc.). According to the prevailing view, a mixed population grew up from the heathen colonists of Shalmanezer (and Esarhaddon, Ezra 4:2) from Assyrian provinces ( 2 Kings 17:24), Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hameth, and Sepharvaim, and from the remnants of the Israelites. In the land of Israel they adopted the Israelite religion ( 2 Kings 17:25; Ezra 6:21; Nehemiah 10:28), and soon went so far as to call themselves the genuine offspring of Israel, or of the house of Joseph (Joseph. Antiq. XI:8, 6). And now they would still be called Israelites, but not Jews. But as they presumed in pride to boast an Israelite descent, so too they often permitted themselves through policy utterly to deny this extraction, and give themselves out for Persians (Joseph. Antiq. XI:9, 4) or Sidonians [Ibid. XI:8, 6].

After Hottinger and others, Hengstenberg in particular [Beiträge I:117; II:3 sqq] has wholly denied to the Samaritans any genealogical connection with the Jews. The document, 2 Kings 17, mentions nothing, it is true, of remaining Israelites, and the Samaritans have often boasted that they were of heathen origin. This last fact, however, can signify nothing; for they likewise boasted, generally, that they were pure Jews (and the ἀλλογενής, Luke 17:18, evidently proves nothing). But it is said in 2 Kings 17:24, that the colonists were placed in the cities; so that the colonization was limited. Besides, the deportations of this kind in history, as Winer observes, are never radical. The Samaritans were also early distinguished from the heathen ( 1 Maccabees 3:10). Under Hezekiah ( 2 Chronicles 30:6; 2 Chronicles 30:10) and under Josiah ( 2 Chronicles 34:9) there were remnants of Israel in Ephraim and Manasseh. And Christ, as well as the Apostles after Him, considered the Samaritans a middle people between Jews and heathen, Acts 1:8; Acts 8:5. A predominance of heathen blood is assumed by many.

As might be expected of such a mixed people, adopting Judaism in an outward way, (1) they were not consistent in their national and religious spirit; they professed now to be Jews, now to be Gentiles, as their interest might require. Under Antiochus Epiphanes their temple was dedicated to Jupiter Hellenius. Heresy in the Christian church, which is mainly a mixture of Christianity with heathenism, takes its rise in the Christianity of Samaria.³⁴ (2) They attained no living development of their religious ideas; so that in their canon (the Pentateuch), their Messianic expectation, and their use of the law, they stopped where they began; whence they in many respects resembled the Sadducees (though the Sadducees had their abridged and stunted Judaism for having gone backwards with a negative criticism, the Samaritans for having gotten fast in the letter, and not gone forwards). (3) For this very reason, however, their Messianic hope remained more simple and pure. (4) After having been refused a share in the Revelation -building of the temple in Jerusalem [ Ezra 4:1 sqq.] they fully reciprocated (first of all by hindering the building of the temple, Ezra 4:4, .and the subsequent strengthening of the city, Nehemiah 4:1) the fanatical hatred of the Jews, who looked upon them as heretics, not as heathen [see Sir. L27]; and they built a temple of their own on Gerizim. According to Josephus, Antiq. XI:8, 4, this took place in the time of Alexander the Great. man, brother of the Jewish high-priest Jaddus, had a heathen lady for his wife. The Jewish rulers demanded his circumcision; whereupon Sanballat induced him to renounce his membership in the Jewish religion, and built the temple on Gerizim, of which Manasseh became high-priest. According to Nehemiah 13:28, a son of the high-priest Joiada, not named, had married a daughter of Sanballat, and was excommunicated for it. We may suppose that the two accounts relate to the same case, and that the chronology of Josephus is here at fault, the case having occurred under Darius Nothus (see Winer, Samaritaner). On the further fortunes of the Samaritans, see Winer, l. c. (comp. Com. on Matthew 10:5, p185; Leben Jesu II:2, p539).

John 4:5. To a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar [lit. drunken].—Near to the city, into its vicinity: εἰς πόλιν. Συχάρ = Shechem or Sichem (שְׁכֶם), Genesis 33:18, etc.; Συχέμ Sept, Acts 7:16; also Σίκιμα; after the time of Christ, Neapolis [Joseph. De bello Jud. IV:8, 1]; now Nabulus (Robinson, III. p336; Schubert, III. p136).³⁵

Its general identity with Sichem is established by the particular statement that Jacob’s well was near. But the name Sychar for Sichem is not otherwise known, apart from the statement in Wieseler, that in the Talmud occurs the name of a place עין סוכר, well of the grave, literally of the purchased, that is, of the purchased burial-ground. Hug also (Einleitung II. p218) supposes the name comes from Suchar, and denotes the place of burial where the bones of Joseph [ Joshua 24:32] and, according to the tradition common in the times of Jesus, of the twelve patriarchs of the children of Israel, were deposited, Acts 7:15-16. It is the prevailing presumption that Συχάρ is a popular Jewish nick-name, a contemptuous travesty of Sichem; with allusion, according to Reland, to Isaiah 28:1; Isaiah 28:7 : Samaria the crown of pride of the drunkards in Ephraim, therefore the city of drunkards [שִׁכּוֹר, drunkard]; according to Lightfoot, alluding to שֶׁקֶר, heathenism as falsehood [ Habakkuk 2:18], therefore the city of deceit.³⁶ According to Hug and others, Sychar is to be distinguished from Sichem itself somewhat as a suburb, and then means the city of the sepulchre. This view is favored by the fact that both Schubert and Robinson put the ancient Sichem nearer Jacob’s well, than the present town lies, and that at the time of Eusebius, Sychar and Sichem were distinguished as two places. Consequently the views of Reland and Lightfoot may well be dismissed as ingenious scholastic conjectures (especially since the first view would make the city of Samaria, not Sichem, a Sychar, and since the allusion to Habakkuk is quite too subtile), though it might be some relief to suppose, with Meyer, that John uses the name Sychar only as the vulgar name. Yet then we might have to admit ignorance in reference to the true name; which we could hardly do; still less admit that John made nick-names. The hypothesis of an interchange of the liquidæ (Tholuck) is also inconclusive. We abide, therefore, by the hypothesis that Sychar is distinguished as the city of the sepulchre from Sichem³⁷ On the situation of Nablus between Gerizim and Ebal, see Schubert, Robinson, and others (comp. Leben Jesu II:2, p525).

Near to the parcel of ground that Jacob, etc.—The basis of the tradition is Genesis 33:19. Jacob buys of the children of Hamor a field in Shechem on which to settle. The passage, Genesis 48:22, is to be regarded as a prophecy; he would give Joseph a portion above his brethren, which he (in his posterity) would win (not had won; see Knobel on the passage) from the hand of the Amorites with his sword and bow. Finally, in Joshua 24:32 it is said that the bones of Joseph were buried at Shechem in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor, and the sons of Joseph received them (with the field) for an inheritance. The somewhat inaccurate version of the Sept. is of no importance at all to the estimate of the perfectly correct account (against Meyer).

John 4:6. Jacob’s Well.³⁸—The well which Jacob, according to the Israelitish tradition, dug; which by this tradition was made highly sacred. It is thirty-five minutes from the present Nablus, sunk in rock to the depth of a hundred and five feet [now only about seventy-five feet.—P. S.], with a diameter of nine. Maundrell found fifteen feet of water in it; Robinson and others found it dry.³⁹ Probably it was not the well nearest the city. The woman, however, might have had occasion to avoid the conversation of other women at other wells; perhaps for the same reason she chose the unusual hour of noon (other possible reasons, from Robinson, in Leben Jesu, II:2, p526).

Sat thus [ἐκαθέζετο οὕ τως, a graphic touch].—Simply sat. Probably indicating the absence of all constraint and reserve.⁴⁰ About the sixth hour.—According to the Jewish reckoning, noon. Meyer: “Never to be forgotten by John.”

[The hour is probably also mentioned to bring more vividly to our mind the weariness of our Saviour at the heat of the midday sun, the burden and toil He suffered for us at the very moment He opened a fountain of refreshment to this poor thirsty woman and to us all. On the dates of John, see note on John 1:39, p92 f. There are additional reasons for assuming that he reckoned hero in the Jewish manner from sunrise to sunset. Otherwise he would have noted whether it was six in the morning (as Rettig assumes), or six in the evening (as Ebrard and Wordsworth hold). The former is too early to account for the fatigue of the Lord, the latter leaves no time for what follows, as the night sets in with little or no intervening twilight in Eastern countries. The conversation must have lasted at least half an hour, then the woman goes away to the city, tells her experience to the men, and they come to the well of Jacob; and yet after all this it must have been still daylight, to account for the words of Jesus: “Lift up your eyes and look on the fields” ( John 4:35). Considering the oriental contempt for woman and the prejudice even of the disciples ( John 4:27), a conversation with a woman late in the evening would have been even more unseemly than at noon-day. The fact that the woman was alone sufficiently explains that she came so early to draw water, instead of the evening as usual. The time of the year—it was at the end of December—permitted travelling till towards noon. Porter, in his excellent Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine, ii. p341, takes the same view. “Christ probably came up the plain of Mukhna, and about noon reached the well.” So also Macduff, p36.—P. S.]

John 4:7. A woman of Samaria.—That is, of the country. The city of Sebaste was two hours [six miles] distant.⁴¹ Tholuck remarks that the characteristic traits of this very highly individualized woman are indifference to higher interests and roguish frivolity.⁴² But these are hardly individual traits; and these traits form hardly the whole outline of a deeply fallen character, who shows, however, a considerable versatility of mind and great energy, besides a deeper susceptibility under the veil of a bright, resolute nature. A sort of Samaritan Magdalene. With good reason Tholuck insists on the individuality of the woman against Strauss and Weisse. The striking invalidation of Baur’s fiction respecting the design of this supposed fiction is likewise worthy of notice.

Give me to drink.—Points: (1) The truth, of Christ’s thirst; (2) the freedom of His intercourse,—with a Samaritan, and a woman; (3) the higher purpose of His words; (4) the mastery of the great Fisher of souls [ Luke 5:10], in having the earthly given to Him in order to give the heavenly.⁴³

John 4:8. For his disciples.—Immediate occasion: The disciples had gone to the city. Probably they also carried a vessel for drawing water (ἄντλημα, John 4:11) with them⁴⁴ To buy food.—Meyer: “The later [Rabbinical] tradition⁴⁵ would not have allowed this. But at that time the separation may not have been so rigid, especially for Galileans, whose route of pilgrimage passed through Samaria. Besides, Jesus was above the divisions of the people, Luke 9:52.”

John 4:9. How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest, etc.—She recognizes Him in particular by His Jewish dialect and pronunciation [perhaps also from His Jewish physiognomy and the dress of a Rabbi]. Tholuck: The Samaritan tongue is between the Hebrew and the Aramaic. As Jesus Himself spoke Aramaic, this is not quite clear, and probably a medium between Western and Eastern Aramaic is meant.⁴⁶ More than one thing might surprise her: not only that a Jew spoke with her, and asked drink from her pitcher, but also that this distinguished Jew condescended to ask of her. In truth we might well suppose that she was moved with a feeling of her unworthiness in the dignified presence: He unconsciously defies Himself on my pitcher; at least she hints at the difference between the man and the always less regarded woman. Though the national enmity could hot wholly prevent her asking water in her turn (Tholuck), yet the breach was wide enough to make her feel the request of Jesus to be a great and free condescension. Then the expression of this feeling may easily have been accompanied or disguised by a certain humor giving vent to her national spirit, as she now, with her pitcher, seems to have the better of the stranger. The addition: The Jews have no dealings, etc., is commonly taken as an explanatory note of the Evangelist. But in that case we should expect: The Jews and the Samaritans have no dealings with one another. The disdain being here ascribed to the Jew alone, the words no doubt, belong to the woman’s reply.

[The question of the woman illustrates the intensity and bitterness of sectarian bigotry and hatred as it then prevailed, and sets in stronger contrast the marvellous freedom of Christ from existing prejudices.⁴⁷ According to Dr. Robinson and others the ancient hatred is still kept up, and the remnant of Samaritans neither eat, nor drink, nor marry, nor associate with the Jews, but only trade with them. An experienced traveller says, apparently to the contrary: “Never yet, during many years’ residence in Syria, and many along day’s travel, have I been refused a draught of water by a single individual of any sect or race. The Bedawy in the desert has shared with me the last drop in his water-skin. Yet the only reply of the woman to the weary traveller was, ‘How is it that thou, being a Jew,’ ” etc. (Porter’s Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine, P. II, p342.) But this courtesy to strangers is not inconsistent with Dr. Robinson’s statement, nor with our narrative, for the woman did not refuse a drink of water to Jesus, but only expressed her surprise at His asking her for it.—P. S]

John 4:10. If thou knewest the gift of God.—Tholuck: “This answer indicates that she, instead of hesitating, must have felt herself honored, and made haste.” More pertinently Meyer: “Unquestionably Jesus immediately perceived the susceptibility of the woman; hence His leaving His own want, and entering upon a conversation so striking as to arouse the whole interest of the sanguine woman.” She is surprised that Hebrews, the supposed haughty Jew, is the asker; the Lord brings out the opposite relation, that she is the needy one, He the possessor of the true fountain of satisfaction.

The gift of God: (1) The person of Jesus (Greek com, Erasmus). [Hengstenberg refers to John 3:16; “God gave His only begotten Song of Solomon,” and Isaiah 9:5 : “to us a Son is given,” as decisive proofs that Christ designated Himself “the gift of God.”] (2) The Holy Spirit [with reference to John 7:38-39] (Augustine, etc.) (3) Correctly: The singular grace of God in the golden opportunity of this moment (Grotius and others).⁴⁸ [(4) Eternal life. So Lampe and Godet; John 4:13-14; comp. Romans 6:23 where eternal life is styled “the gift of God” (χάρισμα, but here we have δῶρον); Revelation 22:17. (5) Living water. in anticipation of what immediately follows: “He would have given thee living water,” So Stier and Trench. Alford regards this as the primary view, but combines with it the first three, like Dr. Yeomans in the preceding footnote.—P. S.] And who it is.—Unfolding the thought of the gift of God. Thou (σύ) wouldest (already) have asked (not: wouldest ask him, Luther) of him.—Expressing the greatness of her need, the greatness of His gift, the urgency her request would have; doubtless also her susceptibility. [Mark the difference between ὁ λέγων σοι which Christ uses of Himself, after the woman had naturally asked: πῶς σὺ παῤ ἐμοῦ αἰτεῖς ( John 4:9), and σὺ ἄν ᾕτησας, which assigns at once to the woman a position of inferiority and dependence on Him, the possessor and giver of that living water. “There lies often,” says Trench, “in little details like this an implicit assertion of the unique dignity of His person, which it is very interesting and not unimportant to trace.”—P. S.]

He would have given thee living water.—מַיִם הַיִים [Sept. ὕδωρ ζῶν] well-water.⁴⁹ Expressing at once the greatness of the gift and the readiness of the giving, in a figure drawn from His own, request, but answering perfectly to her unsatisfied state of mind. The figures of Psalm 36:8; Jeremiah 2:13; Jeremiah 17:13. The sense of the words, living water, explained in John 4:14. Various interpretations: (1) Baptism (Justin, Cyril [Cyprian, Ambrose]. But the water of Baptism is not water for drinking, which becomes a fountain in him who drinks it. (2) The evangelic doctrine. Grotius, similarly Meyer: The truth.⁵⁰ Shall a man then after that thirst no more? (3) Tarnow; Gratia justificans. Like most of the explanations, too dogmatically exclusive. (4) Institutio salutaris (Semler). (5) Lücke: Faith. (6) Olshausen: Life ( John 6:33). (7) The Holy Spirit, John 7:39 (Maldonatus, Bucer, [Webster and Wilkinson, Wordsworth] and others). The act of giving must no doubt be distinguished from the living water itself: The giving of the water is the gospel, the word of Christ; see John 4:26. The water itself, which quenches thirst, proves itself already operating when the woman sets her pitcher down, [ John 4:28]: it is evidently the inner-life as the operation of the life of Christ, conceived predominantly under the aspect of inward peace (no longer thirsting), developing into regeneration, life in the Holy Ghost (the water’s becoming a fountain) and perfection in blessedness (springing up into everlasting life). Tholuck: “The word of salvation the medium of a living power of the Spirit, John 7:38; John 11:26.” [Godet: Living water is the life eternal, which is Christ Himself living in the soul by the Holy Spirit. Donner l’eau vive, c’est pour lui se communiquer lui-même; car la vie est identifiée avec son principe.—P. S.]

John 4:11. Sir, thou last nothing to draw with.—Sir. A title of respect usual even at that time among men, John 5:7; John 6:34, etc. Used in the ordinary sense.⁵¹ The spiritual conception was rendered difficult by the lack of the prophets among the Samaritans, and the want of knowledge of the prophetic metaphors (Tholuck). On this presumption the reply is not exactly “saucy” (Tholuck), but no doubt clearly thought, firm, savoring of national pride, exulting again in easy humor. Thou hast nothing. Exactly: Thou hast not even a vessel to draw with.⁵² She evidently distinguishes between the water itself standing in the well, and the spring at the bottom of it. Thou hast not even a bucket, i. e., thou canst not even reach down to the standing water. And the well is deep—That is, even with the bucket thou couldest not come to the living spring.⁵³

John 4:12. Art thou greater.—Σύ emphatic. Μείζων cannot mean nobler, of higher rank, as Meyer thinks; for noble lords, as such, are not exactly masters in water-drawing or well-digging. The question proceeds from a feeling that Jesus assumed some extraordinary character, that He claimed a spiritual power; perhaps claimed to be a prophet, like Moses, who could make a fountain of water by miracle. Than our father Jacob.—Expressing the national jealousy towards the Jew. The Samaritans traced their descent from Joseph [Joseph. Antiq, viii14, 3; xi8, 6].

Who gave us the well.—This was a simple inference from the tradition that Jacob dug the well and left it to his posterity. The sense is: The patriarch himself knew not what better to give, and this sufficed for all the wants of his entire nomadic establishment. Meyer: “The woman treats the enigmatical word of Christ at first as Nicodemus does, John 3:4, but more thoughtfully [considering the false conception of Nicodemus], and at the same time more pertly and with feminine readiness of speech.” In her last word: θρέμματα, cattle, she finishes her carnal misapprehension of His spiritual words. [The mention of the cattle (which does not necessarily include the slaves, as sometimes on inscriptions (see Meyer, p192), completes at the same time the picture of the nomadic life of the patriarch. Stier is wrong therefore in regarding it as a falling off in the lofty language of the woman to descend from Jacob’s sacred person to his cattle. There is in the question of the woman a slight resentment at the seeming intentional disregard of the venerable traditions and memorials of her people by which they connected themselves with the patriarchal history. She had evidently a considerable degree of self-respect, national pride and interest in religious questions, and was a brave upholder of patriarchal succession.—P. S.]

John 4:13. Shall thirst again.—[As Christ Himself did, physically, on this occasion, and when He exclaimed on the cross διψῶ.—P. S.]—The excellence of that well Jesus suffers to pass.⁵⁴ But in His view of the spiritual water, that has the fundamental defect of every earthly satisfaction: the partaker thirsts again. So it was with all the woman’s enjoyment of life hitherto. [She had by successive draughts at the “broken cistern” of carnal lust only increased her thirst, and the sense of the utter vanity of all earthly pleasures]. Shall never thirst.—[Comp. John 6:35 : “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger; and he that balieveth in Me shall never thirst.” Revelation 7:16 : “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.” John 21:6 : “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Old Test. passages: Isaiah 55:1; Isaiah 49:10.—P. S.] An opposite word: the sentence of Wisdom in [the apocryphal book of the son of] Sirach 24:21 : “Those who drink of me (the Wisdom) shall thirst again” (Οἱ πίνοντές με, ἕτι διψήσουσι). Meyer, not clearly: “This figure rests on another aspect of the drinking, as viewed in its particular moments, not in the continuity constituted by them.” Jesus Christ expresses the absolute satisfaction which is given in principle in the peace of the Christian life; Jesus Sirach describes the desire for further knowledge begotten by the first taste of wisdom. Not only is the object viewed on different sides; the object itself is in Sirach imperfectly conceived, with reference rather to quantity than quality. The Old Testament strives after life, the New strives in the life. What Sirach calls a thirsting again, Christ calls an everlasting springing up.⁵⁵

Shall be in him a fountain of water.⁵⁶—Not “after the negative operation the positive” (Meyer), for the quenching of the thirst is itself positive; but, after the elemental working of Christianity, coming point by point from without, as a means, its life as a principle continually reproducing and propagating itself as its own object. First water drunken, then water welling up: distinction of the catechumenate and the anointing of the Spirit. A fountain whose stream gushes into eternal life. The decisive word, spoken with the utmost confidence, stirring the soul of the hearer to its depths. The spiritual sense of the whole declaration of Christ appeared in every feature: (1) A water, after drinking which one thirsts no more; (2) a water drunken, which becomes a fountain; (3) a fountain which ever joyously flows (which can rarely be said of wells in the east); (4) a fountain which gushes into everlasting life. Here the spiritual sense was perfectly transparent. By the union of the divine Spirit with the human, the latter becomes an organ of the divine life, and therefore a self-supplying fountain of life. Calvin, in the interest of his doctrine, here emphasizes the thought that the life of the Spirit in the regenerate cannot dry up: Bengel, in the interest of his, that if a man thirst again, it lies not with the water, but with the man. [So also Alford.] Above this doctrinal antagonism stands the concrete unity of the life of faith sealed by the Spirit. Tholuck takes the thought that Christ assumes form in the believer; which does indeed describe the personal and objective side of spiritual life. He observes that some (Origen, Zwingle, and others) have been misled by the analogy of John 7:38 to think here also of a flowing for the quickening of others. The woman, at all events, does soon come to quickening others, though the fundamental thought here of course is satisfaction for one’s self.

In ἅλλεσθαι, applied to the fountain, are included (1) springing up from a hidden depth within; (2) incessant flow; (3) living, joyous, springing motion; (4) rhythmic life, continually increasing in a steady succession of living acts. That the fountain also, as a fountain, becomes more and more copious, is indicated by its streaming forth into eternal life. Comp. Sirach 24:31.

It is a question, how into everlasting life (εἱςζωὴναἰώνιον) is to be interpreted. (1) Up into the heavenly life, like a fountain (Origen, Grotius, and others).⁵⁷ Tholuck objects that this substitutes οὐρανόν. (2) Redounding to eternal life; affording it (the word being referred to πηγή not to ἁλλομένου, Luthardt). This loses the figure. According to John 3:36, one might indeed take the sense to be, that the spiritual life passes into eternal life; as in Sirach 24:31 : My brook became a river, my river a sea.” But there, as in Ezekiel 47, the subject is the immeasurable objective unfolding of the revelation of salvation, or wisdom; here a subjective unfolding of saved life. Though this is eternal life, yet, to be complete, it must pour itself into the objective eternity (Olshausen: The eternal rests not, till it comes to eternity).⁵⁸ In view of this, and in accordance with the figure, we understand by the words a flowing on of this well into the eternal life of perfect fellowship with God in the world to come. This eternal life is doubtless conceived in the figure as an ocean [into which all the rivers of life of individual believers empty at last]. The fountain leaps into eternal life (Meyer: ἅλλεσθαι εἰς, to leap into). The water drunk becomes a well, the well a fountain which incessantly flows into the ocean of eternal life.

As Jesus engages the stiffened Pharisaic spirit of Nicodemus by the free wind of the Spirit and its transforming power, so He enlists the restless, inconstant woman, whose thirst continually returned, by the offer of an endless satisfaction, which is at once an infinite tranquility and a perfect decision of effort, and soon passes into the enjoyment of the eternal life.

John 4:15. That I thirst not, neither come hither.—The sigh of a poor, weary woman, in whom neediness and the burden of toil seem to form a contradiction to spiritual claims, though the sigh is disguised by the air of good humor. The last words betray, to be sure, a misapprehension of the spiritual sense of the words of Jesus. But about her meaning there remains uncertainty.

(1) She means, in all earnest, a miraculous water, which might have the effect described by Jesus (Maier, Meyer). Not readily conceivable. Of such water no one would wish to drink.

(2) She asks the water, in order to get behind the mystery. Lampe: Tentare voluit audacula, quomodo præstita petitionis conditione, promissionem suam exsecutioni daturus esset. This is not ironical, as Tholuck thinks. At least it is only half so; according to Lücke’s interpretation: Her request is half sportive, half earnest.⁵⁹ Such water is inconceivable to her, but yet she wishes for what has become to her a dim appearance of a toilless life.

(3) Ironical talk. Lightfoot: Verba irrisorie prolata longe apertius concipias, quam supplicatorie. So also Tholuck.

(4) The presentiment of something higher which might do her good is awakened in her (Baumgarten-Crusius and my Leben Jesu, II. p529).⁶⁰ This is more probable, if we suppose that the woman had even journeyed to that sacred well in some sort of religious feeling under a troubled conscience, while there were other wells at least nearer the city of Sichem. Then, too, the third interpretation is accompanied with the view that Jesus breaks off, in order to take an entirely new method; and this involves the unintended, but hazardous presumption that the first method had failed. On the contrary, we suppose that the next word of the Lord was suggested by this request.

John 4:16. Call thy husband.—(1) The husband was to have part in the saving gift, and so she was to be brought indirectly to confession of sin (Chrysostom, etc.; Lücke). (2) Christ would in this way lead her indirectly to a consciousness of her guilt (Calov, Neander, Tholuck, Stier, Luthardt). (3) He intended to give her a sign of His prophetic knowledge in the lower sphere of life, to gain her confidence for disclosures from the higher (Cyril, Schweizer; similarly Meyer). (4) Conformity to custom and to the idea of the law. Hitherto Jesus had influenced her after the manner of a missionary, as man with man. In her last request, expressing spiritual susceptibility, the woman came to the position of a catechumen. But, as a proselyte, she must not act without the knowledge of her husband. Meyer objects: The husband was in truth a paramour. True, they were not legally united. But the highest, most delicate social law lies somewhat deeper; she had given that man the rights of husband. If there was still a moral spark in the immoral connection, Christ had an eye to detect it. Even Stier and Tholuck have not been able to appropriate this interpretation. But it is connected on the one hand with the moral principle, Matthew 3:15; on the other with the principles in Matthew 10:12; 1 Corinthians 7:15; 1 Corinthians 11:10, and with all those principles which distinguish the Evangelical church from the Roman Catholic in the manner of making proselytes.

[I must dissent from this interpretation as assuming a relation and a duty which did not exist. The words of Christ: Call thy husband, opened the wound at the tender spot where the cure was to begin, and were the first step in granting the woman’s request: Give me to drink. By a prophetic glance into her private life of shame, which, after five successive marriages, culminated in her present illegitimate relation, He at once effectually touched her conscience and challenged her faith in Him. Conviction of sin is the first indispensable condition of forgiveness, and is the beginning of conversion. She at once understood the intention, and her next word is a half confession of guilt, quickly followed by faith in the prophetic character of Christ.—P. S.]

John 4:17. I have no husband [Οὐκ ἕχω ἅνδρα].—She feels the effect of the sudden turn. She is living in a settled, to all appearance exclusive, but illegal relation; and this causes her to deny the correctness of the Lord’s address. This is the summit of her resistance,⁶¹ and the master-hand of Christ must prove itself over her. Call thy husband! This might be a word of conjecture. She supposes this, and so ventures the denial, half true, and half false. Her denial is untrue in that she denies a fact of which she is perfectly aware; true, in that she places herself on the ground of the law, and judges by that. Then in this might be already couched a confession of sin, or even the vow: I renounce him, if I may thereby share thy instruction and thy promise. At all events, we may be sure of this: If she had hitherto answered pertly and ironically in a vulgar way, she would now have departed with her pitcher filled, under an ironical promise to call her husband. If, on the contrary, she had taken Jesus for a magician, from whom she might receive a magical water of life, she would have called her husband, and permitted him to be recognized as such. Thus her denial itself proves (1) that she is bound up by the word of Christ; (2) that she for an instant looks on her relation with new eyes; (3) that she deceives herself in attempting to deceive the Lord; (4) that the confession of her guilt is already almost upon her lips. By some expositors the woman is made far too jovial, saucy, spiritually obtuse, and even vulgar.

Thou hast well⁶² said, husband I have not [ἅνδρα οὐκ ἕχω].—The emphasis is on husband, [Hence ἅνδρα here precedes, while, in the woman’s answer, it follows the verb,—P. S.] The saying is commended as proper. This is true of her saying in its strict sense, but it has an irony intended to drive out the reservatio mentalis, the untruth lurking behind the true saying; and this it does even by the emphatic placing of the word husband: Husband I have none.⁶³

John 4:18. For five husbands thou hast had.—Some have concluded from the confession in John 4:29, that those former connections also had been illegitimate. [So Meyer.] Against this is the antithesis: Five husbands, and: Whom thou now hast, etc. Five marriages, therefore, had preceded, “of which at least some had been dissolved through the wantonness of the woman.” Tholuck. Whether the fault lay in sensual wantonness (licentiousness in the narrower sense), or in an antinomian looseness of spirit, does not appear. With Magdalene the latter seems to have been the case; and it is to be considered, that in Samaria, as well as on the sea of Galilee, Greek views of the marriage relation might already have had an effect. “According to the Talmud, the Samaritans did not acknowledge the laws of divorce; probably referring not to the laxer Hillelian view current among the Jews, but only the more strictly Biblical view of Shammai, following Deuteronomy 24:1. Yet even according to this, it was not only adultery that divorced, but any כָּעוּר, as the Talmud calls it: uncovering of the arms, laying off the veil, and the like.” Tholuck. Meyer supposes that she had not been faithful in one or more of her marriages, and was now a widow living with a paramour. But she might have been a divorced woman.⁶⁴

The extraordinary disclosure of the Lord. Different explanations:

(1) The hypothesis that Jesus had learned the history of the woman from others (Paulus, von Ammon, etc.). Simply contrary to the text.

(2) The disciples added what they afterwards learned (Schweizer). The supposition of a forgery needs no refutation.

(3) The mythical hypothesis, with reference to the five heathen nations which came to Samaria ( 2 Kings 17:24 sqq.; Joseph. Antiq. XIX:14, John 3 : (πέντε ἕθνη—ἕκαστον ἵδιον θεὸν εἰς τὴν Σαμάρειαν κομίσαντες).⁶⁵

(4) A providentially ordered representation of the life of the Samaritan people by this woman: the woman is Samaria; the five husbands are five gods, etc.; Hengstenberg, Beiträge [zur Einl. in’s A. T., 3vols, 1831–’39] II. p 23 sqq.⁶⁶

To this Meyer objects that in this case the husbands must be six; and Heracleon actually read six. This is disposed of by a more attentive examination of Hengstenberg’s opinion. It may rather be observed that to the five nations, seven gods are reckoned, 2 Kings 17:30 sq. But the chief point is that an actual personal offence of the woman, as here described by the Lord, is the subject, and that the woman would assuredly have understood nothing of such a scholastic allusion of the Lord, if He had intended to make it; and of this there is not the slightest indication. At most, however, the woman would be only an accidental allegory of the history of her people, since the marriage law of the Samaritans was strict; and not at all an allegory in so far as Samaria had at the same time from five to seven gods, and these not merely instead of, but together with, Jehovah. [The woman had her five husbands in succession, and was not guilty of polygamy, consequently she could not represent the polytheism of the Samaritans.—P. S.]

(5) “Lange, Leben Jesu II:2, p531, strangely says, that the psychical effect of the five husbands upon the woman had forced out traces in her appearance which Jesus perceived.” So Meyer reports my view. This judgment might be expected from the author. Our reasons are still the same: 1. Every hair casts its shadow. Every marriage relation leaves its psychical mark; only in most cases our weak eyes do not see it2. There is a deep communicatio idiomatum in the life of the Lord. What He knew by His divine nature in a divine, immediate way, He at the same time knew in virtue of His human nature, in a human way through means. From the Christological point of view the old false scholastic alternative of merely divine or merely human is done away in reference to the life of Jesus.

[Dr. Lange here undoubtedly goes too far in the application of a true principle. It is, indeed, a fact that traits of character and habits, good and bad, especially pride, sensuality and intemperance, express themselves in the countenance and the eye, as the mirror of the soul.⁶⁷ But this is very different from the assumption that particular events and relations of the past life, such as the five marriages, leave each a distinct mark on the face which may be read, as the forester reads the age of the tree in the number of its rings. Such details of private history even Christ could not know, except from report, or by special Revelation, or by His mysterious union with the divinity. The last is the only proper view we can take of the case in hand. Not that Christ was strictly omniscient in the state of humiliation (He Himself disclaimed this, Mark 13:32); but wherever it was needed for His mission of saving sinners and the interests of His Kingdom, He could, by an act of His will and in virtue of His vital and essential union with the omniscient Father, unlock the chambers of the past, or penetrate, by immediate intuition, to the inmost secrets of the human heart, and read the history which is indelibly recorded on the pages of memory (comp. John 2:25).—P. S.]

John 4:19. Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.— 1 Samuel 9:9. She justly infers this from the miracle of knowledge. [The Samaritans regarded the Messiah mainly as a prophet, see below.] We must note the gradual growth of her respect: (1) Σύ, Ἰουδαῖος ὥν, John 4:9; (2) Κύριε, John 4:11; (3) Κύριε, δός μοι.—At the same time a concession of her guilt, yet skilfully veiled.

John 4:20. Our fathers worshipped.—The Caricaturing estimate of this personage represents her as everywhere frivolously bantering up to this point without intelligence or misgiving, and now also as putting this question to get away under its cover (De Wette and others, Schweizer, Ebrard, Tholuck). Christ would hardly have gone so far to no purpose with such worthlessness.⁶⁸ It may be going too far, to find in this sentence an expression of strong personal religious interest, as if: She perceives in Christ the searcher of hearts, perceives her guilt, and wishes to go to the holy place of forgiveness (Zwingli, Luthardt [Besser], and others). According to Chrysostom, Neander and others, an interest in objective religion at least was awakened in her. The case is probably to be thus conceived: Having indirectly owned her guilt, she cannot treat of it much further with the stranger. The need of religious atonement comes home. But with it comes the question: Where is the right place of atonement? And this question takes its precedence probably not merely from an external, superficial spirit, but rather from the preponderance of a reflective turn. In other words, she turns, not hypocritically, in embarrassment or silliness, to religious controversy, but, under a spiritual bias over-ruling her simple womanly feeling, to reflection. Probably also she had, through the same disposition, lost caste in Samaria, like Magdalene in Galilee (a homeless nature in Sichem, as on the sea of Galilee). Furthermore, she might hasten with this question, (1) because the opportunity of asking a prophet concerning it might not occur again; (2) because she could not but wish to agree in reference to religion and the place of worship with the prophetic man who inspired her with reverence, and who was privy to her guilt.

On this mountain.—Pointing to Gerizim, which was near. On Gerizim comp5 Raumer, Palästina, p38; Winer, s. v.; and the books of travel.⁶⁹ But she does not say: We worship here, ye there; the antithesis is of another sort: Our fathers worshipped, and ye say. A decline of the Samaritan system of worship, and a sense of the weight of the Jewish protest in favor of Jerusalem, are expressed in the carefully chosen terms. At the same time, her having the religion of her fathers in any case contained an apology for her position.

Our fathers.—Down from the first Samaritans who were rejected by the Jews, and who, from being excommunicate, had become schismatic by setting up a temple on Gerizim.⁷⁰ Chrysostom, Kuinoel, and others, suppose she goes back in thought to Abraham and Jacob; but the antithetic ὑμεῖς contradicts this.⁷¹ Even after the destruction of the temple by John Hyrcanus, the pinnacle of the temple continued to be the seat of the Samaritan worship (Joseph. Antiq. XVIII:4, 1), and is so to this day (Robinson, III. p319). “Latterly the Turks have interposed hindrances.” Tholuck.

It is very expressive, that the woman merely states the issue, without making a question, which place of worship is the true one. By making a question, she would have somewhat compromised her system, and at the same time disparaged the prophet’s place of worship. Whether she meant anything by saying: In Jerusalem is the place, instead of: On Mount Zion, remains uncertain. She seems, at all events, proud of her holy mountain, as well as of her holy well. It might seem to favor the Samaritans, that Moses had designated Gerizim as the mountain of the benedictions of the law ( Deuteronomy 11:29); in fact he seemed to appoint it distinctly as the seat of worship, according to Deuteronomy 27:4, where the Samaritan Pentateuch reads Gerizim instead of Ebal. On the other hand, Jerusalem had now a mighty representative in this prophet, who gave her, moreover, a strong impression of the dignity of the Jewish prophetic office.

John 4:21. Woman, believe me, an hour is coming.—[Believe Me, not us. A more familiar and condescending phrase for Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Nowhere else used by Christ.—P. S.] "Εοχεται ὥρα, a Johannean phrase, John 5:28, &c.—Ye shall worship the Father: pointing to a new, more inward mode of worship. [Ye, says Christ, not we, as an ordinary prophet would have done. He refers not only to the future conversion of the Samaritans (Meyer), but to all Christian ages. The Father indicates, as Grotius remarks, suavitatem novi fœderis; for the fatherhood of God is fully known and felt only in Christ, the only begotten Song of Solomon, and the only Mediator between God and man.—P. S.] To speak of the “stupidity” of the woman on which Jesus wasted a sublime utterance, is utterly without foundation. The sublime utterance teaches the distinction between external and internal worship in a concrete form. The expression evidently contains primarily, in a gentle hint, a preferring of Jerusalem. The progressive grades of worship are: (1) Samaria, (2) Jerusalem, (3) Christianity. It cannot therefore be exactly asserted that Jesus evades a decision: still less that He puts Jews and Samaritans alike under mistake (Baumgarten-Crusius). But the greater prominence is given to the issue which puts Samaria and Jerusalem on one side, and the worship of God in spirit and in truth on the other. This is evident from the advent of Christianity in particular to the Samaritans. The negation of Samaria and Jerusalem only denies that prayer was to continue at all restricted to the places named; that is, it declares the abolition of external, legal cultus, both Samaritan and Jewish.⁷² At the same time it marks the woman’s question as one too little concerned with essential things.

John 4:22. Ye worship that which ye know not.—The question concerning the where of worship could be resolved only by the what, and this again by the how. The neuter instead of whom is significant. Just because God is not truly known to them, He is a ὅ rather than a ὅς, more impersonal than personal. Meyer supposes that the neuter denotes God in His essence and substance; Lücke, that it denotes τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, which does not suit the term προσκυνεῖν. De Wette: “O refers to the act of προσκυνεῖν; ye worship, and therein do what ye know not. Brückner objects to the correctness of the sentence, that the Samaritans were monotheists. But there are different monotheisms. Tittmann and others explain: Pro vestra ignorantia. Tholuck (after Lücke): “The true knowledge is that which is shaped by the history of redemption; and the Samaritans who were limited to the Pentateuch for their sacred books, knew Jehovah, that is, the historical God of Israel, but partially.” As a whole, in a living growth of knowledge, they almost knew Him not. This accounts also for the ὅτι.

We worship that which we know.—Designating the Jewish fellowship in its living unity, as represented in fact by Himself. [The ἡμεὶς in the mouth of Christ in relation to God, is without example, but is easily explained by the fact that here He speaks as a Jew, defending the Jewish worship as the true one against the Samaritan. Otherwise He always calls God His Father, and puts Himself, as the only begotten Song of Solomon, in a unique and exclusive relation to Him. In John 4:23-24 He drops the ἡμεῖς and speaks of the Christian worshippers in the third person.—P. S.]

For salvation is from the Jews.—[ἐστίν, the present, not ἕσται, for salvation was already at hand in the person of the Saviour.—P. S.] Σωτηρία: (1) Chrysostom, et al.: All benefits of salvation; (2) Erasmus: The prophetic knowledge of salvation; (3) The true Jews worship the God of continuous revelation. The proof of this lies in the fact that salvation breaks forth out of Judaism (Leben Jesu, II. p533). Similarly Tholuck, Meyer. In ἐκ τῶν (see Romans 9:4 ff) are intimated (1) the personal issuing of salvation out of Judaism, (2) its inward connection with Judaism, (3) its distinction from it. The expression is an evidence that John names the Jews not in a hostile sense alone.

[By this declaration Christ sets the seal of His authority on the Jewish religion as a divine revelation to prepare mankind for His coming, and sets aside all other religions as false, or at best as groping in the dark after “the unknown God.” This preparation by law, types, and prophecy, running back in unbroken succession to Abraham, and even to the very gates of paradise lost ( Genesis 3:14), forms one of the most convincing evidences of Christianity, as the final and perfect religion of mankind—P. S.]

John 4:23. When the true worshippers.—The hour now is. Christ was the centre of these worshippers, and about Him was gathering the discipleship of the true worship. The hour is, and the hour cometh. The true: the inward, whose prayer is truly prayer. The true worshippers are not so called for being beforehand worshippers in spirit and in truth (excepting Christ), but they are such as become so under the Christian revelation. [Οἱ ἀληθινοὶ προσκυνηταί are distinguished not only from hypocrites, but also from all worshippers before Christ, whose worship was necessarily imperfect.—P. S.]

In spirit and in truth.⁷³—[The preposition ἐν signifies the element and the sphere in which worship moves.] This is the space-less place of prayer, in distinction from [and yet at the same time including both] Gerizim and Jerusalem. [Also πνεῦμα in opposition to flesh (σάρξ), ἀλήθεια in opposition to falsehood (ψεῦδος), both in opposition to mere forms and symbols (σκιά and τύποι).—P. S.] In spirit, as opposed to external, stiffened, and even carnally fanatical modes of worship; in the life of the spirit, the life of the human spirit moved by the Spirit of God ( Romans 8:14; Romans 8:16; Romans 8:26).⁷⁴ The distinction itself shows that πνεῦμα here cannot denote the Holy Ghost (Luthardt, after the ancients); yet neither can it denote the human spirit as such by itself. This is doubtless in especial opposition to some fanatical, carnal devotion of the Samaritans. In truth.—Neither subjective truth of the man, sincerity, of itself (which is involved earlier in ἁληθινοί);⁷⁵ nor objective truth as such (which would mean in unity with God, or in the doctrine of God); but the opposite of a merely symbolical, formal, ritualistic worship; in real, actual religious life, i.e., in a true interaction between the personal worshipper and the personal God, in a religious vitality of the worshipper worthy of the living God. This probably in especial opposition to the Jewish symbolical system of prayer. Athanasius, et al.: Πνεῦμα is the Holy Ghost; ἀλήθεια, the Son of God.⁷⁶ Augustine, et al., with reference to the place: In spiritu, in distinction from space: Foras eramus, intromissi sumus; in templo vis orare, in te ora.⁷⁷ Lücke, et al.: That which is akin to God in spirit, the sphere of true prayer. Calvin, et al. with reference to the mode: The actio spiritualis itself; Bucer, et al.: The posture of mind corresponding to the Spirit of God. We must not overlook the close connection of “spirit and truth” as in an ideal unity. It implies that one cannot exist without the other. The rendering with the article—in the Spirit, etc. [in Luther’s5]—is substantially not incorrect, yet it does not let the connection of the two things stand out strongly enough.

For such [τοιούτους, emphatically placed first] worshippers the Father also [καὶ γάρ, nam et pater (Vulg.), denn auch] seeketh.—On the part of the Father Himself this living prayer is sought, as on its own part it seeks the Father. Such He desires and requires; such He would have, and must have.—Interpretations: 1. The Father also, besides the Son [Besser]. 2. Also seeketh (referring the καί to ζητεῖ, which makes the antithesis not clear). 3. The Father also seeketh what these worshippers do (Meyer). More accurately: He seeketh for Himself such worshippers, as these worshippers seek for themselves such a God.

John 4:24. God is spirit.—Emphasis on πνεῦμα.⁷⁸ The mode of prayer must correspond to the object of prayer. Hence it is now become the law of life for all worshippers, that they must worship God in spirit and in truth. Every other sort of praying is thereby done away, as well as, or in proportion as, the provisional system of religion. The mode of prayer is to be conformed to the mode of religion. God as the living Spirit, and as pure Spirit, is present to His worshippers, and He rejects an outward prayer or a false prayer from a carnal mind, as well as a symbolical prayer from a trammeled mind. God’s being spirit was neither a thing already known, now emphasized (Hofmann, Meyer), nor a thing entirely new to the Old Testament (Köstlin, etc.). The Old Testament speaks of the Spirit of God, and intimates also the spirituality of God ( Exodus 20:4; Numbers 16:22; 1 Kings 8; Isaiah 31:3), the New speaks of God as spirit; being in this matter also the finished revelation. Common prayers, liturgies, are not hereby forbidden; they may be regarded as the embodiment of the Christian spirit of prayer (Stier); but here is established the condition that this body be living, under perfect discipline, spiritual.

[“God is spirit”; “God is light” ( 1 John 1:5); and “God is love” ( 1 John 4:5), all from the pen of John, are the briefest and profoundest definitions, or divine oracles rather, concerning the nature of God, which can be found anywhere. The first refers mainly to His metaphysical, the second to His intellectual, the third to His moral essence; but, of course, the line cannot be so distinctly drawn. Light refers to purity and holiness as well as to truth. Although no metaphysician can exhaust these words, yet even the ignorant Samaritan woman could understand them sufficiently for all practical purposes, viz. that God, being a spiritual being, is not confined to Gerizim or Jerusalem or any other place, but is omnipresent, and can be worshipped everywhere. Trench applies to this passage the well-known saying, that the Scripture has depths for an elephant to swim in, and shallows for a lamb to wade,—a saying which seems to date from Gregory the Great (Preface to his Com. on Job: “Divinus sermo…est fluvius planus et altus, in quo et agnus ambulet el elephas natet”). Spirituality of Christian worship does, of course, not exclude forms, which are indispensable, as man consists of body as well as soul, but puts them in a subordinate position, as vehicles and aids of devotion, while formalism makes them substitutes for, or hindrances of, the inner service of the heart.—P. S.]

John 4:25. I know that Messiah cometh.—Here, too, comes a decidedly incorrect estimate of the woman in Tholuck: “The woman is not inclined to enter into so high matters, and therefore answers like Felix, Acts 24:25.” Similarly, De Wette, Lücke, [Scott, Barnes]. Would Christ have revealed Himself as the Messiah to such a woman? Meyer better: “The woman is apprehended by the answer of Jesus, but does not as yet apprehend it, and appeals to the Messiah.” Evidently the words of the wonderful Unknown quicken in her the Samaritan expectation, of the Messiah. Even a presentiment that this might be the Messiah, may readily be imagined (Luthardt); and then her answer would have to be construed as a feeler for the true solution; perhaps as Lampe explains her words: “Give me this water.” At all events, she now felt the old system to be shaken, and with a longing for the inner life, the longing for the Messiah awoke (see Leben Jesu, II:2534).⁷⁹

A. Maier (p344): “If the Messianic hope of the Samaritans, who acknowledged only the Pentateuch, based itself on Deuteronomy 18:15, they must have expected in the Messiah chiefly a divine teacher, who like Moses, should make known to them the divine will, and lead them into hidden truths.” The Samaritans expected the Messiah of old, and they expect Him to this day. “The latest on this subject is in the work of Barge’s; Les Samaritains de Naplouse, 1855. They call Him הַשָׁהֵב, or הַתָּהֶב, which Gesenius, Anecdota Samarit., p65, etc., [and Ewald] would interpret conversor, Hengstenberg [and Meyer], with greater probability, restitutor,⁸⁰ which the Samaritan priest in Barge’s confirms.” Tholuck. For other interpretations see the note in Tholuck, p150. The woman may have well known the Jewish term, and have chosen it instead of the Samaritan. According to V. Ammon, and others, the term [the explanation: Who is called Christ] is the Evangelist’s;⁸¹ which is very questionable, since he generally prefers to record the original expressions.

John 4:26. I am he [̓Εγώ εἰμι, ego sum, viz., the Messiah].—The subject of ἐγώ εἰμι is to be supplied from the text. Thus He now voluntarily presents Himself to this sinful woman openly as the Messiah, as in the old covenant the angel appeared first to Hagar as angel of the Lord ( Genesis 16:7), and as the risen Jesus appeared first to Magdalene. Among the Jews Jesus long avoided the name of Messiah,⁸² because its meaning was distorted by Chiliastic notions; the Samaritan idea of the Messiah was stunted, but not as yet encumbered with Chiliastic inferences, and therefore could here be introduced. [The Jews looked upon the Messiah as the King of Israel, and expected from Him first of all political changes (comp. John 6:15): while the Samaritans, deriving their Messianic expectations chiefly from Deuteronomy 18:15-19, regarded Him simply as a prophet or teacher, and were less liable to abuse this revelation for disturbing political purposes.—P. S.]

John 4:27. Marvelled that he talked with a woman.—Not with this woman as such (Kuinoel), but with a woman, on the low level assigned her by the rabbinic views. Two considerations met here: 1. The Oriental custom which imposed rigid restriction on intercourse with the female sex: Pirke Aboth i5. “Docuerunt Sapientes, ne multiplices colloquium cum muliere. Cum uxore dixerunt, quanto minus cum uxore alterius.” (Lightfoot, Schöttgen.) 2. Rabbinical scholastic prejudice. “According to Jewish Rabbinical ideas the female sex was incapable of religious instruction.” (Tholuck. It should doubtless be: Rabbinical instruction.)⁸³ Yet no man said.—Expressing reverence, and the acknowledgment that He might well establish a new and higher custom. An enlargement of their horizon. Comp. Luke 10:38. Tίζητεῖς is hardly: What desirest Thou? (Meyer without connecting it with μετ’ αὐτῆς.) Plainly the ζητεῖν, in distinction from λαλεῖν, is to discuss in rabbinical style; the latter meaning merely to talk (chat). Μέντοι in the New Testament is almost peculiar to John.

John 4:28. The woman then left her water-pot.—“Now for the first time the force of the argument from His prophecy comes powerfully upon the woman, perhaps under the additional influence of an awakened conscience.” Tholuck. Why: Now for the first time? and why: perhaps? “She forgets her work, as the Redeemer had forgotten His need.” Luthardt: “Nicodemus went away silent and burdened; this woman hastens away in joyful certainty, with a burning heart, to be the herald of His name.” And she calls now not her husband, but the whole city. [Meyer: “What a power of the decided awakening of a new life in this woman!” She has been justly regarded as a fit illustration of the proper work of the church, viz., to be a witness of Christ, and thus to lead men to Him as the Saviour of the world.—P. S.]

John 4:29. Who told me all things that ever I have done.—Under the sense of her guilt she thinks He has told her everything she had done, that is everything wrong. The testimony of an awakened conscience.⁸⁴ Unquestionably what Jesus said to her contained the sum of her particular transgressions. Besides this she had no doubt perceived by His look and tone, that He saw through her whole life. It may indicate still her legal spirit, that she speaks in the plural of her sins; yet she may also intend by this to magnify the wonderful vision of the prophet. The ὅσα, instead of ἅ, is full of emphasis.

Is this the Christ?—On the negative, doubtful element in the μήτι, comp. Meyer and Tholuck against Lücke (is He really the Messiah?) De Wette, however, suggests the analogous μήτι in Matthew 12:23, which calls for an affirmative answer. Considering the boldness of the announcement, especially in presence of the authorities, the interrogative form is perfectly intelligible in the mouth of this poor outcast, and yet so shrewd and dexterous woman.⁸⁵ The more, that she passes over Christ’s announcement of Himself, in order perhaps to take to herself somewhat of the honor of a glorious discovery. A sinful ambition may well still cleave to her confession of guilt which was more public than it was perfectly open. That she herself believes, or is inclined to believe, is evident from her extraordinary agitation, which impels her beyond all the bounds of reserve, bashfulness, and despised condition. Compare the woman who was a great sinner, and ventured into the house of the Pharisee, Luke 7:37.

John 4:31-33. In the meanwhile.—The woman was gone, the Samaritans had not yet come. The mistake of the disciples: “Quid mirum, si mulier non intelligebat aquam? ecce discipuli nondum intelligunt escam.” August. [Tract. xvi31.—P.S.].

John 4:34. My food is.—A very intelligible figure. Not merely satisfaction, but nourishment and quickening. An opposite judgment of the disciples, c1. A parallel, Matthew 4 Ἳνα adds to the nature of the food (ὅτι) its suitableness to its purpose. The aorist τελειώσω denotes the act which completes the ποιεῖν.

John 4:35. There are yet four months.—Τετράμηνος, sc. χρόνος. Harvest began in April [in the middle of Nisan], about, Easter, and lasted till Pentecost. Four months run back to December. Seed-time itself fell in the beginning of November (the month Marcheshvan). The fields, therefore, were probably green; and the more piquant was the expression: The fields are white for the harvest. The figure follows the analogy of the food. The Lord, as represented by John, is perfectly consistent in His use of the earthly as the symbol of the heavenly. Probably the Samaritans were already coming through the green fields, and they were the fields white for harvest. The disciples saw the green seed-field, He saw the white harvest-field, and to this He wished to open their spiritual eye. Many have taken the four months proverbially: “From seeding to harvest there are four months” (so also in the Talmud); and in this view the passage would lose its chronological value,⁸⁶ and only denote in general some time before harvest (Lightfoot, Grotius, Lücke, etc.). Against this Meyer: The proverb does not elsewhere occur [nor is the seed-time mentioned]. After all there seems to be something proverbial about the expression. Yet it is suitable only at seed-time. It may then be an expression as well of joyful hope (only four months yet), as of waiting patience (yet four whole months). Lücke rightly chooses the latter sense. In the natural world we must wait yet four months; in the spiritual, it is already the time of harvest.

Yet this again may be understood in different ways1. In the natural world four months intervene between seeding and harvest; here a harvest follows immediately upon the sowing. John 4:38 goes against this2. In the natural world it is now seeding time; in the spiritual the harvest time is opening. Chemnitz, Baur (Stier, Luthardt, Tholuck), and others find in the harvest not only the harvest of the Samaritans ( Acts 8), but also the harvest of the Gentiles.⁸⁷ But then where would be the previous sowing? Primarily the talk is only of a field now white for the harvest, though betokening, to be sure, all future harvest fields.

John 4:36. And he that reapeth, etc.—The connection with the preceding is this: The field is white for harvest. Be reapers. Reaping in the spiritual field is full of promise. Tholuck: Christ thought of the conversion of far-off Gentiles. Then came the sad thought, that He Himself would not live to see it in this world; which relieved itself with the joyful thought that their joy would also be His. So De Wette, Meyer. In that case Christ would have mixed two figures; one representing Himself as already harvesting, another representing Him as sower. But harvest is the subject here, and the disciples are supposed to be reapers with Him. The sowing, therefore, must be sought at some previous time (Chrysostom: The prophets were the sowers). Even in Samaria spiritual seed had been sown by Moses and the Pentateuch, by Jewish teachers, last perhaps by John the Baptist (see John 3:23, p141 f.). As little can we accept the exposition of Meyer, Tholuck, and others, which makes the καί after μισθόν λαμβάνειν only expletive: that is, he gathereth fruit unto eternal life. This again is simply contrary to the figure, which represents an employed reaper. Hunnius and Calov: The μισθός is the gracious reward, the gradus gloriæ; the καρπός is the converts. But since the wages of the reaper are represented as given in this world, over against the gathering of fruit unto eternal life, the primary idea is the immediate spiritual blessings and joys of the harvesters, the joy of spiritual harvest, the communion of the converts themselves. A different and further joy is that of carrying the fruit into heaven, to gladden there the sower who passed thither long before, and to have with Him a common and simultaneous (ὁμοῦ) rejoicing; a thing not possible in the kingdom of nature, but belonging to the kingdom of grace. The ζωὴ αἰώνιος is here again represented objectively, as above; there under the figure of the ocean ( John 4:14), here under the figure of a garner (Lücke).

John 4:37. Herein is that saying fully true [ἀληθινός, not ἀληθής].—The fundamental thought is the wonderfully great distance between seeding and harvest, in contrast with the wonderful fact that reaper and sower rejoice together in heaven. This, however, they can do only in heaven; in this world they are far, often very far, apart. Here, therefore, is the proverb fully true; here it reaches its proper truth; whereas in earthly life the sower is generally the reaper, and the proverb simply exaggerates into a general rule the exceptional fatality of the sower not living to see the harvest time, or at least not himself receiving and enjoying his harvest. [The words of Joshua spoken to the tribes of Israel at Shechem: “I have given you a land for which ye did not labor (οὐκ ἐκοπιάσατε), and cities which ye built not,” etc. Joshua 24:13, form a striking parallel to this saying of our Lord uttered on the same spot, and perhaps with reference to it.—P. S.] Tholuck, after De Wette, incorrectly: Ἄληθινός may here mean only ἀληθής.⁸⁸ Then the proverb in its ordinary sense would be declared false. It has, however, some truth; but it does not sustain its truth throughout; as earthly things are not ἀληθινά, but only symbols of the infinite, though they all have their ἀληθές. And since in the spiritual sphere sowing and reaping seem often almost to coincide, we must not overlook the actual reference to the present case. Yet the ἐν γάρ τούτῳ does not mean in this instance, but in this matter. Then, too, the proverb must here be a universal law. The crop in the kingdom of God ripens slowly.⁸⁹ The full harvest is the end of the world. The earliest seed was the word of God in paradise, or the earliest sowers were the earliest patriarchs. The kingdom of God is the mightiest realm of nature and history; and Christ is the root of nature in His slow growth towards His appearance in the middle, and again at the end of time. (On the proverb: Wetstein.)

John 4:38. I sent you to reap.—Ἀπέστειλα (comp. John 17:18.) Hardly merely “in the sense of the prophetic future” (De Wette, Tholuck). They are not yet apostles by a distinct appointment; still they were already disciples to whom an apostolic commission is prospectively affixed. Hence thus: I have chosen you for apostles, or, to keep the figure, for laborers, to send you into the harvest-field. Ye are destined pre-eminently to reap a spiritual harvest which has been long preparing (so also Meyer). According to Meyer the ἅλλοι and αὐτῶν refer simply to Jesus, in the plural of category.”⁹⁰ But Jesus here evidently sets Himself above the distinction of sowers and reapers as the Lord of the harvest (Olshausen, with reference to Matthew 23:34). The older expositors [also Grotius, Bengel, Luthardt, Ewald] include at least the prophets [and John the Baptist] with Him. Bucer: even the heathen philosophers and their elements of truth. [Tholuck: All the preparatory organs of the economy of salvation.] The seed here in view, however, is not the seed of general culture and intelligence, but the seed of theocratic faith.

Others have labored. The painful labors and toils of the prophets. Their sowing was a sowing in tears. It should shame and encourage the disciples, that they so suddenly come into the great harvest of the history of the world, for which the grandest seeds-men have for centuries labored. This does not exclude either the relative harvest which exists at every stage of the kingdom of God, or again the great sowing in the work of the apostles; yet the sight of a present harvest predominates, as in Matthew 9:38; especially here, that the disciples might feel reverence before the hidden work of God in the despised Samaritans, and believe in their susceptibility to conversion, as they were just now approaching. They could no more take offence it the labors of Jesus with the Samaritans, than at His helping the Canaanitish woman; here as there His leading of their spirit corresponds to His outward act.

John 4:39. And many of that city believed.—These first believers, who were gathered by the word of the woman, are distinguished from the much greater company afterwards won by the word of Jesus ( John 4:41). These believers are now come to Him (see John 4:30). [Olshausen: “If the Redeemer had been like any other man, His λόγος could have had no more weight than that of any other, and in support of His own cause, it would have been still less effective. But as the sun proves its existence and reality merely by the light and the animating warmth which it imparts: so Christ, as the Sun of the spiritual world, in all ages past, and to this day, has had but one witness for Himself, viz., His own operation upon souls. By this one means He so entirely takes possession of every unprejudiced mind, that through the reception of His higher vital energies, it becomes to them experimentally certain that the salvation of the world rests in Him. Hence conceptions of the truth and doctrinal knowledge are not principles in the life of faith, but effects resulting from the reception of the spiritual element.”—P. S.]

John 4:40. The evangelist makes record that Jesus tarried two days teaching in the Samaritan city. [Orthodox Jews besought the Lord to depart from their coasts ( Matthew 8:34), took up stones against Him, and plotted for His overthrow ( Matthew 8:34; Luke 4:29; Luke 13:31-32, etc.). Heretical Samaritans besought Him to tarry with them. The first became last, and the last first.—P. S.]

John 4:41. And many more believed, etc.—From the great result, analogous to that in Judea, we infer a great work of Jesus, which however was, at least for the most part, a labor in word. [In these two days of incidental labor Jesus made more converts among the half-heathenish, yet less bigoted and prejudiced Samaritans, without working miracles, than in the preceding eight months of official work in word and signs among the Jews in Jerusalem. The harvest in Samaria was only an episode in the life of our Lord, and yet how rich in immediate results and future promise! His servants also often accomplish most in times and places where they least expect it. Not seldom the meaning of many years or a whole life is condensed into a few days or hours. No labor for the Lord, however, is in vain; if it bear not the proper fruit in this world, it will do so at the final harvest of history.—P. S.]

John 4:42. And said unto the woman.—Under the direct impression which Jesus made upon them, the indirect testimony of the woman certainly became to them a λαλιά; not as contemptuous, but as now appearing insignificant.⁹¹ Meyer justly notices that John himself, as an impartial narrator, says of her word: τὸν λόγον. We must here take into account also the serenity of happy feeling, to understand that the expression has no malice, more than that of the governor of the feast: “Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” (Comp. the remarkable expression in John 8:43.)

We have heard him ourselves.—Found out by our hearing, so that we now know. [This is a higher order of faith connected with knowledge and personal experience (“come and see,” John 1:39; John 1:46), while formerly it rested only on external authority. Difference of the Roman Catholic and the higher Evangelical Protestant conception of faith. Grotius: “Notarunt veteres in hac Samaritidi ecclesiæ esse figuram, quæ nos adducit ad verbum divinum; nos verbo, maxime propter ipsius majestatem et sanctitatem, credimus.”—P. S.]

That this is the Saviour of the world [Only here and 1 John 4:14],—Tholuck doubtfully (after a doubtful expression of Lücke): “Whether the idea contained in ὁ σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου is lent to the people by the evangelist, is a question.” But this puts in question the whole point of the great narrative. Meyer better: “A confession sufficiently intelligible as the fruit of the two days’ instruction of Jesus, the more since the Samaritan Messianic faith was more accessible to a universality of salvation [see Gesenius, De Samarit. Theol., p 41 sqq.] than the Jewish with its concrete and rigorous particularism.” As Samaritans they had peculiar reason to express themselves thus: Yea verily, He is not only a Messiah for the Jews, but also for us and the Gentiles; in Him the divided world again becomes one.⁹²

The work of Jesus in Samaria laid the foundation for the subsequent conversion of that people under the Apostles, Acts 8.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Respecting the pretended contradiction between this history and Matthew 10:5 (Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and in part Weisse), it should be remarked that the case in Matthew is that of a special mission of the disciples in a particular direction towards Jerusalem, not of the general itinerancy of the Lord. And when He Himself gave out, in reference to His earthly office, that He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel [ Matthew 15:24], He referred to the divine law of His work, and did not exclude the Samaritans from an incidental share of His labors. It was consonant with the historical position of the Samaritans, with their susceptibility, with the directions of the Lord Himself ( Acts 1:8), and with the subsequent spread of Christianity from Judea over Samaria and the Gentile world, that He already appeared for once among them; as, on the other hand, it was in conformity with the economy of His work, that this visit was only incidental, and not for a protracted ministry. Thus were the disciples exercised beforehand in the true order of preaching the gospel. Acts 8:5 is supposed to have occasioned the mythical invention of the story before us; whereas that great conversion rather points to a historical preparation. Meyer justly calls attention to the perfect naturalness of the several features of the story, which could not have proceeded from a poetizing spirit. It may be added, that the several stumbling-blocks which have been found in it, such as the misapprehensions of the woman, are simply so many misapprehensions of criticism and exegesis. The remarkable directness of the representation also, in respect to season, locality, the individuality of the woman, rabbinical custom, etc., must be noted. With Baur this history dissolves into a type: “The woman of Samaria, representing susceptible heathendom, readily opening itself to faith, and offering a wide field of harvest, the counterpart of Nicodemus, who is the type of unsusceptible Judaism.” Neither rhyme nor reason, and a further proof of the legend like fantasticism of a criticism past its crisis, in its last stage of consumption.

2. On the history of the hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans comp. Robinson, III, p339 sqq.; Leben Jesu, II, 2, p539.

3. On Hengstenberg’s reference of the five husbands, etc., to the five gods of old Samaria, see Leben Jesu, II, 2, p540. [Comp. my annotations on John 4:18. Hengstenberg’s allegorical interpretation is at least more sensible than that of Augustine (Tract, xv. c19), who understands the five former husbands of the five senses, and explains the words, Call thy husband, to mean, Apply thy reason, by which thou must be governed, rather than by the bodily senses (adhibe intellectum, per quem docearis, quo regaris)! In another place he finds in the five husbands the five books of Moses, and in the sixth husband the Lord Himself, as if He said: Thou hast served the five books of Moses as five husbands; but now he whom thou hast, i.e., whom thou hearest, is not thy husband: for thou dost not yet believe in him!—P. S.]

3 b. John 4:7. “Give me to drink.” So God introduces Himself to us for our salvation: He asks of us a service. He does this from the beginning, and puts our whole earthly life to us as a serving of Him. Our daily labor is at least required of us as a patient submission to His condemnation: “In the sweat of thy face,” etc. And in His covenant of grace, as with Israel, it is consecrated to be primarily a devout serving of Him with tithes and first-fruits. Our ministry to one another is also a giving Christ meat, or drink, or otherwise ministering to Him. Our constitutional unbelief, the enmity of the carnal mind against God, like the natural enmity of Samaritans to Jews, makes us skeptical that He should have any such dealing with us. But if we only know the gift of this wonderful reciprocity established between us and God in Christ,—if we have a heart for it—it opens the deepest fountains of devotion and prayer in our souls. It gives us a wonderful introduction to God! In other words, this sort of presentation of Himself to us lays the foundation of substantial religion in ourselves, and thus also opens the way for the richest gifts of everlasting life from God.—E. D. Y.]

4. As Jesus appears in chap 1 higher than John the Baptist, in chapter 2 higher than the temple, in chap 3 higher than the rulers of the people, so here He appears greater than the sacred well of Jacob and its founder, as afterwards greater than the porches of Bethesda, the manna, the temple-light, the pool of Siloam, etc. And the superiority is at the same time antithetic: Christ is everything in truth (the ἀληθινός), in realized essence, which before Him was presented only in type. Thus Christ is here the real antitype of the typical patriarchal well-diggers, in particular the patriarch Jacob; hence His spiritual life is the real living water of a sacred well. To this main symbol of this chapter are attached the other symbols of the food, the harvest field, the Lord of the seed-field and harvest-field, the sowers, the reapers. In reference to each, see the exegesis.

5. As Christ makes light the symbol in manifold respects of His nature and life, so with the well, and water. Here He is evidently a giver of peace within one’s self, as in chap7. He is a giver of the Spirit communicating itself to others, while in chap5. He appears as the true well of healing. Thus the fountain of life is the fountain of peace, of healing, of the Spirit.

6. Jesus and women. Jesus was never married, because He was the Son of God as well as the Son of man, and because He represents sinless and universal humanity. Hence no fallen creature and no single daughter of Eve even without sin, if there were such, but only the whole church of the redeemed is fit to be His bride. Nevertheless He had much intercourse with women, and this, as well as His dealing with children, forms an interesting chapter in His life and an evidence of Christianity, especially if we contrast it with the radically different position which woman holds at the source of other religions and licentious mythologies. The subject has not yet received the attention it deserves. In addition to my introductory remarks (p150), I shall give the views of Guizot,⁹³ partly in opposition to Renan, the only writer of note, who, to his own discredit, has dared to cast a reflection on this relation so pure and Christlike. “The women,” says Guizot, “seem irresistibly attracted toward Him, with hearts moved, imaginations struck by His manner of life, His precepts, His miracles, His language. He inspires them with feelings of tender respect and confiding admiration. The Canaanitish woman comes and addresses to Him a timid prayer for the healing of her daughter. The woman of Samaria listens to Him with eagerness, though she does not know Him: Mary seats herself at His feet, absorbed in reflections suggested by His words; and Martha proffers to Him the frank complaint that her sister assists her not, but leaves her unaided in the performance of her domestic duties. The sinner draws near to Him in tears, pouring upon His feet a rare perfume, and wiping them with her hair. The adulteress, hurried into His presence by those who wished to stone her, in accordance with the precepts of the Mosaic law, remains motionless in His presence, even after her accusers have withdrawn, waiting in silence what He is about to say. Jesus receives the homage, and listens to the prayers of all these women with the gentle gravity and impartial sympathy of a being superior and strange to earthly passion. Pure and inflexible interpreter of the Divine law, He knows and understands man’s nature, and judges it with that equitable severity which nothing escapes, the excuse as little as the fault. Faith, sincerity, humanity, sorrow, repentance, touch Him without biasing the charity and the justice of His conclusions; and He expresses blame or announces pardon with the same calm serenity of authority, certain that His eye has read the depths of the heart to which His words will penetrate. In His relation with the women who approach Him, there is, in short, not the slightest trace of man; nowhere does the Godhead manifest itself more winningly and with greater purity. And when there is no longer any question of these particular relations and conversations, when Jesus has no longer before Him women suppliants and sinners, who are invoking His power or imploring His clemency: when it is with the position and the destiny of women in general that He is occupying Himself, He affirms and defends their claims and their dignity with a sympathy at once penetrating and severe. He knows that the happiness of mankind, as well as the moral position of women, depends essentially upon the married state; He makes of the sanctity of marriage a fundamental law of Christian religion, and society; He pursues adultery even into the recesses of the human heart, the human thought; He forbids divorce; He says of men, ‘Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female? For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh. Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’…. Signal and striking testimony to the progressive action, of God upon the human race! Jesus Christ restores to the divine law of marriage the purity and the authority that Moses had not enjoined to the Hebrews ‘because of the hardness of their hearts.’ ”—P. S.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The retreat of Jesus from Judea to Galilee through Samaria, the first turning-point in His official life: 1. Motives (the Pharisees began to watch Him with hostile eye: the Baptist is imprisoned). 2. Character: Free consciousness (He retreats in free discretion, without fear; in holy discretion, hence: “the Lord knew”). 3. Rich results (beneficent sojourn in Samaria, beneficent results in Galilee). 4. Significancy (He ceases to baptize, tarries in Samaria on His return).—Symbolical import of baptismal water and drinking water in Christianity. (In John 3. Jesus baptized with water: in John 4he passes to offer a living water to be drunk.)—The resting of the Lord on Jacob’s well, a living emblem of the old patriarchal days and the new evangelistic time in one.—Christ in His human weakness and divine exaltation, (1) weary, and yet the rest of a weary soul; (2) thirsty, and yet a fountain; (3) hungry, and yet enjoying heavenly food, the Lord of the harvest-field; (4) left alone, yet in spirit surrounded with approaching nations.—Christ a Saviour even from the religious perversities of fanaticism.—Fanaticism in its inhumanity and its immoral conduct.—The woman of Samaria, or a Samaritan Magdalene.—The condescending pity of Jesus in the conversion of the woman of Samaria.—How the grace and love of Christ can break through all conventional restrictions, for being the new law of the Spirit: the restrictions (1) of the ancient religious separation, (2) of the ancient national separation, (3) of the old social custom (as to the separation of the sexes), (4) of the old contempt for the fallen.—How many prejudices that one little word of Jesus: Give me to drink, abolishes: 1. The prejudice of the ancients against the female sex; 2. The prejudice of statute against the fallen; 3. The prejudice of nationality; 4. The prejudice of religion.—The wisdom and gentleness of the Lord in winning souls: 1. The opening of the conversation (Give me to drink; a token of common life). 2. The progress of the conversation (a. objective salvation in a sensible emblem: b. subjective need of salvation). 3. The goal: Manifestation of Christ to a sinful, penitent heart.—The stages of the religious instruction of the Samaritan woman: 1. The missionary stage; 2. The catechetical stage; 3. The church stage (see the exegesis).—How Christ sent back as an evangelist into her city a woman who came out of it a notorious sinner.—The day of grace (If thou knewest.)—The life of the Lord, living water (spring-water) in distinction from the stale water of this world’s life: 1. The latter provokes thirst, the former quenches thirst2. The one becomes foul, the other takes away foulness3. The one stands, in a marsh, the other gushes and flows4. The one sinks away, evaporates, the other becomes an eternal fountain.—Christ the life, as fountain of life.—The fountain of life, as a fountain of peace.—Jacob’s well, the pool of Bethesda, the fountain of Siloam, emblems of the salvation in Christ.—The water of life, which Christ bestows: 1. A draught which becomes a fountain; 2. A fountain which becomes a stream; 3. A stream which runs into the ocean of eternal life, without losing itself therein. The crystal spring of truth (that may be likened to spring water) in contrast with the turbid water of vanity and sin (which may be likened to salt water and puddles and ponds).—The miraculous virtue of self-reproduction in the water and the bread which Christ bestows.—The thirst of life, and the satisfaction of it in Christ.— Sir, give me this water, or the unsatisfied longing of the poor, sinful heart: (1) Astray, deceived, debauched in sin; (2) led aright, purified, brought to itself by the awakening of repentance; (3) satisfied, transformed into blessed life by grace.—Call thy husband. Christ not only the knower of hearts, but also the knower of lives.—Christ aims at the conscience, to subdue the sinner.—The gradual awakening: 1. Awakening of reflection; 2. Awakening of conscience; 3. Awakening of faith.—The divine visitation in the hour when the dark human heart feels itself exposed and seen through by a heavenly eye.—The decision of Christ respecting the religious controversy between the Samaritans and the Jews, in its permanent typical import.—“Salvation comes from the Jews.”—But while they quarrel on over the old issue, a new and higher point of unity is present.—The future of religion: Worship of God in spirit and in truth.—The Messiah’s revelation of Himself for the woman of Samaria (compared with the self-presentation of the angel of the Lord to Hagar, of the risen Jesus to Magdalene).—The school which the disciples of Jesus went through in Samaria in reference (1) to the Samaritan woman, (2) to the Samaritans.—The marvelling of the disciples of Jesus at His talking with a woman, in conflict with their reverence.—The whole life discipline of the Christian an alternation of the spirit of captious and of reverential wonder.—The food of Jesus.—Heavenly remembering and reminding an earthly forgetting: 1. Christ forgets His earthly meat; 2. The woman forgets the earthen pitcher.—The difference between the Master and the disciples in their way of seeing: 1. The disciples still look upon the green growing fields (according to the earthly appearance); 2. The Master looks upon the white harvest fields (according to the spiritual reality).—The Samaritans on their way to Jesus, a sign of harvest;—a mission token.—The messengers of Christ not only sowers, but also reapers.—The miraculous relation between sowing and harvest in the kingdom of God: 1. The two infinitely far apart; 2. The two coincident.—The sowers and the reapers of the Lord: 1. How they for the most part do not know each other in this world2. How they rejoice with one another in the next.—The symbolism of the field (of the sown field and of the harvest field).—The double grounds of faith which the Samaritan had: 1. The account of the woman; 2. Acquaintance with Christ Himself.—The two days of the sojourn of Jesus in Samaria.—The dark side and the bright side of the Samaritan life: 1. Greater danger of the adulteration of Christianity with heathenism, than among the Jews; 2. Greater freedom from Jewish prejudice, and hence greater access for the word of faith.—The testimony of the Samaritans: This is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world: 1. A fruit, ripened (a) under the sense of contempt from the Jews, (b) under the sense of free grace on the part of the Lord; 2. A bud which fully unfolded in subsequent faith and under the preaching of the Apostles.

Starke: Envy (with reference to the Pharisees).—(Cramer): Christians should take care of themselves, Matthew 10:23.—(Majus): The dignity and virtue of the sacraments depends not on persons who administer them.—Christ seeks the salvation of all men by all means and at all times.—There is no land entirely void of monuments of grace even from its antiquity.—Christ, as true man, became weary.—If the Lord became weary for the good of His creatures, we should be incited to the patient endurance of the toilsomeness of our calling.—Man must also have his rest.—Canstein: Direct the necessary rest to the glory of God.—A picture of the grace which anticipates us and fondly persuades us.—Quesnel: Jesus voluntarily humbles Himself so far as to have need of His creatures, that we may not be ashamed to accept their help.—Thirst for the salvation of men was greater in Christ than bodily thirst for water.—Christianity consists not in secluding oneself and locking the room and sitting with the prayer book behind the stove; else the Lord would not have talked with the Samaritan woman. Majus: National hatred pernicious and sinful.—Canstein: We should not withhold the general duties of humanity on account of difference in religion.—The same: An inordinate estimate of our ancestry may sometimes be a hinderance to salvation.—Osiander: No earthly refreshing and delights can satisfy the heart.—Thirst a great need;—those who once drink from this fountain of life furnish themselves against all thirst for the world.—He who is to be converted, must be brought to a knowledge of his sin.—Canstein: Christ and His Spirit must disclose to a man his secret shame if they are to help him.—Bibl. Wirt.: Jesus looks especially upon one’s conduct of his married life.—Piscator: In matters of religion and faith no one should appeal to fathers or ancestry, unless their doctrine be first proved from the word of God.—Prayer and worship depend not on time, place, posture, bending of knees or folding of hands, but upon spirit and truth.—Worship in spirit and in truth by no means supersedes outward worship.—Canstein: The way of serving God must agree with the attributes of God.—Majus: If between contending parties there still is agreement or harmony in some points, one must not despise him, but endeavor as opportunity offers to turn it to edification.—Osiander: The true knowledge of Christ fills a man with heavenly joy.—Hedinger: Grace, when it is vitally kindled in the soul, gives joy and alacrity.—The same: Doing the will of God should be to us above eating and drinking and every necessity.—Quesnel: A great consolation for those in the church of God who labor much and see no fruit, that they are here assured that they shall lose nothing of their reward.—Hedinger: He who continues to depend on man, attains not to divine certainty.—Christ a universal Saviour of the whole world, 1 Timothy 4:10; Titus 2:11; Titus 2:13.

Gossner: Where the true Christ comes, He first uncovers disgrace and shame, and then takes them away.—Braune: This is the fixed order in the kingdom of God, which is above all time: that it reaches over centuries, and every generation reaps what the preceding sowed, and in turn must sow what the succeeding may reap.

Gerlach:—Every sensuous form of worship, even that ordained by God Himself, is a symbolical worship, and therefore reaches its truth only in the spiritual,—without which it would be a false worship.—“Wouldst thou have a high, a holy place? consecrate thyself inwardly a temple of God; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are, 1 Corinthians 3:17. Wouldst thou pray in a temple, pray in thyself; but become first thyself a temple of God, for He hears him who calls to Him out of His temple.” (Augustine.)

Heubner: Jesus teaches us prudence, silent withdrawal; it is more illustrious than bold daring, challenge, resistance, and foolhardiness.—A blessing often still rests on old places.—The inward progress in the leading of souls.—“There cometh a woman.” How the steps of man are guided!—Request, an approach to the heart.—The gospel seems at first only to ask of the unconverted, but under this apparent asking the offer of the highest grace is covered.—The first apprehension of the soul by divine grace takes place so secretly and imperceptibly that the souls themselves do not at all suspect it.—Religious hatred the bitterest hatred among nations.—Jesus does not stop upon invidious partizan disputes.—He who begins to know Jesus, asks of Him, calls upon Him.—“The well is deep.” How deep then is the well of Jesus from which the flock of God is refreshed!—The natural man resists the demand of radical renewal with the pretence that godly ancestors have surely been saved by their mode.—“Greater than our father Jacob?” This was her standard. How imperfect in comparison with Jesus.—God compels man to reflect, to come to the knowledge of Himself.—Through Christianity the whole earth is to become a temple of God. The heavenly Jerusalem has no temple (Rev. John 20, 21).—Yet Christ does not teach syncretism, He compromises nothing of the truth.—The future in the germ already lies in the present.

John 4:24. Jerome well applies this passage to pilgrimage.

John 4:30. One coal kindles the others.—Eternal life equalizes all. In it all faithful laborers enjoy in common the fruit of the labor of all.—There is a faith at first hand and a faith at second hand. The latter must lead to the former, because the latter is not enough.—(From Schleiermacher: Why Christ did not baptize and why Paul acted in like manner, 1 Corinthians 1:14; both, on the contrary, preached, whereas among us the authority to preach comes before the authority to administer the sacraments, Vol. Ι., p237).—It is certainly false for a man to say, he must not speak of such (spiritual) things in social life, because they would be too high and deep. For the earthly and the spiritual are not so separate.—In those hot and dry countries where water was scarce, thirst became a tormenting sensation, such as we cannot share.—Soon the time will come when ye shall not use some this word, I some that word, to express a given Christian truth, but when men shall express themselves on the same subject in a manner in which controversy disappears.

[E. D. Yeomans:—The Saviour, wearied with ages of pilgrimage among us and of forbearance towards our heartless service of Him, sits on the well—at the sources of earthly life, which we frequent and throng, to draw,—a well of really holy memory, consecrated by the draughts of the patriarch’s faith,—and asks of us a drink, Himself the gift of God to us! If we but saw things Song of Solomon, what glad labors, what cheerful sufferings, what effectual prayers, what glorious hope, would make up our life!]

[Schaff:—Several idyllic scenes of Scripture, such as the meeting of Abraham’s servant with Rebecca ( Genesis 14), Jacob’s first interview with Rachel ( Genesis 29), Moses’ meeting with Zipporah in Midian ( Exodus 2), took place in the neighborhood of wells; but the most interesting and important event is that attached to Jacob’s well.—“Few can see the literal wells of Palestine, all can visit the better fountain of salvation, all can gather around the true Shepherd, lie down on the green pasture of His love, and drink of the still waters” (Macduff).—Christ’s divine-human dealing with women, as a friend and Saviour, securing both their affection and adoration—an evidence of Christianity.—Christ offering the same gospel to an ignorant, semi-heathenish woman, as to a learned, orthodox Pharisee ( John 3).—Christ’s discourse with the Samaritan woman a proof of His condescending love. (Calvin: Mirum bonitatis ejus exemplum! Quid enim, fuit in misera hac femina, ut ex scorto Filii Dei repente discipula fieret?)—Christ’s discourse with the Samaritan woman, in its effect, breaking down national and religious hatred and bigotry, and elevating woman to higher dignity.—Jewish and Samaritan bigotry continued in the sectarian quarrels of Christendom, contrary to the spirit of Christ. Catholics “have no dealings” with Protestants, nor Episcopalians with Presbyterians, Lutherans with Calvinists, Baptists with Pedobaptists, high churchmen with low churchmen, etc.—The weariness and thirst of Christ turned into an unfailing fountain of refreshment for a poor woman and for all thirsty souls.—A touching allusion to Christ’s weariness in the Dies iræ:

“Quærens me sedisti lassus,⁹⁴

Redemisti crucem passus:

Tantus labor non sit cassus.”

Weary sat’st Thou seeking me,

Died’st, redeeming, on the tree,

Let such toil not fruitless be.

Christ’s weariness, hunger and thirst—a proof of His true humanity, including our infirmities—“When we are carried easily, let us think on the weariness of our Master” (Henry).—The thirst of Christ’s soul for the salvation of man.—‘Christ weary in His work, but not of His work.’—Christ always more ready to give than we are to ask.—Christ, the great Fisher of man, as eager to catch a single soul, as a vast multitude.—The priceless value of a single soul in the view of Christ.—Christ the model of a practical teacher in commencing a most spiritual discourse in a most natural way, and rising from physical wants to the wants of the soul.—How to spiritualize and Christianize the events and occasions of every-day life.

John 4:16-19. There is an avenue to every human heart.—Kindness often more effective than severity.—Reproof is most profitable when least provoking.—“Those who would win souls should make the best of them and work upon their good-nature; for if they make the worst of them, they certainly exasperate their ill-nature” (Henry).—”Amongst all sins the sin of uncleanness lies heaviest upon the conscience; for no sin is so directly opposite to holiness; no sin quenches the Holy Spirit like this” (Burkitt).—Christ keeps a record of our sins.—Conviction of sin the first step to conversion.

John 4:20. The right and wrong appeal to the fathers and to tradition.

John 4:21-24. The spirituality of worship distinct: 1. from formalism and ritualism; 2. from intellectualism; 3. from fanatic spiritualism.—True and false spirituality.—“O for a mountain to pray on, thou criest, high and inaccessible, that I may be nearer to God, and God may hear me better, for He dwelleth on high. Yes, God dwelleth on high, but He hath respect to the humble.… Wouldest thou pray in the temple? pray in thyself; but first do thou become the temple of God” (St. Augustine).—The right use and abuse of forms in worship.

John 4:28-30. The Samaritan woman a specimen of unpretending and effectual lay-preaching. (Origen, who himself preached before his ordination to the priesthood, calls her “the apostle of the Samaritans.”)

John 4:41-42. Two kinds of faith; faith resting on external authority or tradition (the woman’s λαλιά), and faith resting on personal experience (αὐτοὶ ἀκηκόαμεν καὶ οἴδαμεν).—The Samaritan woman a picture of the church in leading men to Christ that they may see and know for themselves.]

Footnotes