John 4:4-12
As we open today’s post, I invite you to put away your Western Christian thinking and look at this story from the eyes of the Ancient Near East. We miss what the author wanted us to see when we examine this story through our Western culture and Christian biases. The cultural bias is the Jews hate the Samarians. Jewish men did not talk to women, especially women who were of pagan or semi-pagan descent. It didn’t matter that the Samaritans were somewhat related to the Jews. The Jews despised them. If you stood in the temple at Jerusalem and heard the prayers of the men, it would go something like this. “Oh Lord God, the Most High God. I thank you that I am not like the Samarian or a woman.”
The author startles us by saying, “But He (Jesus) needed to go through Samaria.” (See the last post for an explanation of the hostility). No self-respecting Jew had to go through Samaria, and here Jesus deliberately walks through Samaria. Seeming for no reason at all. But as we will soon see, He is on a mission to fulfill a divine appointment. And to teach His disciples an important lesson. For Jesus, each moment is a teachable moment.
“So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there, Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus be the well. It was about the sixth hour (12 noon)” (John 4:5, 6). It is midday. How long and how far Jesus and His disciples had traveled, we are unsure. But the text clearly states that Jesus was tired. The author wants us to be completely aware of where this event occurred. He names the town and the location near the town, and this was an area that Jacob had given to his son, Joseph (see Joshua 24:32).
“A woman of Samaria came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink.’ For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food” (verses 7 and 8). Within Jewish law, provision had been made that should you find yourself in Samaria, you could purchase goods and services, but you could not accept hospitality from the Samaritans. As Jesus rests from traveling, a woman comes to the well. Jesus asks her for a drink of water. In so doing, he has discarded Jewish law by asking a Samaritan for a favor and by talking to a woman. Remember, she is not only a woman but also a Samarian and, in Jewish eyes, a pagan.
What intrigues me is that all of Jesus’s disciples have left to buy food as if it would take all 12 of them to fetch food from the local town. Jesus is there as the sundial nears 12 noon, tired and thirsty. Then asks a woman for something to drink, not just a woman, but a pagan woman, who seems to know more about Jesus’s mission than the disciples do. But with that statement, I look too far ahead in the story.
“Then the woman of Samaria said to Him. ‘How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans!’” (John 4:9).
The woman clearly understands her place in society and is shocked that Jesus, being a Jew, has spoken to her and asked for something from her. She understands that in the Jewish culture, she is about as valuable as a dog. Yet here is Jesus talking to her and asking her for something to drink.
Over the years, I have heard countless preachers say that this woman was at the well because she was a social outcast of her society. Therefore, she did not want to suffer the scorn of the other women who came to the well early for water. They claim this is why she was there at nearly noon to get water. These same preachers use verses 16 and 17 to prove their point. This is why I asked at the beginning of this post that we try to lose our Western biases and look at this story through the eyes of an ancient Near Eastern person. I also asked us not to look at this through Christian glasses. By doing so, we lose the point of the story. We lose the teaching point Jesus wants to make with his disciples, who will soon return with food. But we also fail to understand that often, others have a better understanding of who Jesus is than we do. Or, in this case, the Jews and Jesus’s disciples do.
I maintain that this was a divine appointment, set up by the Holy Spirit as a teaching experience for the disciples and to prepare a place that would be a safe place for the Greek Jews to go when the persecution began in Jerusalem after the stoning of Steven (see Acts 8:4).
Jesus answered and said to her. “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 a living water.” This was a reference by Jesus to the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 44:3 and Isaiah 12:2-6. We will see this reference to water later in John’s gospel. But it is also a reference to the water supplied to Israel in the desert during their 40 years of wandering. But the woman thinks Jesus refers to Jacob’s well, over 100 feet deep.
The woman responds, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where, then, do You get 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?” (John 4:11, 12).
She is indeed correct; the water of the well was deep, and it had been dug by Jacob. He had watered his sheep from this well. But she well knew that Jacob had died over 1000 years earlier. So, there were no qualities within the water that would sustain life. Yet she is confused as well because she knows there is no other place nearby to draw water, and the man in front of her has no water with Him, for He asked her for water.
Although the disciples had gone to buy food, they would soon return. They would find Jesus, a Jew, talking to a woman, which was bad enough, but this was also a Samarian woman, and the Samaritans were hated by the Jews. Jesus is not only offering her living water; He is about to demonstrate to her and his disciples what this living water looks like.
We will begin to examine this further in our next post. The woman is beginning to see she is talking to more than just a Jew. She is curious, and our curiosity should be rising, too.
The Bible In Your Hand 