Twelve Extraordinary Women, Week 20
Notes
Transcript
The Samaritan Woman
The Samaritan Woman
29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
In John 4, we read a story of Samaritan woman. Jesus had traveled through Samaria coming into a town called Sychar and had stopped at Jacob’s well. As he sat by the well, a Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus spoke truth to her, something she was not accustomed to. Forty-two verses tell her story, and her encounter with Jesus. Such a significant section of Scripture would not be given to this one episode unless the lessons it contained were supremely important.
When we first start reading these verses, it starts out as small talk from someone looking for a drink of water, and someone who had come to draw her daily ration. Being the sixth hour (noon), it would have been hot, no doubt humid, and a time when many would be resting. She apparently did not want to encounter anyone else. The disciples were out buying food in a nearby village, and Jesus had no way of drawing water, so he asked her to draw up water for him to get a drink. MacArthur states “It was not the stuff of great drama, and this was certainly not a scene that would lead us to expect one of the most profound theological lessons in all the Bible was just ahead.”
Setting
Setting
As we look closer, though, there is more significance to this story.
In the first place, this was Jacob’s well, located on a plot of land well known to students of the Old Testament. It was a field that Jacob purchased so that he could pitch his tent in the land of Canaan (Gen. 33:18–19). He built an altar on the site, “and called it El Elohe Israel,” meaning “the God of Israel” (v. 20 NKJV). This very field was the first inhabitable piece of real estate recorded in Scripture that any Israelite ever owned in the Promised Land. Abraham had previously purchased the field of Ephron, which contained a cave that became his and Sarah’s burial place. But this property actually became Jacob’s home base.
John 4:5 reminds us that this was the same parcel of ground Jacob deeded to his favorite son, Joseph (Gen. 48:21–22).
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
It later became the very place where Joseph’s bones were finally put to rest (Josh. 24:32).
32 As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.
Remember that when Moses left Egypt, he took Joseph’s coffin (Gen. 50:24–26; Ex. 13:19). The Israelites carried Joseph’s remains around with them for forty years in the wilderness. One of their first acts after conquering the Promised Land was the final interment of those bones. This was all done at Joseph’s own request (Heb. 11:22).
22 By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.
To the Israelites, the tale of Joseph’s bones was a significant reminder of God’s faithfulness.
The well that was on the property was not mentioned in the Old Testament, but its location was well established in Jesus’ day by centuries of Jewish tradition, and the site remains a major landmark even today. The well is very deep (John 4:11), accessible only by a very long rope through a hole dug though a slab of soft limestone.
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?
The reservoir below is spring-fed, so its water is always fresh, pure, and cold. It is the only well, and the finest water, in a vicinity where brackish springs abound. The existence of such a well on Jacob’s property was deemed by the Israelites as a token of God’s grace and goodness to their patriarch. Hence, the location had a very long and meaningful history in Jewish tradition.
In Jesus’ era, though, that plot of ground lay in Samaritan territory, and this is another surprising and significant detail about the setting in John 4. For Jesus to be in Samaria at all was unusual (and perhaps even somewhat scandalous). The Samaritans were considered unclean by the Israelites. Jesus was traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee (v. 3). A look at any map reveals that the most direct route goes straight through Samaria. But in Jesus’ time, any self-respecting Jew would always travel a different way. The preferred route went east of the Jordan River, then north through Decapolis before crossing the Jordan again into Galilee. This alternate route went many miles out of the way, but it bypassed Samaria, and that was the whole point.
Samaritans were a mixed-race people descended from pagans who had intermarried with the few remaining Israelites after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom (722 BC). As early as Nehemiah’s time (the mid-fifth century BC), the Samaritans posed a serious threat to the purity of Israel. Secular history records that Nehemiah’s main nemesis, Sanballat, was an early governor of Samaria. The Jewish high priest’s grandson married Sanballat’s daughter, incurring Nehemiah’s wrath. “I drove him from me,” Nehemiah wrote. Such a marriage “defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites”.
By the first century, the Samaritans had a distinct culture built around a syncretistic religion, blending aspects of Judaism and rank paganism. Their place of worship was on Mount Gerizim. Sanballat had built a temple there to rival the temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritan temple was served by a false priesthood, of course. Remember that the Israelites in the northern kingdom had already corrupted Judaism several centuries before this by establishing a false priesthood. That defiled flavor of Judaism was precisely what gave birth to Samaritanism. So the Samaritan religion was twice removed from the truth. But they did hold to selected elements of Jewish doctrine. Samaritans regarded the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) as Scripture. They rejected the psalms and the prophets, however.
During the Maccabean period, less than a century and a half before the time of Christ, Jewish armies under John Hyrcanus destroyed the Samaritan temple. Gerizim nevertheless remained sacred to the Samaritans and the center of worship for their religion. (A group of Samaritans still worships there even today.)
The Jews’ contempt for the Samaritans was so intense by the first century that most Jews simply refused to travel through Samaria, despite the importance of that land to their heritage.
Jesus deliberately broke with convention. John 4:4 says, “He needed to go through Samaria” (NKJV, emphasis added).
4 And he had to pass through Samaria.
He had a purpose to fulfill, and it required Him to travel through Samaria, stop at this historic well, talk to this troubled woman, and make an unprecedented disclosure of His true mission and identity.
Seen in that light, virtually everything about the setting of John 4 becomes remarkable. It is unusual to find Jesus alone. It is amazing to realize that God incarnate could grow physically weary (v. 6) or become thirsty (v. 7). It is startling that Jesus would intentionally seek out and initiate a conversation with a wretched Samaritan woman like this one. It was astonishing even to her that any Jewish man would speak to her (v. 9). It was equally shocking for the disciples to find Him speaking to her (v. 27). It would have been considered outrageous for Him to drink from an unclean vessel that belonged to an unclean woman. It seems odd for a woman like this to enter so quickly into an extended theological dialogue. It is marvelous to see how rich Jesus’ teaching could be, even in a context like this. (The heart and soul of everything Scripture teaches about authentic worship is condensed in just a few words Jesus spoke to this woman in verses 21–24). It is astounding that her own sin was such a large issue in her own heart and mind (v. 29), even though Jesus had only referred to it obliquely (v. 18) and even though she initially seemed to try to dodge the point (vv. 19–20).
But what is staggeringly unexpected about this whole fantastic account is that Jesus chose this time and this place and this woman to be part of the setting where He would (for the first time ever) formally and explicitly unveil His true identity as the Messiah.
And that singular fact automatically gives this woman a prominent place in the “extraordinary” category.
The Conversation
The Conversation
Jesus’ conversation with the woman started out simply and naturally enough—he asked her for a drink. The well was deep, and He had no way to draw water from it, so he said: “Give Me a drink” (v. 7 NKJV).
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
He probably said it casually and in a friendly enough way, but He expressed it in the form of a command, not a question.
She obviously didn’t think the request, or the way He phrased it, was rude. She certainly didn’t act offended. Instead, she immediately expressed surprise that He would even speak to her, much less drink from her vessel: “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (v. 9 NKJV).
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Gender taboos, racial divisions, and the class system would normally keep a man of Jesus’ status from conversing with a woman such as she, much less drinking from a water container that belonged to her.
Bypassing her actual question, Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (v. 10 NKJV). He was already hinting at the real message He intended to give her.
She immediately understood that He was making an amazing claim. She replied, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” (vv. 11–12 NKJV).
As a matter of fact, He was greater than Jacob, and that is precisely the point He wanted to demonstrate for her. But once more, instead of answering her question directly, He continued speaking of the living water. Indeed, He assured her, the water He offered was infinitely better than the water from Jacob’s well:
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Now she was supremely curious, and she asked Him to give her the living water (v. 15).
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
I think by now she probably understood that He was speaking of spiritual water. Parables and metaphors were standard teaching tools in that culture. Jesus was obviously some kind of rabbi or spiritual leader. It is unlikely that she was still thinking in literal terms. But her reply simply echoed the same metaphorical language He had used with her: “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw” (v. 15 NKJV).
Jesus’ next words unexpectedly drew her up short: “Go, call your husband, and come here”.
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
Now she was in a quandary. The truth about her life was so horrible that she could not admit it to Him. He seemed to be assuming she was a typical woman with a respectable home and an honorable husband. She was nothing like that. But instead of exposing all her disgrace to this rabbi, she told him only a small fraction of the truth: “I have no husband”.
To her utter chagrin, He knew the full truth already: “Jesus said to her, ‘You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly’ ”.
17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;
18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
Notice that He did not rebuke her as a liar; on the contrary, He commended her for speaking truthfully. She wasn’t denying her sin. But she obviously wasn’t proud of it, either. So in order to retain whatever shred of dignity she could, she had simply sidestepped the implications of His question without actually lying to cover anything up.
No matter. He knew all about her sin right down to the infinitesimal details. When she later recounted her meeting with Jesus, this was the fact that left the strongest impression on her mind: He told her everything she ever did (vv. 29, 39).
29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”
Moments before, she had questioned whether He was greater than Jacob. Now she knew.
I love the low-key, almost droll simplicity with which she acknowledged her own guilt: “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet” (v. 19 NKJV).
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
He had unmasked her completely. Whoever He was, He obviously knew all about her. And yet, far from spurning her or castigating her, He had offered her the water of life!
At this point, a thousand thoughts and questions must have filled her mind. She certainly must have wondered exactly who this was and how He knew so much about her. It is obvious that He was quite prepared to tell her who He was. He Himself had raised that issue almost immediately (v. 10). But instead of pursuing that question, she turned the conversation in a bizarre direction. She brought up what was to her mind the biggest point of religious contention between the Jews and the Samaritans: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship” (v. 20 NKJV).
20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
She actually didn’t frame it as a question, but I don’t think she meant it as a challenge. I think she was genuinely hoping that this rabbi, who seemed to know everything, could straighten out what seemed to her to be the fundamental debate of the ages: Who was right? The Jews or the Samaritans? Gerizim or Jerusalem? p 148
Jesus did not brush her sincere question aside. He didn’t reproach her for changing the subject. He gave her a brief but very potent answer in John 4:21–24:
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
With that reply, He accomplished several things. First, he let her know that where you worship isn’t the issue. True worshipers are defined by whom and how they worship.
Second, He made it clear that the religious tradition she had grown up in was totally and utterly false: “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews” (v. 22 NKJV).
22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
He did not airbrush the reality or trouble Himself with trying to be delicate. He answered the real question she was asking.
Third, He subtly steered her back to the main subject by telling her that a new age was dawning when neither Gerizim nor Jerusalem would have a monopoly on the priesthood. The era of the New Covenant was just on the horizon. There was a subtle expression of messianic expectation in His words, and she got it.
She replied with these amazing words: “ ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When He comes, He will tell us all things’ ” (v. 25 NKJV).
25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”
Is it not significant that this Samaritan woman, born and raised in a culture of corrupt religion, had the same messianic hope shared by every other godly woman in Scripture?
Now, consider the implications of her statement. She knew the Messiah was coming. That was a definitive expression of confidence. It was embryonic faith waiting to be born. And how did she think the true Messiah would identify Himself? “When He comes, He will tell us all things” (v. 25 NKJV). Jesus had already demonstrated His full knowledge of all her secrets. As she later testified to the men of her city, “[He] told me all things that I ever did” (v. 29 NKJV).
She was strongly hinting that she suspected Jesus Himself might be the Messiah. When the apostle Peter later confessed his faith that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus told him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17 NKJV). The same thing was true of this woman. The Holy Spirit was working in her heart. God the Father was drawing her irresistibly to Christ, revealing truth to her that eye had never seen and ear had never heard.
Now Jesus was ready to pull back the curtain and reveal His true identity in an unprecedented way.
MacArthur, John F., Jr. 2005. Twelve Extraordinary Women: How God Shaped Women of the Bible and What He Wants to Do with You. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.