John 4

Joh 4:1-42.

CHRIST AND THE

WOMAN OF

SAMARIA--THE

SAMARITANS OF

SYCHAR.

1-4. the Lord knew--not by report, but in the sense of

Joh 2:25,

for which reason He is here styled "the Lord."

2. Jesus baptized not--John being a servant baptized with his own hand;

Christ as the Master, "baptizing with the Holy Ghost," administered the

outward symbol only through His disciples.

3. left Judea--to avoid persecution, which at that early stage would

have marred His work.

departed into Galilee--by which time John had been cast into prison

(Mr 1:14).

4. must needs go through Samaria--for a geographical reason, no doubt,

as it lay straight in his way, but certainly not without a higher

design.

5. cometh . . . to--that is, as far as: for He remained at some

distance from it.

Sychar--the "Shechem" of the Old Testament, about thirty-four miles

from Jerusalem, afterwards called "Neapolis," and now "Nablous."

6-8. wearied . . . sat thus--that is, "as you might fancy a weary

man would"; an instance of the graphic style of St. John [WEBSTER and

WILKINSON]. In fact, this is perhaps the most human of all the

scenes of our Lord's earthly history. We seem to be beside Him,

overhearing all that is here recorded, nor could any painting of the

scene on canvas, however perfect, do other than lower the conception

which this exquisite narrative conveys to the devout and intelligent

reader. But with all that is human, how much also of the divine

have we here, both blended in one glorious manifestation of the majesty,

grace, pity, patience with which "the Lord" imparts light and life to

this unlikeliest of strangers, standing midway between Jews and

heathens.

the sixth hour--noonday, reckoning from six

A.M. From

So 1:7

we know, as from other sources, that the very flocks "rested at noon."

But Jesus, whose maxim was, "I must work the works of Him that sent Me

while it is day"

(Joh 9:4),

seems to have denied Himself that repose, at least on this occasion,

probably that He might reach this well when He knew the woman would be

there. Once there, however, He accepts . . . the grateful

ease of a seat on the patriarchal stone. But what music is that which I

hear from His lips, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy

laden, and I will give you rest"

(Mt 11:28).

7. Give me to drink--for the heat of a noonday sun had parched His

lips. But "in the last, that great day of the feast," Jesus stood and

cried, saying, "If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink"

(Joh 7:37).

9-12. How is it that thou--not altogether refusing, yet wondering at

so unusual a request from a Jew, as His dress and dialect would at once

discover Him to be, to a Samaritan.

for, &c.--It is this national antipathy that gives point to the

parable of the good Samaritan

(Lu 10:30-37),

and the thankfulness of the Samaritan leper

(Lu 17:16, 18).

10. If thou knewest, &c.--that is, "In Me thou seest only a petitioner

to thee but if thou knewest who that Petitioner is, and the Gift that

God is giving to men, thou wouldst have changed places with Him, gladly

suing of Him living water--nor shouldst thou have sued in vain" (gently

reflecting on her for not immediately meeting His request).

12. Art thou greater, &c.--already perceiving in this Stranger a claim

to some mysterious greatness.

our father Jacob--for when it went well with the Jews, they claimed

kindred with them, as being descended from Joseph; but when misfortunes

befell the Jews, they disowned all connection with them [JOSEPHUS,

Antiquities, 9.14,3].

13, 14. thirst again . . . never thirst, &c.--The contrast here is

fundamental and all comprehensive. "This water" plainly means "this

natural water and

all satisfactions of a like earthly and perishable nature." Coming

to us from without, and reaching only the superficial parts of

our nature, they are soon spent, and need to be anew supplied as much

as if we had never experienced them before, while the deeper wants of

our being are not reached by them at all; whereas the "water" that

Christ gives--spiritual life--is struck out of the very depths of

our being, making the soul not a cistern, for holding water

poured into it from without, but a fountain (the word had

been better so rendered, to distinguish it from the word rendered

"well" in

Joh 4:11),

springing, gushing, bubbling up and flowing forth within us,

ever fresh, ever living. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost as the

Spirit of Christ is the secret of this life with all its enduring

energies and satisfactions, as is expressly said

(Joh 7:37-39).

"Never thirsting," then, means simply that such souls have the supplies

at home.

into everlasting life--carrying the thoughts up from the eternal

freshness and vitality of these waters to the great ocean in which they

have their confluence. "Thither may I arrive!" [BENGEL].

15-18. give me this water, &c.--This is not obtuseness--that is giving

way--it expresses a wondering desire after she scarce knew what from

this mysterious Stranger.

16. call thy husband--now proceeding to arouse her slumbering

conscience by laying bare the guilty life she was leading, and by the

minute details which that life furnished, not only bringing her sin

vividly up before her, but preparing her to receive in His true

character that wonderful Stranger to whom her whole life, in its

minutest particulars, evidently lay open.

19, 20. Sir, I perceive, &c.--Seeing herself all revealed, does

she now break down and ask what hopes there might be for one so guilty?

Nay, her convictions have not reached that point yet. She ingeniously

shifts the subject from a personal to a public question. It is not,

"Alas, what a wicked life am I leading!" but "Lo, what a wonderful

prophet I got into conversation with! He will be able to settle that

interminable dispute between us and the Jews. Sir, you must know all

about such matters--our fathers hold to this mountain here," pointing

to Gerizim in Samaria, "as the divinely consecrated place of

worship, but ye Jews say that Jerusalem is the proper

place--which of us is right?" How slowly does the human heart submit to

thorough humiliation! (Compare the prodigal; see on

Lu 15:15).

Doubtless our Lord saw through the fetch; but does He say, "That

question is not the point just now, but have you been living in the way

described, yea or nay? Till this is disposed of I cannot be drawn into

theological controversies." The Prince of preachers takes another

method: He humors the poor woman, letting her take her own way,

allowing her to lead while He follows--but thus only the more

effectually gaining His object. He answers her question, pours light

into her mind on the spirituality of all true worship, as of its

glorious Object, and so brings her insensibly to the point at which He

could disclose to her wondering mind whom she was all the while

speaking to.

21-24. Woman, &c.--Here are three weighty pieces of information:

(1) The point raised will very soon cease to be of any moment, for a

total change of dispensation is about to come over the Church. (2) The

Samaritans are wrong, not only as to the place, but the whole

grounds and nature of their worship, while in all these respects

the truth lies with the Jews. (3) As God is a Spirit, so He both

invites and demands a spiritual worship, and already all is

in preparation for a spiritual economy, more in harmony with the

true nature of acceptable service than the ceremonial worship by

consecrated persons, place, and times, which God for a time has

seen meet to keep up till fulness of the time should come.

neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem--that is, exclusively

(Mal 1:11;

1Ti 2:8).

worship the Father--She had talked simply of "worship"; our Lord brings

up before her the great OBJECT of all acceptable

worship--"THE

FATHER."

22. Ye worship ye know not what--without any revealed authority, and so very much in the dark. In this sense, the

Jews

knew what they were about. But the most glorious thing here is the

reason assigned,

for salvation is of the Jews--intimating to her that Salvation

was not a thing left to be reached by any one who might vaguely desire

it of a God of mercy, but something that had been

revealed, prepared, deposited with a particular people, and must be

sought in connection with, and as issuing from them; and that people,

"the Jews."

23. hour cometh, and now is--evidently meaning her to understand that

this new economy was in some sense being set up while He was talking to

her, a sense which would in a few minutes so far appear, when He told

her plainly He was the Christ.

25, 26. I know Messias cometh . . . when He is come, &c.--If we

take our Lord's immediate disclosure of Himself, in answer to this, as

the proper key to its meaning to His ear, we can hardly doubt that

the woman was already

all but prepared for even this startling announcement, which indeed

she seems (from

Joh 4:29)

to have already begun to suspect by His revealing her to herself. Thus

quickly, under so matchless a Teacher, was she brought up from her

sunken condition to a frame of mind and heart capable of the noblest

revelations.

tell us all things--an expectation founded probably on

De 18:15.

26. I that speak . . . am he--He scarce ever said anything like this to

His own people, the Jews. He had magnified them to the woman, and yet to

themselves He is to the last far more reserved than to her--proving

rather than plainly telling them He was the Christ. But what would

not have been safe among them was safe enough with her, whose

simplicity at this stage of the conversation appears from the sequel

to have become perfect. What now will the woman say? We listen, the

scene has changed, a new party arrives, the disciples have been to

Sychar, at some distance, to buy bread, and on their return are

astonished at the company their Lord has been holding in their absence.

27. marvelled that he talked with the woman--It never probably occurred

to them to marvel that He talked with themselves; yet in His eye, as

the sequel shows, He was quite as nobly employed. How poor, if not

false, are many of our most plausible estimates!

no man said . . . What? . . . Why?--awed by the spectacle, and thinking

there must be something under it.

28-30. left her water-pot--How exquisitely natural! The presence of

strangers made her feel that it was time for her to withdraw, and He who

knew what was in her heart, and what she was going to the city to do,

let her go without exchanging a word with her in the hearing of others.

Their interview was too sacred, and the effect on the woman too

overpowering (not to speak of His own deep emotion) to allow of its

being continued. But this one artless touch--that she "left her

water-pot"--speaks volumes. The living water was already beginning to

spring up within her; she found that man doth not live by bread nor by

water only, and that there was a water of wondrous virtue that raised

people above meat and drink, and the vessels that held them, and all

human things. In short, she was transported, forgot everything but One,

and her heart running over with the tale she had to tell, she hastens

home and pours it out.

29. is not this the Christ--The form of the question (in the

Greek) is a distant, modest way of only half insinuating what it

seemed hardly fitting for her to affirm; nor does she refer to what He

said of Himself, but solely to His disclosure to her of the particulars

of her own life.

30. Then they went out, &c.--How different from the Jews! and richly

was their openness to conviction rewarded.

31-38. meantime--that is, while the woman was away.

Master, eat--Fatigue and thirst we saw He felt; here is

revealed another of our common infirmities to which the Lord was

subject--hunger.

32. meat ye know not of--What spirituality of mind! "I have been

eating all the while, and such food as ye dream not of." What can that

be? they ask each other; have any supplies been brought Him in our

absence? He knows what they are saying though He hears it not.

34. My meat is, &c.--"A Servant here to fulfil a prescribed work, to

do and to finish, that is 'meat' to Me; and of this, while you

were away, I have had My fill." And of what does He speak thus? Of the

condescension, pity, patience, wisdom He had been laying out upon

one soul--a very humble woman, and in some respects repulsive too!

But He had gained her, and through her was going to gain more, and lay

perhaps the foundations of a great work in the country of Samaria; and

this filled His whole soul and raised Him above the sense of natural

hunger

(Mt 4:4).

35. yet four months, and then harvest--that is, "In current speech,

ye say thus at this season; but lift up your eyes and look upon those

fields in the light of another husbandry, for lo! in that sense,

they are even now white to harvest, ready for the sickle." The simple

beauty of this language is only surpassed by the glow of holy emotion in

the Redeemer's own soul which it expresses. It refers to the

ripeness of these Sycharites for accession to Him, and the joy of

this great Lord of the reapers over the anticipated ingathering. Oh,

could we but so, "lift up our eyes and look" upon many fields abroad

and at home, which to dull sense appear unpromising, as He beheld

those of Samaria, what movements, as yet scarce in embryo, and

accessions to Christ, as yet seemingly far distant, might we not discern

as quite near at hand, and thus, amidst difficulties and discouragements

too much for nature to sustain, be cheered--as our Lord Himself was

in circumstances far more overwhelming--with "songs in the night!"

36. he that reapeth, &c.--As our Lord could not mean that the reaper

only, and not the sower, received "wages," in the sense of

personal reward for his work, the "wages" here can be no other than

the joy of having such a harvest to gather in--the joy of "gathering

fruit unto life eternal."

rejoice together--The blessed issue of the whole ingathering is the

interest alike of the sower as of the reaper; it is no more the fruit of

the last operation than of the first; and just as there can be no

reaping without previous sowing, so have those servants of Christ, to

whom is assigned the pleasant task of merely reaping the spiritual

harvest, no work to do, and no joy to taste, that has not been prepared

to their hand by the toilsome and often thankless work of their

predecessors in the field. The joy, therefore,

of the great harvest festivity will be the common joy of all who have taken any part in the work from the first operation to

the last. (See

De 16:11, 14;

Ps 126:6;

Isa 9:3).

What encouragement is here for those "fishers of men" who "have toiled

all the night" of their official life, and, to human appearance, "have

taken nothing!"

38. I sent you, &c.--The I is emphatic--I, the Lord of the whole

harvest: "sent you," points to their past appointment to the

apostleship, though it has reference only to their future discharge

of it, for they had nothing to do with the present ingathering of the

Sycharites.

ye bestowed no labour--meaning that much of their future success

would arise from the preparation already made for them. (See on

Joh 4:42).

others laboured--Referring to the Old Testament laborers, the Baptist,

and by implication Himself, though He studiously keeps this in the

background, that the line of distinction between Himself and all His

servants might not be lost sight of. "Christ represents Himself as the

Husbandman [rather the Lord of the laborers], who has the direction both

of the sowing and of the harvest, who commissions all the agents--those

of the Old Testament as well as of the New--and therefore does not stand

on a level with either the sowers or the reapers" [OLSHAUSEN].

39-42. many . . . believed, &c.--The truth of

Joh 4:35

begins to appear. These Samaritans were the foundation of the Church

afterwards built up there. No miracle appears to have been wrought

there (but unparalleled supernatural knowledge displayed): "we have

heard Him ourselves"

(Joh 4:42)

sufficed to raise their faith to a point never attained by the Jews,

and hardly as yet by the disciples--that He was "the Saviour of the

world" [ALFORD]. "This incident is further

remarkable as a rare instance of the Lord's ministry producing an

awakening on a large scale" [OLSHAUSEN].

40. abode two days--Two precious days, surely, to the Redeemer Himself!

Unsought, He had come to His own, yet His own received Him not: now

those who were not His own had come to Him, been won by Him, and invited

Him to their town that others might share with them in the benefit of

His wonderful ministry. Here, then, would He solace His already wounded

spirit and have in this outfield village triumph of His grace, a sublime

foretaste of the inbringing of the whole Gentile world into the Church.

Joh 4:43-54.

SECOND

GALILEAN

MIRACLE--HEALING OF THE

COURTIER'S

SON.

43, 44. after two days--literally, the two days of His stay at Sychar.

44. For Jesus testified, &c.--This verse had occasioned much

discussion. For it seems strange, if "His own country" here means

Nazareth, which was in Galilee, that it should be said He came to

Galilee because in one of its towns He expected no good reception.

But all will be simple and natural if we fill up the statement thus: "He

went into the region of Galilee, but not, as might have been expected,

to that part of it called 'His own country,' Nazareth (see

Mr 6:4;

Lu 4:24),

for He acted on the maxim which He oft repeated, that 'a

prophet,'" &c.

45. received--welcomed Him.

having seen . . . at the feast--proud, perhaps, of their Countryman's

wonderful works at Jerusalem, and possibly won by this circumstance to

regard His claims as at least worthy of respectful investigation. Even

this our Lord did not despise, for saving conversion often begins in

less than this (so Zaccheus,

Lu 19:3-10).

for they also went--that is, it was their practice to go up to the

feast.

46, 47. nobleman--courtier, king's servant, or one connected with a

royal household; such as Chuza

(Lu 8:3),

or Manaen

(Ac 13:1).

heard that Jesus was come out of Judea--"where he had doubtless seen

or heard what things Jesus had done at Jerusalem"

(Joh 4:45),

[BENGEL].

come down--for Capernaum was down on the northwest shore of the Sea

of Galilee.

48-54. Except ye see signs, &c.--He did believe, both as his

coming and his urgent entreaty show; but how imperfectly we shall see;

and our Lord would deepen his faith by such a blunt and seemingly rough

answer as He made to Nicodemus.

49. come down ere my child die--"While we talk, the case is at its

crisis, and if Thou come not instantly, all is over." This was faith,

but partial, and our Lord would perfect it. The man cannot believe the

cure could be wrought without the Physician coming to the patient--the

thought of such a thing evidently never occurred to him. But Jesus will

in a moment bring him up to this.

50. Go thy way; thy son liveth--Both effects instantaneously

followed:--"The man believed the word," and the cure, shooting quicker

than lightning from Cana to Capernaum, was felt by the dying youth. In

token of faith, the father takes his leave of Christ--in the

circumstances this evidenced full faith. The servants hasten to convey

the joyful tidings to the anxious parents, whose faith now only wants

one confirmation. "When began he to amend? . . . Yesterday, at the

seventh hour, the fever left him"--the very hour in which was uttered

that great word, "Thy son liveth!" So "himself believed and his whole

house." He had believed before this, first very imperfectly; then

with assured confidence of Christ's word; but now with a faith crowned

household. "To-day is salvation come to this house"

(Lu 19:9);

and no mean house this!

second miracle Jesus did--that is, in Cana; done "after He came out

of Judea," as the former before.