John 4.1-26 has an interesting exchange between Yeshua and a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well, and we want to present a different view on these verses for consideration. This conversation will not be about her personal life.
The Samaritans were the descendants of the colonists brought in by the king of Assyria when the ten tribes were deported. Yeshua stops at Jacob’s well as he is passing through Samaria and he asks a woman at the well for a drink, and she wants to know why he would ask her this since she was a Samaritan and Jews had no dealings with them. Now, this was according to the 18 Edicts of Shammai passed in 20 BC, a school of the Pharisees, that opposed the school of Hillel in over 300 different areas of halakah, or how to walk in the Torah. Yeshua told her if she knew who he was, she should be asking him for a drink of living water. So right off, we see he is going to engage her in a deep, spiritual conversation here. The woman said she wanted this water so that she would not have to thirst again, but she was thinking physically here.
So, Yeshua tells her to go call her husband. Now, he knew she wasn’t in a marriage covenant, and neither was Samaria with God, but he was trying to elicit a response from her, and she is going to represent the Samaritan people. She says she has no husband. He says, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband (or marriage covenant, and neither does Samaria).’ He then goes on to say, “You (the Samaritan people) have had five husbands (five covenants with false gods).” Now, here is what we believe he is referring to.
The Assyrians replaced the ten tribes with five alien nations from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sephar-vaim in 2 Kings17.30-31, and each of these nations brought in their own gods, or “baalim” which can mean “husbands.” These false religions reigned in the land of Samaria over the people, like a “husband.” Eventually, many of the Israelites returned and intermarried with these five nations and they became the Samaritans. They had a “form” of Torah observance but it was mixed with different beliefs (2 Kings 17.33, 41). The symbolism, we believe, is this: the woman stands for Samaria, and the five husbands, or “baalim”, stood for the five alien nations and their false gods, baalim, or husbands, that religiously ruled over the people in Samaria. And the one she was living with now, who was not her husband, was the Samaritan religion at that time. So, as we shall see, this conversation is about true worship.
So the woman perceives that Yeshua is a prophet and she understood what Yeshua was getting at, that he was talking about Samaritan worship and religious beliefs, just like the prophets of old had done, not her personal life, and she responds. She says, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain (Mount Gerizim), and you say (the Jews) that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship (Deut 12.11; 1 Kings 8.29; 2 Chr 6.6).
Yeshua says, “Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father (because the Temple in Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, and whatever worship they did on Mount Gerizim would cease to be also).” He says the Samaritans worship what they do not know (they were ignorant of true worship), and the Jews worship what they knew (to be true), for salvation is from the Jews. That means there were true worshipers among the Jews, which he was a part of, and they knew the Lord. They had the oracles of God, the services of God, and they were instructed from the Torah, which defines what sin is. The promise of salvation through the Messiah comes from the Jewish people. He then says an hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit, as opposed to the fleshly concepts about him; and truth, as opposed to hypocrisy, because in a short time the Jerusalem temple of the Jews, and the Samaritan worship on Mount Gerizim was going to end and be destroyed by the Romans.
The woman tells him she knows that Messiah is coming because there was a high level of expectation, as seen in Luke 3.15. This was based on the prophecies in Daniel also. She said when that happens, he will declare all things to the people, teaching the people what was the truth. One of the roles of the Messiah was he was going to be a teacher (Deut 18.15; John 11.28). It was at this point Yeshua reveals to her that he is the Messiah, and at the same time his talmidim came back from an errand, but no one questioned him as to why he was speaking to the woman. The woman left her water pot and went into the city of Shechem and told everyone that she has met the Messiah. And they came out of the city because they believed her, so she must have had a good reputation or they would not have listened to her. So they came running to Yeshua at the well.
Yeshua says, “There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest (so this event was around Shavuot and he is talking about the harvest at Sukkot, which taught the salvation of all the nations). Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields that they are white for harvest (he is telling them to look at all the Samaritans running to them and many were in white; he is saying the harvest is now). The Samaritans came and they eventually asked him to stay longer with them, and he stayed there for two days. Their attitude was totally different than the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Gadarenes and the others. Yeshua would later be called a Samaritan in John 8.48 as an insult.
For a detailed look into these verses, we refer you “Brit Chadasha Foundations-Concepts in John Chapter 4” on this website.
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