John the evangelist's account of the real meeting and conversation of the Lord Jesus Christ with the Samaritan woman near Sychar also turns out for the reader to be a parable full of deep meaning, in which, as in a drop of water, some important things related...
John the evangelist's account of the real meeting and conversation of the Lord Jesus Christ with the Samaritan woman near Sychar also turns out for the reader to be a parable full of deep meaning, in which, as in a drop of water, some important things related to any person's meeting with Christ can be seen.
In folklore, "living water" usually means a kind of magical remedy that prolongs or restores life. The Gospel, however, speaks to us about something entirely different. The point is that the quality of water in wells and springs can vary greatly, and in the everyday speech of the ancient Near East there were different terms for water more or less fit to drink. The purest and best of it was called living water. This concept is closer not to folkloric living water, but to what we call life-giving moisture. At hot noon, when all respectable women (not women married five times) had long since stocked up on water, such water was, of course, greatly desired by the Samaritan woman.
But for us, the point is still not this. We cannot fail to notice that in the Bible there is a long-standing tradition of comparing pure water with faith and personal communion (or, if you like, "personal acquaintance") with God. The Lord speaks to the Samaritan woman about water that will become in a person a spring flowing into eternal life. The apostle James writes in the General Epistle that bitter and sweet water cannot flow from one spring, comparing the flow of water with the flow of truth. At the end of Revelation the evangelist John quotes the Lord's words: "To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment." This image was known already to the prophets: Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel all use it.
Therefore Christ's words about living water can be applied to the gift of faith that He gives us. The water of Christ's teaching is called living by Him, that is, clean and unclouded - unlike water from other sources, not dangerous for a person's spiritual health. On the contrary, this water becomes a source of life in the person himself. Only Christ can give it to us, and if we were able to understand this (if we knew the gift of God), we would ask for this water as the most important thing.
And, of course, we cannot help thinking that in the barren desert that human spiritual life becomes without this gift of God, Christ's word is truly like a drink of clean cold water on a hot day.
4
4:1 The Lord knew - Though none informed him of it.
4:3 He left Judea - To shun the effects of their resentment.
4:4 And he must needs go through Samaria - The road lying directly through it.
4:5 Sychar - Formerly called Sichem or Shechem. Jacob gave - On his death bed, Gen 48:22.
4:6 Jesus sat down - Weary as he was. It was the sixth hour - Noon; the heat of the day.
4:7 Give me to drink - In this one conversation he brought her to that knowledge which the apostles were so long in attaining.
4:8 For his disciples were gone - Else he needed not have asked her.
4:9 How dost thou - Her open simplicity appears from her very first words. The Jews have no dealings - None by way of friendship.They would receive no kind of favour from them.
4:10 If thou hadst known the gift - The living water; and who it is - He who alone is able to give it: thou wouldst have asked of him - On those words the stress lies. Water - In like manner he drawsthe allegory from bread, Joh 6:27, and from light, Joh 8:12; the first, the most simple, necessary, common, and salutary things in nature. Living water - The Spirit and its fruits.But she might the more easily mistake his meaning, because living water was a common phrase among the Jews for spring water.
4:12 Our father Jacob - So they fancied he was; whereas theywere, in truth, a mixture of many nations, placed there by the king of Assyria, in the room of the Israelites whom he had carried away captive, Ki2 17:24.Who gave us the well - In Joseph their supposed forefather: and drank thereof - So even he had no better water than this.
4:14 Will never thirst - Will never (provided he continue to drink thereof) be miserable, dissatisfied, without refreshment. If ever that thirst returns, it will be the fault of the man, not the water. But the water that I shall give him - The spirit of faith working by love, shall become in him - An inward living principle, a fountain - Not barely a well, which is soon exhausted, springing up into everlasting life - Which is a confluence, or rather an ocean of streams arising from this fountain.
4:15 That I thirst not - She takes him still in a gross sense.
4:16 Jesus saith to her - He now clears the way that he might give her a better kind of water than she asked for. Go, call thy husband - He strikes directly at her bosom sin.
4:17 Thou hast well said - We may observe in all our Lord's discourses the utmost weightiness, and yet the utmost courtesy.
4:18 Thou hast had five husbands - Whether they were all dead or not, her own conscience now awakened would tell her.
4:19 Sir, I perceive - So soon was her heart touched.
4:20 The instant she perceived this, she proposes what she thought the most important of all questions. This mountain - Pointing to Mount Gerizim. Sanballat, by the permission of Alexander the Great, had built a temple upon Mount Gerizim, for Manasseh, who for marrying Sanballat's daughter had been expelled from the priesthood and from Jerusalem, Neh 13:28. This was the place where the Samaritans used to worship in opposition to Jerusalem.And it was so near Sychar, that a man's voice might be heard from the one to the other. Our fathers worshipped - This plainly refers to Abraham and Jacob (from whom the Samaritans pretended to deduce their genealogy) who erected altars in this place: Gen 12:6-7, and Gen 33:18, Gen 33:20. And possibly to the wholecongregation, who were directed when they came into the land of Canaan to put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, Deu 11:29.Ye Jews say, In Jerusalem is the place - Namely, the temple.
4:21 Believe me - Our Lord uses this expression in this manner but once; and that to a Samaritan. To his own people, the Jews, his usual language is, I say unto you. The hour cometh when ye - Both Samaritans and Jews, shall worship neither in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem - As preferable to any other place. True worship shall be no longer confined to any one place or nation.
4:22 Ye worship ye know not what - Ye Samaritans are ignorant, not only of the place, but of the very object of worship. Indeed, they feared the Lord after a fashion; but at the same time served their own gods, Ki2 17:33.Salvation is from the Jews - So spake all the prophets, that the Saviour should arise out of the Jewish nation: and that from thence the knowledge of him should spread to all nations under heaven.
4:23 The true worshippers shall worship the Father - Not here or there only, but at all times and in all places.
4:24 God is a Spirit - Not only remote from the body, and all the properties of it, but likewise full of all spiritual perfections, power, wisdom, love, holiness. And our worship should be suitable to his nature. We should worship him with the truly spiritual worship of faith, love, and holiness, animating all our tempers, thoughts, words, and actions.
4:25 The woman saith - With joy for what she had already learned, and desire of fuller instruction.
4:26 Jesus saith - Hasting to satisfy her desire before his disciples came. l am He - Our Lord did not speak this so plainly to the Jews who were so full of the Messiah's temporal kingdom.If he had, many would doubtless have taken up arms in his favour, and others have accused him to the Roman governor. Yet he did in effect declare the thing, though he denied the particular title.For in a multitude of places he represented himself, both as the Son of man, and as the Son of God: both which expressions were generally understood by the Jews as peculiarly applicable to the Messiah.