Verse one of chapter four must be read (if you wish to understand it) in a certain way. This is how: first read John 3:25 and 26 then immediately follow by reading John 4:1. In this way, we may clearly see just the issue of the quarrelsome Pharisees (A.K.A. “the Jews”) finding out that Jesus baptized in the same area and how people were turning to him. In other words, people were leaving the Baptist, whom the Pharisees addressed as 'Rabbi', and were flocking to Jesus, whom the Pharisees addressed as 'Rabbi'.
Look closely at the important details. The author addressed Jesus as 'the Lord'. This tells of an author who has written his account after the fact – after an opinion has fully formed. Then, we see that Jesus got wind of the Pharisees. He knew that they knew. For the moment, I will lay aside whether he just knew by his Son of God powers or whether he was informed. Instead, I wish to think about his reason for leaving when he found out.
Jesus saw the approach of a storm. So, was he trying simply to avoid the hassle of dealing with combative and confrontational Pharisees? Did Jesus decide to leave in consideration of his cousin John? Here is another important detail. According to the author, Jesus did not baptize. His disciples baptized. We find that in verse two. In all likelihood, this was a critical time in the early training of his disciples. Jesus was teaching them, supervising their initial efforts. I think that when he knew the Pharisees were aware of his presence and actions, and he was certain they would come and interrupt the training of his disciples, he packed up the operation for that reason.
Things we must consider about the march are, one, the Jews had a longstanding bigotry against Samaria and Samaritans. It was a good bet that the Pharisees would not follow. Two, the march from an area near Jerusalem, in Judaea, to Sychar, (Aschar) in Samaria, was on the order of thirty or forty miles. The trip would have taken two or three days.
We find Jesus stopping to sit at Jacob's well at the sixth hour. There are, believe it or not, two interpretations of when the sixth hour could have been. It could have been 6 AM according to Roman time or noon according to Hebrew time. On the meeting between the woman and Jesus at Jacob's well, I will leave much unsaid. There are church sermons for that. There are, however, a few points I wish to touch on.
Jesus stopped to sit on the well. He was tired. His disciples had gone on to “the city to buy meat.” Two things occur to me in reading this. One is that the disciples had money that someone had to provide. Two is that the well seems more attached to a “city” than most scholars think. They suppose the well to have been approachable by way of extended suburbs.
A point is made in this narrative about Jesus being “a Jew.” I bring this up for a reason. History of the area saw early Israelites transported to Babylon, being supplanted by Babylonian people, as was the custom of the time. Samaritans were a people of mixed race as well as mixed religion. They were easily identifiable as such by the purebloods of the southern third of the nation. The upper third of the nation suffered the same fate and became a people of mixed race with a more lax take on religious practice than those of the south. As such, the Galileans were also easily identifiable.
Jesus was a Galilean. The exchange at the well shows me two things. A Samaritan woman identifies herself with the descendants of Jacob – in other words, she claims to be an Israelite, or Hebrew, by choice. Then, there is the fact that she calls an easily identifiable Galilean a Jew. At this point, I am reminded of the language of the author. So far in the initial chapters of this gospel, the author uses the term “Jews” to reference the religious elite (Pharisees, etc.) of the southern third. Is the fact that Jesus is here called a Jew not a misidentification but rather a hint that he is identifiable as a Rabbi?
This woman also takes a wild guess that Jesus might be a prophet. Prophets and Rabbis were different creatures altogether. While prophets were singular individuals imbued with the power and knowledge of God through direct contact, Rabbis were associated with the religious governance of the nation by the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, Sadducees, and a whole slew of legalistic Doctors of the law.
The thing about Rabbis is that they dressed liked Rabbis. I pulled this conjecture from Christianity Stack Exchange: 'It seems from Mt 9:20, 14:36, Mk 6:56 that Jesus may have worn the same kind of fringes or tassels (tzitziyot), similarly commanded in the Law, albeit presumably his were not as long as those of the Pharisees.'
Notes on John four verses twenty through twenty-four. The woman tells Jesus “our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” This statement sets a limited contrast. She has already identified herself with the children of Israel and she has already identified Jesus as a “Jew” rather than a Galilean. Her statement here adds yet more support to both identifications.
More than this, the answer Jesus gives in verse twenty-one validates her identification with Jacob. Jesus, although he says in verse twenty-two, “Ye worship ye know not what,” nevertheless, asserts in verse twenty-one that she and her people worship the “Father.” He says to her, “believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.”
In that he told her, “Ye worship ye know not what,” I think he referenced a less articulate, less disciplined approach to worship.
When Jesus says, “we know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews,” one's first impression might well be that of nationalistic pride issuing from the lips of the Lord. But notice two things: Jesus said “we” and “of the Jews.” Clearly, Jesus was a Galilean. Yet, it appears that he is, in fact, identifying with the Jews. His identification is not with the race of Jews, but rather, it is with the body of those who adhere to the law of God. Jesus is pretty much saying, 'Yes, I am one of those guys.'
Easily identified by anyone as “a Jew,” and called “Rabbi” by religious leaders – we should sit up and actually take notice; the language is plain. Jesus was no rogue teacher outside of the religious order, but one of the order's staunchest advocates of God's law. It is also plain that the complaint Jesus most often leveled against the body of governing religious leaders was that they did not take the law as seriously as they should.
Finally, Jesus explains the deal about God in verses twenty-three and twenty-four. “God is a spirit.” God is a spirit who seeks people who will worship him “in spirit.” Jesus tells this, not to an expert, but to a layperson. Did the woman understand what a spirit is? Do we? This particular point is important for it touches on the very nature of God, and in no less degree, the very nature of man. For a person to be able to worship in spirit, he or she must have spirit to work with. Jesus called God a spirit, but he also said we know (not 'who' but) what we worship. God is a what; God is a spirit. That 'what' must be a part of a person's total makeup and able to connect.
In order to worship God, we must call upon the same 'what' inside of ourselves – the same 'God' inside of ourselves. Jesus also said that we must worship God in 'truth.' Did not Jesus say, “I am the truth?” In a broader sense, however, what we are looking at is a contrast. It is a contrast within the nature of man.
On the one hand, there is spirit. On the other hand, there is truth. There is a certain undeniable fact about the abilities of man – in other words, what we are able to do. We can achieve a thing only by the two routes that are available to us. We can think and/or communicate about something and we can actually perform the thought or communication. What it all comes down to is that a man has a mind (spirit) and a man has all that he can be and do (truth.)
Verses twenty-five through thirty-eight. There are two things of note in these verses. The first thing is the woman being convinced that Jesus was the Christ. The second thing is the truth that Jesus taught his returning disciples.
The disciples returned to find Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman. This raised red flags in their general predispositions toward those people, but they were not bold enough to say, 'Hey, what are you doing? She's a Samaritan.' The disciples returned just as Jesus told the woman he was the Christ. Maybe they caught it, maybe not, but someone remembered it and wrote it down.
When Jesus turned his attention to the returning disciples, the woman slipped away to run to town and tell her immediate peers about Jesus. On this point, I would like to draw the reader's attention to facts mostly overlooked. The woman was excited enough about meeting Jesus that she left her waterpot to fetch her friends. Such items were not disposable as our items are today. They were hard-won and guarded.
There were, basically two conversations at play, one with the woman while the disciples went to town and another with the disciples while the woman went to town and return with townsfolk in tow. Judging the respective lengths of the two conversations should give us a fair idea as to the walking distance between town and well.
They had walked a long way to get to the well. Jesus was tired. The disciples begged him to rest and eat. He told them he was sustained by the doing of God's will and his own keen interest in finishing the work. He taught them a lesson, a truth, while the woman left and returned.
He told them not to have a limited view as in the harvest being a ways off, or a limited view as in only paying attention to the immediate field. He told them to take a broader view. Others had already labored and there were already other fields ready for harvest.
Let's take a reverse-order look at verses thirty-five through thirty-seven. Verse thirty-seven: “And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth.” Does the word 'One' reference “him that sent me” from verse thirty-four? Verse thirty-six: “And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.” Does Jesus refer to himself and people like him as sowers and disciples as reapers?
The reaper gets two things out of reaping (and we are still thinking about the will and work of God;) the reaper gets wages and the reaper gets fruit. The fruit is 'unto' life eternal – it is directional as in a process. Fruit builds toward a goal. What are the wages? Are they different from the goal? If the goal is in the future, are the wages for present maintenance?
Verse thirty-five: “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look upon the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” Jesus challenges the notion that there is still time. The four months is a reference to spring wheat which is cut down before the season of autumn, around July. The point he makes is that other people have sown other fields – look up, they are everywhere.
The saying, “One soweth, and another reapeth,” must have been a common and localized saying as I could not find it in the Old Testament. As for the expression, “rejoice together,” I am mindful of Psalms 104:15, “And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.” On that same note of rejoicing together, I am mindful of Matthew 26:29, “But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.”
Back to the Samaritan woman. She was a member of a society largely shunned by the Jews, yet, they also looked for the coming Messiah. They don't impress me as the kind of people who worshiped other gods or resorted to groves to sacrifice children on pagan alters – they, like the Jews, believed in the God of their fathers and awaited the coming Christ. The woman did not have to say much to the men in town to pique their interest, to get them all to run out to the well.
So the Samaritans believed that Jesus was the Messiah. They just ran out, listened a bit – and, Bam! – they believed. Why did the Jews and the Galileans have such a hard time believing? Jesus stayed in that town for two days, but the author failed to write anything said or done by him during his stay. Did he stay with the Samaritans who believed? Where did he put up his disciples?
After his stay, Jesus and his disciples go to Cana, in Galilee, where the author reminds us that Jesus performed his first miracle. The author was counting miracles. He recounts the second miracle.
Two cities are mentioned in the story of the second miracle. Those cities are Cana and Capernaum. The distance between these two cities is roughly twenty-five miles. The nobleman who came to see Jesus, having wealth, would have traveled in a mode of ease. Rather than walk, I think he would have ridden a mule or horse or gone in an animal-drawn cart.
Here, I wish to consider the travel time between the two cities. Time is recorded. Between the time of the meeting and the time where servants brought news of the son's recovery, about a day had passed. The nobleman, at the time of his conversation with his servants, counted the hours since Jesus told him his son was alright. That was on the previous day at the seventh hour. He, basically, began his return journey at the seventh hour.
Ellicott's commentary for English readers gives this, “These Jews, as all Jews, meant by the “seventh hour” the seventh from sunrise, what we should call one o’clock. After sunset the same evening they would have commenced a new day (comp. Excursus F.), and this seventh hour would be to them as one o’clock the day before, or the seventh hour yesterday. We have thus an interval of five or six hours between the words spoken by our Lord and their confirmation by the servants.”
It appears that the nobleman, most likely, met with Jesus at around 1 in the afternoon and met with his servants some five or six hours later.
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