Translated by Claude.
Jesus has decided to leave Judea, apparently to avoid trouble from the Pharisees (Jn 4:1-3). The shortest route from Judea to Galilee led through Samaria (Jn 4:4); the usual pilgrim route of the Galileans to Jerusalem also passed through this land (Josephus, Antiquities 20.6.1). Only very strict Jews avoided Samaria, which they detested (Jn 4:9), and made the detour through Perea. Christ also set aside this prejudice on other occasions (cf. Luke 9:21).
From Judea to Galilee Via Samaria
Jn 4:5: "He comes to a city of Samaria (not: "into a city of Samaria," v. 28ff.), which is called Sychar, near the field which Jacob gave to Joseph, his son." Instead of Συχάρ (Sychar), which the vast majority of witnesses read, the Received Text has Σιχάρ (Sichar), and accordingly the printed Vulgate has Sichar.
It is probably the same city that in the Old Testament (cf. Genesis 33:18; Joshua 20:7; Judges 9:7; and other passages), in the Septuagint is called Συχέμ (Sychem) and Σίκιμα (Sikima), later bore the name Flavia Neapolis in honor of Emperor Vespasian, and is now called Nablus. It lies in a pleasant valley between the mountains Gerizim and Ebal, about 18 hours from Jerusalem and 16 from Nazareth.
The name Συχάρ (Sychar) appears only here, and the question arises: why did the Evangelist change the common name Sychem to Sychar? Some derive this designation from סוכר, "the purchased" (from שכר = סכר, "to buy"), thus here, perhaps with allusion to Ezra 4:5, the land which Jacob bought at Sychem according to Genesis 33:19. Since according to Joshua 24:32 the bones of Joseph, and according to tradition the bones of all twelve patriarchs were buried there, the rabbis could also render its meaning as "sepulcher" or "burial place." See Wieseler, Synopsis, pp. 256ff.
More probable, however, is that the Evangelist with this designation alludes to the Hebrew word שכר, i.e., "drunk" (cf. Isaiah 28:1), or to שקר, "lie, idolatry" (cf. Habakkuk 2:18), and thus with a slight modification makes the name express the nature of the place, designating the location either as a "drinking city" or as a "city of lies" or "heathen city."
This sort of thing lies entirely in the peculiarity of our Evangelist; we need only recall his self-designation. He constantly designates himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved: ὃν ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς. This designation is only an interpretation of his Hebrew name יוחנן, i.e., יהוה חנן = "beloved of God" (Gottlieb). The Evangelist sees in his name a prophecy that was fulfilled in his relationship to Jesus.
We find several analogies for such name changes in the Old Testament. Thus Hosea calls Bethel (house of God), profaned by idolatry, Bethaven (house of idols), Hosea 4:15; 5:8; 10:5. Thus in 2 Kings 1:2, the god of the Philistines בעל זבול, i.e., "lord of heaven," is transformed with a slight modification into בעל זבוב, i.e., "lord of flies," and in 2 Kings 23:13 the Mount of Olives, הר הזיתים, is called הר המשחית, i.e., "mount of corruption."
Through the name Συχάρ the Evangelist thus wants to point from the outset either to the drunkenness of the inhabitants of this city, or more probably to their false worship of God. Already Sirach (50:26) calls the Sychemites a λαὸς μωρός (foolish people). In the latter case, this name would form a kind of commentary on the Lord's words in v. 22: ὑμεῖς προσκυνεῖτε ὃ οὐκ οἶδατε ("you worship what you do not know").
Others, however (Hug, Meyer, Ewald), consider it more probable that Sychar was a separate city located near Sychem, namely the same one still called today with an Arabic-transformed name al-Askar, east of Nablus. The addition λεγομένη ("called") is supposed to indicate, as in 11:54, not such a large and generally known city as Sychem or Flavia Neapolis was at that time (Ewald).
In οὗ ἔδωκεν κ.τ.λ., οὗ is a genitive of attraction; the reading ὁ ἔδωκεν of the Received Text is a later correction. The fact to which reference is made here rests on Genesis 48:22 according to the translation of the Septuagint. For there, according to the original text, Jacob says to Joseph: "And I give you one portion (אחד שכם) above your brothers." The Septuagint translates this: ἐγὼ δὲ δίδωμί σοι Σίκιμα ἐξαίρετον ὑπὲρ τοὺς ἀδελφούς σου. They translate thus because according to tradition this portion was a field near Sychem; but this tradition was based again on Genesis 33:19, where Jacob buys a piece of land near Sychem, and on Joshua 24:32, where Joseph's bones are buried at Sychem in the field which Jacob had purchased, and the sons of Joseph receive it as a possession.
At Jacob's Well
Jn 4:6: On this field, a small half-hour south of Sychem, was a spring well (πηγή), which according to tradition was supposed to have been dug and used by Jacob. This well still exists today, though without spring water, and is held in high honor by the inhabitants of the region.
It was about the noon hour (ώρα ἦν ὡς ἕκτη, not: about six o'clock in the evening, Ewald) when Jesus arrived there, weary from the journey, and sat down thus, i.e., in this state of weariness, in the immediate vicinity (ἐπί) of the well. According to this reading, οὕτως takes up the participle κεκοπιακώς again and stands in the sense of "sic ut erat" (Win. p. 545). The Greek interpreters explain it through ἁπλῶς καὶ ὡς ἔτυχε, i.e., thus without further ado, unceremoniously on the ground, or, "on the spot" (Meyer). Through the precise time indication, the Evangelist wants to suggest the reason why Jesus was weary and thirsty, the woman fetched water, and the disciples food.
The Encounter
Jn 4:7-8: After the preceding introduction, which acquaints us with the occasion and the external situation, now follows the conversation itself, which continues until v. 27.
Σαμάρεια does not designate the city of Samaria—this lay two hours away and was no longer called Shomron at that time, but Sebaste; rather we must understand by it the region of Samaria. The ἐκ τῆς Σαμαρ. is therefore not to be connected with ἔρχεται but with γυνή, and an οὖσα is to be supplied; thus γυνὴ ἐκ τῆς Σαμαρείας means the same as Σαμαρεῖτις (a Samaritan woman).
With the words "Give me to drink," the Lord initiates the conversation in the simplest and most natural way. The parenthetical remark in v. 8 is then meant to explain (γάρ) why Jesus turned to the woman for a drink: "For the disciples had gone into the city to buy food," and had probably taken the travel equipment, which also included a water vessel (v. 11), with them.
Jn 4:9: The woman is astonished at the stranger's request, whom she recognizes as a Jew either by his speech or by his dress, and asks: "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" To explain this surprised question of the woman, the Evangelist adds: "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans."
Among the Jews it was considered law: No one should cultivate friendship with a Samaritan, no one should enter into the fellowship of bread and salt with him, indeed not even receive a drink of water from him for free. For the great ban lay upon the Samaritans. Already Sirach 50:25f. had said: "Two nations are hateful to my soul, and the third is no nation: the inhabitants of the mountain of Samaria, the Philistines, and the foolish people that dwell in Shechem." For more details about the Samaritans, see Matthew 10:5.
Living Water
Jn 4:10: In his answer, the Lord does not directly address the woman's surprised question; rather, setting aside his need, he seeks to raise her to an awareness of his higher dignity, namely by designating her meeting with him as a gracious dispensation of God and figuratively pointing to the heavenly gifts that he is able to give: "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, 'Give me to drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
ἡ δωρεὰ τοῦ θεοῦ (the gift of God) is not the Holy Spirit, as Augustine and others think, nor is it the person of Jesus himself, as Chrysostom and others want, but rather, as is evident from the epexegetical addition καὶ τίς ἐστιν ὁ λέγων σοι, the God-given opportunity to speak with Jesus. In σὺ ἂν ἤτησας the preceding σύ has the emphasis: the asking would have been done on your part.
The expression ὕδωρ ζῶν (living water) is ambiguous; it means first of all the same as the Hebrew מים חיים, "fresh spring water" in contrast to standing cistern water, and the woman takes it in this sense. But it can also, taken in a spiritual sense, designate "living and life-giving water," and the Lord understands it in this sense. Cf. Jeremiah 2:13; 17:13, where Yahweh is called "the fountain of living water."
Jesus means by this primarily his teaching, the communication of divine truth, which stills the inner longing of man for truth, the spiritual thirst, just as fresh spring water satisfies physical thirst and gives bodily refreshment. But since Christ and his teaching cannot be separated, since he himself as the primordial Word of God, as eternal truth, forms the content of his teaching, so that whoever accepts his teaching in faith takes him himself into himself, one can also say that by ὕδωρ ζῶν the Lord ultimately means himself, with his whole fullness of divine grace and truth (cf. 1:14). Thus the Greek interpreters, Erasmus, and others. Cf. Sirach 15:3; 24:21, where the divine σοφία is compared to water and to a πηγή (spring). Some interpreters wrongly want to understand this expression also of the Holy Spirit.
Jn 4:11-12: The curiosity of the easily excited woman is now awakened; the solemn εἰ ᾔδεις τίς ἐστιν ὁ λέγων σοι has instilled a certain respect in her; therefore she now addresses Jesus with κύριε (Lord). But this respect was only momentary and superficial in the frivolous woman; boldly and snippily she asks, not without an admixture of irony and in truly feminine loquacity:
"Sir, you have on the one hand no bucket, on the other hand the well is deep; from where then do you have the living water? You are not greater (of higher rank) than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons and his cattle?"
οὔτε - - καί (cf. 3 John 10) correspond to each other in the two parallel clauses (see Win. p. 438). ἄντλημα = haustrum is a drinking vessel with a cord, which in the Orient belongs to the necessary travel equipment. According to information from older travelers, Jacob's well is 105 feet deep and filled with about 15 feet of water. A more recent measurement has found a depth of 75 feet, but the spring water is now absent from it.
In μὴ σὺ μείζων κ.τ.λ. v. 12, the σύ is placed first with a certain contemptuous emphasis: "You don't look as if you were more capable and more distinguished than our father Jacob, who dug this well for us and to whom it was good enough to drink from himself with his family; how should you have different and better spring water!"
The Samaritans considered themselves descendants of Joseph (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 8.14.3; 11.8.6); hence: τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν Ἰακώβ (our father Jacob).
Water That Satisfies Forever
Jn 4:13-14: Jesus again does not answer directly the two questions of the woman: πόθεν ἔχεις and μὴ σὺ μείζων εἶ; rather he expounds to her the nature of that water which he wants to give, in contrast to natural water. If the woman has recognized this, her questions are answered by themselves.
Natural water stills physical thirst only for a time: "Everyone who drinks from this water will thirst again." The water, on the other hand, which the Lord gives and which he himself is with the fullness of his grace and truth, satisfies man and stills his longing forever: "But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will certainly not thirst in eternity."
To be compared is the passage Isaiah 55:1, where it says in reference to the messianic salvation: "Ho, all you who are thirsty, come to the water, etc.," a passage which without doubt hovered before the Lord here and to which he also points below in 7:37 (cf. also Isaiah 49:10).
But not only this: "but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water that springs into eternal life." Jesus wants to say by this: "If man drinks from this spiritual water which I give him, it will become in him an independently bubbling spring that reaches from this earthly existence into the next."
Or without metaphor: When man believingly receives Christ with the fullness of his grace and truth into himself, he becomes in him the actual life principle; man then no longer lives, but Christ lives in him (Galatians 2:20). All good works that he then performs proceed from this principle, as the river from its source; and these works are what lead him to eternal life. See Council of Trent, Session VI, chapter 16, on justification.
It should also be noted that the words οὐ μὴ διψήσει - δώσω αὐτῷ are absent in some witnesses and are therefore bracketed by Lachmann as suspect. However, their omission is easily explained by an oversight of the copyists, whose eye strayed from the first αὐτῷ immediately to the second.
Jn 4:15: The woman does not yet understand what the Lord wants to say, and while still referring his words to natural water, she says: "Sir, give me this water, so that I may not thirst and not come here to draw." These words contain no irony, as has been supposed, but are spoken faithfully and in trustful naivety. The water-carrying was burdensome, since the well was distant from the city; the woman wished to be freed from this burden.
If we read with Tischendorf (7th ed.) according to predominant witnesses ἵνα - ἔρχομαι (instead of ἔρχωμαι, Lachmann), then we have here again the unusual but occasionally occurring construction in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 4:6; Galatians 4:17; Titus 2:4) of ἵνα with the indicative present. See Win. p. 259.
Revealing Her Past
Jn 4:16ff: After Jesus has awakened the woman's longing and raised her at least to an awareness of his higher dignity, he suddenly gives the conversation a completely different, surprising turn. He calls upon the woman: "Go, call your husband and come here!" The Lord directed this apparently insignificant request to the woman, on the one hand to bring her thus to acknowledgment of his higher knowledge and character, but on the other hand also to stir her conscience. If she wants to become a partaker of this water that Jesus promises, she must first completely renounce her impure way of life.
Therefore, with the older interpreters, one should not ask what the husband was supposed to do, since the request is only apparent, not serious, because Jesus already knew her situation (Meyer).
Jn 4:17f: In typical feminine cunning, the woman wants to evade this embarrassing request with the half-true "I have no husband"; but Jesus goes deeper and shows her that he well knows in what sense her ambiguous answer is to be taken: "You have rightly (καλῶς, cf. Matthew 15:7; Luke 20:39) said: I have no husband; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have said as something true."
Jesus reverses the woman's οὐκ ἔχω ἄνδρα into ἄνδρα οὐκ ἔχω; for here it was the concept ἀνήρ that was of primary importance. Whether under πέντε ἄνδρας only actual husbands are to be understood, from whom the woman was separated partly by death, partly by divorce, or whether Jesus counts lovers along with them, cannot be decided with certainty. Enough, she now lived with a lover. In τοῦτο ἀληθὲς εἰρ., τοῦτο is the object, ἀληθές the predicate (Win. p. 412).
Where to Worship?
Jn 4:19-20: From this precise knowledge of her domestic situation, the woman now concludes that Jesus is a prophet: "Sir, I see that you are a prophet!" For knowledge of hidden things belonged to the concept of an Old Testament prophet (cf. 1 Samuel 9:9). She therefore immediately presents to him a national-religious controversial question for decision:
"Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship." One should supplement in the woman's sense the question: "who is right?"
Whether the decision of this controversial question was really a matter of the heart for the woman, or whether by raising it she only wanted to escape an unpleasant discussion about her immoral life, cannot be decided with certainty; but probably the former is the case.
Under οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν (our fathers) are not to be understood, as Chrysostom and others think, Abraham and Jacob according to a tradition based on Genesis 12:6ff.; 13:4; 32:20, but rather the ancient Samaritans who had built the temple on Gerizim in the time of Nehemiah. The ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ points to Mount Gerizim, at whose foot Shechem lay. To the οἱ πατέρες - - προσεκύνησαν one must add in thought: "and we still do so accordingly."
The προσκυνεῖν must here in the woman's question, and accordingly also immediately in Jesus' answer, be understood of the entire celebration of divine worship, especially of the offering of sacrifices, wherein the Old Testament cult actually consisted. The temple on Gerizim had long since been destroyed by John Hyrcanus (in the year 130 B.C.); but the Samaritans nevertheless continued to sacrifice there, appealing to Deuteronomy 27:4, where Yahweh commands to erect stones inscribed with the words of the law on Ebal and to build an altar. For the Samaritans read in their text גריזים where the Hebrew text has עיבל. Even now this mountain, which Moses had already designated as a place of blessing (Deuteronomy 11:29; 27:12f.), is sacred to them, and they turn their faces there when praying.
Jn 4:21: Jesus first answers the controversial question presented by stepping onto a higher standpoint and thereby resolving it: "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem."
The controversial question was based on the idea that God can be worshiped legally only in one place, that only there can homage be paid to him through sacrifice, that therefore God is present, as it were, only in one place. Jesus seeks to remove this idea through the emphatic assurance that soon both the Jewish and the Samaritan cult, which seeks God only on Zion or on Gerizim, will cease, and thus the point of contention between the Jews and Samaritans, to which the woman attached such weight, will lose all significance in the future.
Already Malachi 1:11 had said: "From the rising of the sun to its setting, my name is great among the nations; and in every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name is great among the nations, says Yahweh of hosts." The prophet thus announces that the provision of Deuteronomy 12:5f.: "At the place which the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to set his name there, you shall seek his dwelling and go there. And you shall bring there your burnt offerings and your grain offerings, etc.," will lose its significance in the future at the appearance of Christ. And this prophetic passage forms the Old Testament foundation of this saying of the Lord.
The πίστευε (Lachmann: πίστευσόν) μοι is emphatic confirmation of a new truth which must seem incredible to the woman, thus an urgent call to faith. The τῷ πατρί designates in advance the new relationship in which, in the time now coming, the worshipers will stand through Christ to their God: he will be a Father to them.
Jn 4:22: Jesus resolves the controversial question secondly directly by giving the Samaritans wrong and granting the Jews a relative right: "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews."
Until that time comes, Jesus wants to say, when one worships neither on Gerizim nor on Zion, i.e., when both the Samaritan and the Jewish sacrificial cult cease, the Jews (ἡμεῖς) are in the right, who hold Jerusalem to be the legal place of worship.
The neuter ὃ refers to God, as frequently the neuter is used in relation to persons: "a being whom you do not know." Cf. 6:37; Hebrews 7:7; 1 Corinthians 1:27f. The οὐκ οἶδατε is not to be taken absolutely—for the Samaritans were not without any and all knowledge of God—but relatively: in comparison with the religious knowledge of the Jews, the knowledge of God of the Samaritans was most deficient and could be called ignorance.
The Samaritans were in a certain sense the Protestants in Judaism. Just as the Protestants of the sixteenth century endeavored to leap back into primitive Christianity through a salto mortale and denied the entire 1500-year historical development of Christianity, so also did the Samaritans. By accepting only the Pentateuch from the Old Testament, they stepped out of the whole context of revelation, thus denying the later development of Judaism through the prophets. Their messianic hopes were therefore deficient and unclear, thus also their cult, which was based entirely on those hopes and whose soul was the expectation of the coming Redeemer.
Under σωτηρία is naturally to be understood the messianic salvation; this comes from the Jews, insofar as the σωτήρ (Savior) according to the flesh descended from Israel and had to descend (cf. Romans 9:4). For only from the people who possessed the continuity of divine revelation, whose culmination was Christ (Hebrews 1:1), could the Redeemer come forth.
True Worship
Jn 4:23-24: After the Lord has vindicated a relative right for the Jews, he now rises far above the opposition between Judaism and Samaritanism, continuing: "But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father seeks such as his worshipers."
We have arrived here at a passage that is often misused by Protestant theologians and applied against Catholic worship. With what right? An unbiased explanation will show.
Through ἀλλά the following is contrasted with the preceding, especially with the ἡμεῖς προσκυνοῦμεν ὃ οἴδαμεν. The Lord wants to contrast with the—although in comparison with the Samaritan cult true, yet nevertheless deficient and imperfect—worship of God by the Jews, the perfect form of worship of God as it should now enter with him. He calls it a future appearing (ἔρχεται ώρα) and yet again an already present one (καὶ νῦν ἐστίν). It was present in germ, insofar as the author and mediator of this true worship of God, Christ, had already appeared; it was a future appearing, insofar as this true worship of God should spread ever further in humanity. In the same sense, the kingdom of God is called in the New Testament both a present and a future one.
It is well to note that here stands ἀληθινοὶ προσκυνηταί (true worshipers) and not ἀληθεῖς προσκυνηταί. If the Lord had said ἀληθεῖς προσκ., he would thereby have represented the Jewish worship of God as false. For ἀληθές forms the contrast to the false and untrue; ἀληθινόν, on the other hand, designates that which corresponds to its idea, in contrast to the deficient and imperfect. Cf. 1:9. The Jewish cult was certainly deficient and imperfect, but not false.
Of these "true worshipers" Jesus now says that they will worship the Father ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ (in spirit and truth). He says τῷ πατρί and not τῷ θεῷ; to the true worshiper, God always appears in the relationship of Father to Son.
The ἐν πνεύματι, according to the whole context, obviously stands in contrast to ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ and ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις v. 19, and the ἐν ἀληθείᾳ in contrast to the merely external and symbolic worship of God of the Jews and Samaritans through sacrifice.
The Jewish and Samaritan cult was tied to specific places, to the temple in Jerusalem and to Mount Gerizim; only there could the Jew and Samaritan perform the highest act of worship, i.e., offer sacrifice. And these sacrifices were merely external symbols and types, not the truth itself; they were signa (signs) and not signa and res (sign and reality) at the same time, like our holy sacraments and the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
True, genuine worship should now take place:
- In spirit, i.e., in inner spiritual acts, in the inner spiritual sacrifice in which man offers himself to God, and which is not bound to a specific place but can be offered everywhere and at all times. Some have wrongly understood πνεῦμα to mean the divine Spirit, although it must be admitted that true προσκύνησις ἐν πνεύματι can only take place in the Holy Spirit (cf. Romans 8:14ff.).
Augustine aptly says: "Are you perhaps seeking a high, a holy place? Consecrate yourself inwardly as a temple to God. 'For the temple of God is holy, and that temple you are' (1 Corinthians 3:17). If you want to pray in a temple, pray in yourself, but first become yourself a temple of God; for he hears the one who calls upon him from his temple."
- In truth, i.e., not merely externally symbolically and typically, but essentially, comprehending in itself the object of worship. In the most ideal way, this worship in spirit and truth is realized in the offering of the most holy sacrifice of the Mass, in which the glorified Christ, the head of the Church, offers himself to his heavenly Father and is offered by the congregation through the priest. Therefore one can with full right find in these words a preliminary indication of the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
Such worship in spirit and truth is alone the genuine one because it corresponds to its idea, i.e., is homogeneous with the essence of God. Therefore the Lord adds in v. 24 by way of foundation: "God is spirit, thus not bound to a specific space, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
The predicate πνεῦμα is placed first with emphasis, as in 1:1: θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (the Word was God).
That, moreover, the Lord does not want to abolish all local worship and all external customs absolutely, is actually self-evident, and only blind polemic can find in our passage a condemnatory judgment on Catholic worship. As long as man remains human, i.e., a bodily-spiritual being, his inner worship and devotion will always attach itself to specific times and places and manifest itself in external symbolic actions and customs. Only with pure spirits is a purely spiritual worship possible.
Christ rather wants hereby only to reject the merely external worship tied exclusively to a single specific place. A merely external worship without the inner has no value in God's eyes; already in the Old Testament God demanded the external sacrifice only for the sake of the inner. Cf. Psalms 50 and 51:25f.
The Messiah
Jn 4:25: Although the woman has not yet grasped the meaning of Jesus' words in their full depth, she already senses that this one, whom she already considers a prophet, promises something great and sublime. She expects full enlightenment about this from the coming Messiah; therefore she says: "I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ; when he comes, he will tell us all things."
For the Samaritans also expected a Messiah, and they probably based their messianic hopes on passages like Genesis 3:15; 49:10; Numbers 24, but especially on Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses says: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me; you shall listen to him." They called the Messiah השהב or התהב, which according to some (Gesenius, Ewald) means as much as "restorer, converter," but according to others (Sacy, Meyer, Hengstenberg) is supposed to designate "the one returning" (namely Moses, according to the words "like me").
The name "Messiah," which the woman uses here, had either come over to the Samaritans from the Jews, or it is put into the woman's mouth by the Evangelist.
Jn 4:26: The Lord had now gradually prepared the woman so far that he could tell her that he himself was the Messiah promised by Moses: "I am he, the one speaking with you." Toward the hostile Jews, Jesus held back with this declaration; before the guileless woman he expressed himself openly. Now she knew what that living water was and who could hand it to her.
ἐγώ εἰμι = אני הוא (I am he), cf. Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 43:10 and other passages.
The Disciples Return
Jn 4:27: "And at this point, namely as Jesus was speaking thus with the Samaritan woman (ἐπὶ τούτῳ = sur cela, see Win. p. 351), his disciples came, and they were amazed that he was speaking with a woman."
They were amazed at this because it was against the custom of a Jewish teacher to instruct a woman; indeed, it was already considered unseemly to converse publicly even with women. It was considered a principle that one should not greet a woman, and as far as instructing them was concerned, the rabbis say: "Whoever instructs his daughter in the law is like one who practices folly"; and: "The words of the law should rather be burned than handed over to women."
Out of reverence for the Master, however, the disciples did not dare to ask him: "What do you seek or what are you speaking with her?" According to some, μετ᾿ αὐτῆς also belongs to ζητεῖς through a zeugma, so that it should actually read: τί ζητεῖς παρ᾿ αὐτῆς ἢ τί λαλεῖς μετ᾿ αὐτῆς. Meyer takes τί ζητεῖς by itself: "what do you desire?" namely, that prompted you to this surprising conversation. Ewald wants to take ζητεῖν here in the sense of "to quarrel." According to him, the disciples returning from the city are already amazed from afar that Jesus, contrary to his usual habit, is speaking quite alone with a woman; but when they come closer, they find both so engrossed in serious conversation and so little in angry exchange of words, as they feared according to the Samaritan-Jewish enmity of the peoples, that no one said: "What are you quarreling about or what are you talking about with her?" But this interpretation reads into the text what is not there.
Jn 4:28-29: Full of joy over Jesus' answer, "I am the Messiah" (v. 26), the woman forgets her business for which she came to the well, leaves her water jar standing and runs with burning heart to the city. "Come," she calls to the people, "see a man who told me everything I have done; can this not really be the Messiah?"
The ποιεῖν in πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησα is to be taken in a bad sense like perpetrare: all my sins. One sees from this: that Jesus held up to the woman her impure life (v. 18), that is what made the deepest impression on her.
The question μήτι οὗτος κ.τ.λ. is not doubtful—for the woman is already clear with herself that Jesus is the Messiah; rather, the woman in it demands with a certain modesty and in acknowledgment of her thoroughly subordinate position only the agreement of her fellow citizens. For man is generally by nature so constituted that he can confirm his own conviction only through the judgment of his fellow men.
Jn 4:30: "They went out of the city and came to him." As in v. 27, the descriptive, visualizing imperfect ἤρχοντο alternates with the merely reporting aorist ἐξῆλθον. Meyer aptly: at ἤρχοντο the reader sees, as it were, the procession coming. Cf. v. 40, where they arrive.
Food and Harvest
Jn 4:31-34: After the woman's departure, our Lord was probably absorbed in thought; he has now sown the first seed among the Samaritan people, a woman has become the herald of his name. And looking into the future, he already sees the beautiful fruits of this his first activity. In this he forgets physical food, as if satiated by the pleasure in the success of his work. For a while the disciples remain in reverent silence; finally they venture a timid address: "In the meantime, after the woman has hurried away and before the Samaritans come, the disciples asked him and said: Master, eat!"
Jesus answers in v. 32: "I have food to eat that you do not know." βρώσις, actually "eating," here the same as βρῶμα, cf. v. 34; Colossians 2:16. By this food the Lord understands, as is evident from v. 34, the execution of the work of salvation entrusted to him by the Father. This saving activity delights the soul of the Redeemer as physical nourishment refreshes bodily life; his desire is directed toward this as the desire of the sensual man is toward bodily food.
That the disciples do not know this food of which the Lord speaks is evident from v. 33, where they ask one another: "Has someone brought him something to eat?" Therefore Jesus explains to them in v. 34 the nature of the food he means: "My food is that I do the will of him who sent me and will complete his work." It is therefore spiritual food, and it consists in the fulfillment of the will of his heavenly Father, in the completion of the work of salvation which he has entrusted to him (αὐτοῦ τὸ ἔργον).
The particles ἵνα circumscribe the infinitive, but in such a way that the ποιεῖν and τελειοῦν emerge as what is intended: "My food consists in the striving that I do" (see Win. p. 301).
Jn 4:35: The execution of the entrusted work of salvation is already in full progress: "Do you not say: there are still four months and (i.e., it lasts until) the harvest comes? Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already now."
The introduction of the words ἔτι τετράμηνος (scil. χρόνος) - - ἔρχεται through οὐχ ὑμεῖς λέγετε makes it very probable that Jesus is citing here a then current proverb that people used to employ in the sowing season to console themselves with the prospect of the joyful harvest time during laborious work, while at the same time also admonishing to patient waiting. Thus most interpreters, although such a proverb cannot otherwise be proven.
With the following words ἰδοὺ λέγω ὑμῖν - - πρὸς θερισμὸν ἤδη, Jesus undoubtedly pointed to the Sychemites coming from the city. The ἤδη, which Tischendorf has wrongly drawn to the following verse, stands in contrast to the preceding ἔτι and is placed at the end for emphasis.
The Lord namely wants to contrast the slow development of earthly seed to ripeness with the rapid development of his spiritual sowing, so that the meaning is: "The common proverb says: when one has sown, one must wait four months before one can harvest (also in the Talmud the time between sowing and harvest is given as four months); quite different is it with my spiritual harvest; here the harvest follows immediately upon the sowing."
The meaning stands out most beautifully if we assume that when Jesus cited this proverb, the people around were just busy with sowing in the field. With this assumption, our passage also contains an important chronological datum. See on 5:1. Cf. Wieseler, Chronological Synopsis, pp. 214ff.
Jn 4:36: The Lord holds fast to the image of the harvest, but modifies it in such a way that he presents himself as the sower, but his disciples as those harvesting, i.e., as those who are to accomplish the actual reception of the Sychemites into the new kingdom of God: "The harvester receives wages," namely for his labor; and this wage is precisely the ripe fruit that he leads into the barns. Hence: "and he gathers fruit unto eternal life."
With εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον the speech passes from the figurative expression into the application. By ζωνὴ αἰώνιος the Lord understands not exclusively the life beyond, but the life that begins with entry into his kingdom and continues into eternity, that true life that begins in us with the reception of Christ, the life κατ᾿ ἐξοχήν (par excellence), through faith.
This spiritual harvest, which the apostles will hold, should according to God's intention delight both the sower, Jesus, and also the harvester, the disciples; hence: "So that both the sower and the harvester may rejoice together."
Jn 4:37-38: Foundation of the preceding ἵνα καὶ ὁ σπείρων κ.τ.λ.: "For in this (in this point of sowing and harvesting) the saying is true, i.e., the proverb has its full truth (ἀληθινός, see on 1:9): 'One is the sower and another the harvester.'"
The general meaning of this proverb is: "Often man can only prepare the results of his activity, but not complete them himself." It also occurs among the pagans (see Wetstein). Usually it is otherwise used in a bad sense of the unjust appropriation of another's goods or the appropriation of advantages that belong to another (cf. Matthew 25:24); but here in a good sense.
Jn 4:38: Application of the saying: "I have sent you to harvest what you have not worked for; others have worked, and you have entered into their labor." The sending of the apostles and their entering into the labor is grasped as included in their election; hence the preterites ἀπέστειλα and εἰσεληλύθατε.
By ἄλλοι Jesus understands first of all himself, then furthermore also Moses and the prophets; he thus indirectly declares the old covenant to be a preparatory school of Christianity. But the old covenant only prepared the soil, as it were; Christ was the actual sower, and a few years later Philip, Peter, and John held here in Samaria the first rich harvest. See Acts 8:5ff.
Many Believe
Jn 4:39-42: Here the Evangelist takes up again the thread of the narrative broken off in v. 30: "But from that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified: He told me everything I have done. When the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days."
The faith of the Sychemites of which we speak here was at first only an incipient one. The woman's account made them inclined to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. To the higher level of faith, to the actual recognition of Jesus, they were first led through the instruction of the Lord himself during his two-day stay with them: "And many more believed because of his word. And they said to the woman: We no longer believe because of your talk; for we have heard for ourselves and know that this is truly the Savior of the world!"
The διὰ τὴν σὴν λαλιάν is placed with a certain disparagement in contrast to the διὰ τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ in v. 41: in comparison with Jesus' word, the woman's word was only "talk."
The Sychemites call Jesus "the Savior of the world," thus already grasping him much more purely and universally than most Jews, who considered him only the savior of the chosen people. The ὁ Χριστός, which the Received Text has after κόσμου according to many witnesses, is an exegetical addition and is rightly deleted by Lachmann and Tischendorf.
End of Translation
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