Many years ago, a dear friend and second-Mother asked me an intriguing question. That question comes to my mind multiple times each year even to this moment. Paraphrased, the question would be something like:
"If you could hold a dinner party to talk with any ten people, living or dead, other than the obviously invited guests of Jesus and the disciples, who would you invite and why?"
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Dinner Guest #4: The Samaritan Woman at the Well
The Introduction
A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away to the city to buy food. So the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, though You are a Jew, are asking me for a drink, though I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus replied to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” She said to Him, “Sir, You have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do You get this living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well and drank of it himself, and his sons and his cattle?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw water.” He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” The woman answered and said to Him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this which you have said is true.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and yet you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.” Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, that a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am He, the One speaking to you.”
And at this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What are You seeking?” or, “Why are You speaking with her?” So the woman left her water pot and went into the city, and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is He?” They left the city and were coming to Him.
(John 4:7-30)
Now from that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One truly is the Savior of the world.”
(John 4:39-42)
The History
Prior to a monarchy, the tribes of Israel were autonomous from one another. As they rebelled against God's law, and subsequently fell into sin and despair, God would raise up a Judge to rescue the Israelites from their enemies and rule for a period. In the time of the judge and prophet Samuel, Israel cried out for a king like the surrounding nations had. God, The King of Israel, allowed Israel to have what they desired.
Around 1,020 BC, God raised up Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, as king over a united Israel. Saul repeatedly acted against God's decrees until God finally removed His anointing from him and gave the anointing to David, son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah.
Through the prophet, Nathan, God gave David this promise that spoke to David's kingdom and the eternal kingdom of the coming Messiah through David's lineage:
I took my love away from Saul. I removed him from being king. You were there when I did it. But I will never take my love away from your son. Your royal house and your kingdom will last forever in my sight. Your throne will last forever.
(2 Samuel 7:15-16)
Around 1,000 BC God raised up David to be king.
In 970 BC, after David died, his son Solomon became king. He was the last king over a united Israel. Solomon turned away from God in his later years. He began worshipping the false gods of his many wives and promoted their worship to the people.
The prophet Abijah approached a skilled worker named Jeroboam and proclaimed that the kingdom was going to be taken from Solomon and Jeroboam would rule over ten tribes. Remaining faithful to the lineage of Judah and of His promise to David, God would keep a descendent on the throne in Jerusalem.
Solomon heard of this and tried to have Jeroboam killed, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt. Upon Solomon's death, his son Rehoboam became king and ruled for a period. Word of Solomon's passing and Rehoboam's rule reached Jeroboam, and the people summoned him back from Egypt. Jeroboam and the people petitioned Rehoboam to be less oppressive in ruling than his father. Rehoboam's advisors convinced him to rule even more oppressively. The message Rehoboam delivered, at the advisors' prompting, was extremely harsh and offensive.
In 930 BC, civil war resulted in the divided kingdom. Jeroboam became king of the ten tribes in the Northern Kingdom called Israel. Rehoboam remained king over the Southern Kingdom called Judah consisting of the two remaining tribes: Judah and Benjamin.
The city of Samaria was made the North Kingdom's capital. Jerusalem remained the capital city of Judah.
In 722 BC, after decades of tributary taxes to Assyria, continued rejecting of God's ways, rejecting God's prophets and their warnings against their sinfulness, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians for refusing to continue paying the tributary taxes. The region that had been the Northern Kingdom of Israel became known as Samaria after its former capital city. Tens of thousands of Jewish people were dispersed from Samaria and scattered among the various countries of the Assyrian Empire, and peoples from other nationalities from around the Assyrian empire were brought to Samaria. This was a standard practice of Assyria to both assimilate the conquered peoples and lessen the chances and effectiveness of would-be rebellions.
This Assyrian conquest resulted in the Jewish Samaritans' heritage being mixed with other ethnicities and adopting syncretic beliefs. Syncretism is the result of mixing multiple religious beliefs into a new hybrid form of beliefs. Such as trying to incorporate Hinduism's chakra meditation into Christianity. A few common modern examples of syncretism would be:
- New Age Spirituality (combines elements from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shamanism, etc)
- Unitarian Universalism (combines elements from Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism)
- Baha'i (combines elements from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroasatrianism)
In 586 BC, the Southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians, and an estimated twenty thousand people were led into captivity in Babylon.
In 538 BC, the Jews were set free from Babylon and allowed to return and repopulate Judah, aka Judea. The returning number of Jews was in excess of forty-two thousand, and many Jews (including Daniel) remained in Babylon.
The Samaritans that held to their Abrahamic ancestry had their own copy of the Torah and their own temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. The Samaritan temple was also a point of contention with the Jews as pointed out by the woman's mentioning of Jewish adherence to Jerusalem being the place of worship and the designated place where God accepted sacrifices.
The Jews of Judea despised the Samaritans as unclean, mix-heritage, syncretic, pagans even until the time of Jesus. Jews would even avoid as much as possible traveling through Samaria. (This should also shed light for you regarding the Priest and the Levite of the parable of the Good Samaritan.)
Sorry, that was a long, in-a-nut-shell, explanation to set up why Samaritans were hated by the Jews, and why the Samaritan woman at the well was looked on dispassionately by the disciples, as well as when James and John wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village that would not receive Jesus into the town [Luke 9:51-56].
The Person
The Jewish method of keeping time would mark each hour during the day. The first hour would be at sunrise, and the twelfth hour marking sunset. During the night, not only was time marked by twelve hours, it was also marked by four three-hour watches marked time during the night.
John 4:6 states the time of the Samaritan woman coming to the well was the "sixth hour" at mid-day. The sun would be at or near zenith, casting narrow shadows, and heating both the air and the earth. That the of the time of day was included in the account would seem it indicate it must have a bearing on the setting.
Many cultural sources indicate that water was drawn from wells in the cool times of morning and/or evening and when shade would be available rather than during the heat of mid-day. However, this woman came alone to the well at the sixth hour.
Through her interaction with Jesus, we learn that she has been married five times. If these these marriages had ended with deaths of the husbands, it most likely would not have been worthy of mention by Jesus, but He seems to connect that fact to the fact she was currently involved with a man to whom she was not married.
This might indicate that she was not accepted company among the women in her town. Either way, certainly she'd be surprised to approach the well and find a Jewish man sitting there.
Her question points out the obvious: “How is it that You, though You are a Jew, are asking me for a drink, though I am a Samaritan woman?”
There is so much more that we could extract from the interaction, but a summation is: Jesus begins the conversation by appealing to a real-world necessity, and then immediately ties it to a spiritual concept and the truth regarding God. He then dives right into the heart of the issue: her multiple marriages and involvement with the latest man. Jesus follows the identification of her condition with where salvation comes, and then identifies Himself as the promised Messiah.
The Conversation
In reading the text this way, it seems she had a somewhat troubled life and relational problems. I would love to learn about her as a person.
+ What was her early life like?
+ Are the conclusions we draw about her ostracization close to truth? If not, what was daily life like for her?
+ With people in the town coming to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, did their treatment and reception of her change?
+ What was the biggest impact on her life after encountering Jesus?
+ What was life like after meeting and spending time with the One who revealed to her plainly that He was the promised Messiah.
The Why
Ostracization, imposed by others or on ourselves, is not a new or uncommon human condition. Having been a self-imposed recluse most of my live until God called me back into fellowship with Him, I understand and sympathize for people in the shadows of life.
Having looked for love in "all the wrong places" myself, I can sympathize with that desire and struggle for acceptance, companionship, love, and commitment.
I rejoice when the lowly are brought into the love of Christ and of loving Christian fellowship because I too experience that now.
It is interesting that Christ made the direct comment to this woman, a Samaritan woman, that He was indeed the promised Messiah. It is amazing that by her testimony many of the people of her town believed and others heeded enough to listen and come to believe in spite of her apparent ostracization.
This is an amazing story showing how God works marvelous transformations physically, spiritually, emotionally, and relationally among ourselves as well as relationally with Him.
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