Meditations

”As for the bones of Joseph… they buried them on the piece of land near Shechem that Jacob had bought.” (Joshua 24:32) “Jesus departed Judea heading for Galilee, but He needed to pass through Samaria. He came to a town of Samaria near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there.” (John 4:3-6)

This well where Jesus “just happened” to come to rest was not just any well. The woman whom He met there pointed this out, “Where do You get this ‘living water’? Are You greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself as did his sons.” (John 4:11-12) As in all things involving God’s plans, there are no such things as coincidences, and more often than not there is much more to the story than first meets the eye. In Jesus’ day this plot of land was in Samaritan territory, which meant that no self-respecting Jew should comfortably be traveling through there. The preferred route for Israelites ran beside the Jordan River to avoid contact with the ‘unclean’ Samaritans. So for Jesus to even be in Samaria would have been close to scandalous. Why were the Samaritans so despised by the Jews?” (John Piper)

“In 722 BC, Israel was conquered by the Assyrians and her leaders had been exiled to Babylon. The remnant left behind intermarried with the pagans, and by the time of Nehemiah these ‘Samaritans’ had become a threat to the purity of Israel. (Neh 13:28-29) By the first century, the Samaritans had a distinct culture built around a religion that blended aspects of Judaism with rank paganism. They disputed the Jews’ claim that Mt. Moriah was the site of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac (and therefore the proper location of the temple), and instead built a rival temple of equal grandeur on Mt. Gerazim. Dozens of years before Jesus arrived, this rival temple was destroyed, but the Samaritans still used the location as their center of worship. Into all of this hostile territory, calmly walked a tired and thirsty Jesus because He ‘needed to go.’ He had a purpose to fulfill, a historic well to visit, an unbelieving soul to save, and an unprecedented disclosure of His true mission and identity to reveal.” (Warren Wiersbe) Tomorrow, with that background in mind, we will talk to this woman. (John 4:19-23)

David