The Woman of Samaria

For the List of the "Women of the Bible", click Blog Archive, 2008 December

16 Questions & Answers
Scripture Reference: John 4:1-42

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#1. True or False. The 'Woman of Samaria' given as her name in this story may be appropriate rather than her real name.

#1. True. Everybody knows Woman means an adult female human being. The teaching method of Jesus lay not in her name, but the political and religious relation of Samaritans with Jews serve a better understanding and implication of this particular story.
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#2. How Jesus happened to be at the well to meet with this ordinary woman?

#2. John 4:3-6. When the Lord learned of this(=hostility of Pharisees), he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour(=noon).
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#3. Describe a brief religious history of Samaria to understand this context?

#3. When one church brands another a cult, it usually creates long-standing bitterness. The Samaritans and the Jews felt that way about each other. Samaritan religion closely resembled Judaism, but on key issues its followers had gone their own way.

Forty-two miles north of Jerusalem lie the ruins of ancient Samaria near a small village called Sebastiya. Samaria was the capital, residence, and burial place of the kings of Israel (1 Kings 16:23-28; 1 Kings 22:37; 2 Kings 6:24-30). Following the Northern Kingdom's fall to Assyria (721 B.C.), exiles from many nations settled Samaria (Ezra 4:9-10). Later, the Greeks conquered the region (331 B.C.) and hellenized the area with Greek inhabitants and culture. After a long period without inhabitants, Samaria lived again under the Romans (63 B.C.). Finally, Herod the Great obtained control of Samaria in 30 BC. and made it one of the chief cities of his territory. Again, the city was resettled with people from distant places, this time mercenaries from Europe. Herod renamed the city Sebaste, using the Greek word for Augustus, the emperor. When the Jews revolted in 66 A.D., the Romans reconquered the city and destroyed it. The Romans later rebuilt Samaria, but the city never regained the prestige it once had. Samaria is the only major city founded in Israel (the Northern Kingdom) by Omri, the sixth king of Israel (885-874 B.C.).
When Ahab, Omri's son, became king of Israel, he built an ivory palace at Samaria. Amos denounced him for doing this (Amos 6:1,Amos 6:4; 1 Kings 22:39). Jezebel influenced Ahab, her husband, to make the city the center for Baal worship (1 Kings 16:29-33). Jezebel also had many prophets of Yahweh killed in Samaria (1 Kings 18:2-4).

After the Assyrian conquest, Samaria began to shrink in size. By New Testament times, it became identified with the central region of Palestine, with Galilee to the north and Judea to the south. When Assyrian captives from distant places settled there (2 Kings 17:24) this led to the intermarriage of some, though not all, Jews with Gentiles and to widespread worship of foreign gods. By the time the Jews returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem, Ezra and Nehemiah refused to let the Samaritans share in the experience (Ezra 4:1-3; Nehemiah 4:7). The old antagonism between Israel to the north and Judah to the south intensified the quarrel.

The Jewish inhabitants of Samaria identified Mount Gerizim as the chosen place of God and the only center of worship. Their scriptures were limited to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The Samaritans expected a Messiah, but their rejection of all the inspired writings after the Pentateuch meant that they knew little about him. They thought of him mainly as a teacher. Moses was regarded as the only prophet and intercessor in the final judgment. They also believed that 6,000 years after creation, a Restorer would arise and would live on earth for 110 years. On the Judgment Day, the righteous would be resurrected in paradise and the wicked roasted in eternal fire.
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#4. The woman said the well was deep. How much was it deep?

#4. Christian pilgrim sources as early as the fourth century mention a well in this area that was about 100 feet deep. When the present well was cleaned out in 1935, it was found to be 138 feet deep. Jacob's well is mentioned only in the Scripture in
Jn 4:6.
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#5. What was the belief of Jews if they drink out of a vessel handled by a Samaritan?

#5. A Jew would become ceremonially unclean if he used a drinking vessel handled by a Samaritan, since the Jews held that all Samaritans were "unclean."
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#6. In the days of Christ, the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans was greatly strained. Can you name the things Jesus did to improve this situation by reaching across the barriers?

#6. In the days of Christ, the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans was greatly strained (Luke 9:52-54; Luke 10:25-37; Luke 17:11-19; John 8:48). The animosity was so great that the Jews bypassed Samaria as they traveled between Galilee and Judea. They went an extra distance through the barren land of Perea on the eastern side of the Jordan to avoid going through Samaria.

Yet Jesus:
a)rebuked His disciples for their hostility to the Samaritans(Luke 9:55-56),
b)healed a Samaritan leper (Luke 17:16),
c)honored a Samaritan for his neighborliness (Luke 10:30-37),
d)praised a Samaritan for his gratitude (Luke 17:11-18),
e)preached to the Samaritans (John 4:40-42).
f)In Acts 1:8, Jesus challenged His disciples to witness in Samaria.
(Philip, a deacon, opened a mission in Samaria - Acts 8:5),
g)and even Jesus asked a drink of a promiscuous Samaritan woman beside a well(John 4:7).
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#7. How many times Jesus told before his trial that he is the Messiah?

#7. Jn 4:26 "I who speak to you am he". This is the only occasion before his trial on which Jesus specifically declared that he was the Messiah. (See also Mk 9:41).
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#8. "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty". Who said this and what was the occasion?

#8. Samaritan woman requested Jesus at the well.
Jn 4:10-15 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." 11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" 13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
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#9. One of the constantly recurring contrasts in the Gospels is the repudiation of Jesus by the religious leaders of his nation. But what does the story of the Samaritan woman reemphasize about Jesus to us?

#9. The acceptance of Jesus by the outcasts, sinners, and common people.
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#10. Why the disciples were surprised when they came back to Jesus after the shopping trip in Sychar?

#10. Jn 4:27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

Jewish religious teachers rarely spoke with women in public. Jesus seemed refreshed and restored by his encounter with the woman, though he had arrived at the well thirsty, hungry, and tired from the journey towards Galilee in north.
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#11. Jesus clearly commanded, "how to worship God". What was it?

#11. Jn4:24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
This fact has great importance for the proper understanding of Christian worship.
(Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity. Don't get confused with the context).

The place of worship is irrelevant, because true worship must be in keeping with God's nature, which is spirit. In John's Gospel truth is associated with Christ
Jn 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jn 17:17 your word is truth.

Jn 8:31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

1 Cor 14:15 So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.

Phipp 3:3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—
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#12. What was the end result of Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman?

#12. Dodge, counter dodge- nothing the woman said would keep Jesus satisfied. He kept pressing beneath the surface, inviting her to a deeper understanding, by revealing his knowledge of the most intimate details of her life. When she finally admitted the truth, Jesus startled her with a revelation about himself: for the first time he admitted that he was the Messiah.

She immediately left and began telling people, “He told me everything I have ever done” (John 4:39). Many Samaritans believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony. At the Samaritan's urging, Jesus stayed on for 2 days with them and many more came to believe. Thus the woman helped to proclaim the gospel. Also the visit of Jesus laid the groundwork for the hearty reception of the Gospel by the Samaritans a few years later (Acts 8:4-8).
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#13. What would have been the Samaritan woman's sorrow?

#13. She have lived in a way with many romantic liaisons that relegated her to the margins of her society. Though she helped to spread the Word after the encounter with the Lord, she would not have been most people's first choice to advance the gospel in a region where it had not yet been heard.
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#14. True or False. Jesus told the woman of Samaria, "You must be born again".

#14. False. (Jn 3:7) If Jesus had said this to the Samaritan woman, Nicodemus would have agreed with Jesus. But the wonderful teachings about "eternal life, His love and the new birth", Jesus taught the Israel's prominent religious teacher, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, and a respected interpretter of God's Law, Nicodemus.
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#15. What is the meaning of the term Messiah?

#15. 1.In Christianity, Jesus Christ regarded as the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.
2. In the Hebrew Bible, an anointed king who will lead the Jews back to the land of Israel and establish justice in the world.

The term became the official title of the central figure of a deliverer and redeemer which the writers of the New Testament considered to be fulfilled in Jesus.
(Jewish messianic hope in the first century was considerably diverse, and different concepts of the Messiah were in circulation at the time of Jesus).
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#16. Give 2 promises in Scripture about hunger?

#16. 1. Matt 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
2. Luke 6:21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
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