CHAPTER VII.

JESUS AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.

HOSTILITY OF THE PHARISEES TO JESUS-HE LEAVES JUDEA FOR SAMARIA-DEAN STANLEY'S VIEW OF THE COUNTRY-VANDEBILDE'S DESCRIPTION-THE SAMARITANS AND THEIR RELIGION-REASONS FOR

THEIR REVERENCE FOR MOUNT GERIZIM-HOSTILITY OF THE JEWS TO THE SAMARITANS-RECIPROCAL HATRED OF THE SAMARITANS—APPROACH OF JESUS TO SAMARIA-JACOB'S WELL-JESUS ASKS DRINK OF A SAMARITAN WOMAN-HIS REPLY TO HER QUESTION OF SURPRISETHE WOMAN'S RESPONSE AND REFERENCE TO JACOB-JESUS DECLARES HIS DIVINE SUPERIORITY OVER JACOB, AS POSSESSING THE GIFTS OF SPIRITUAL REFRESHING AND EVERLASTING LIFE—THE FULL AND DEEP SIGNIFICANCE OF HIS WORDS-THE WOMAN'S REQUEST FOR LIVING WATER, AND JESUS' REVELATION OF HER SPIRITUAL CONDITION—de LIGNY'S COMMENT ON HER REPLY, "I HAVE NO HUSBAND"-HER REFERENCE TO THE SAMARITAN WORSHIP, AND THE JEWS' EXCLUSIVENESS-OUR LORD'S REPLY-PECULIAR ERROR OF THE SAMARITANSCOMMON ERROR OF BOTH JEWS AND SAMARITANS-A SPIRITUAL WORSHIP TO TAKE THE PLACE OF THE CEREMONIAL SYSTEM-THE WOMAN'S QUERY AS TO THE MESSIAH-JESUS DECLARES HIMSELF TO BE THE MESSIAH—THE DISCIPLES RETURN AND ASK HIM TO EAT-JESUS URGES THE IMPORTANCE OF HIS WORK-THE REWARD OF THE LABORER-THE WOMAN RETURNS TO THE CITY, AND SPREADS THE FAME OF JESUSHE PREACHES THE WORD 'IN SAMARIA, AND MANY BELIEVE.

THE Pharisees had not yet come to an open rupture with Jesus; but their suspicions were excited, and the growing enthusiasm of the common people who came in large numbers to His baptism alarmed them. He had already become more formidable than John the Baptist to that powerful sect. Aware that a longer stay in Judea would bring on a premature conflict with these fanatical enemies, which it was His purpose for the present to

avoid, Jesus determined to return to Galilee. The nearest and most practicable route was through Samaria. A bigoted Jew would perhaps have made a detour through Perea, and thus avoided the territory of the despised and hated Samaritans. Jesus, however, was no bigot, and, besides, He had a great work to do among those very Samaritans; hence He would not turn aside from the direct road.

The country through which He passed was the fairest and most fruitful of central Palestine. This was especially true of the vale of Shechem or Sychar, called by the Greeks, Neapolis, and by the modern Arabs, Naplous. "A valley," says Dean Stanley, "green with grass, gray with olive gardens sloping down on each side; fresh springs rushing down in all directions; at the end, a white town with dome-shaped roofs, embosomed in all this verdure, lodged between the high mountains which extend on each side of the valley,-that on the north, Ebal; that on the south, Gerizim ;-this is the aspect of Naplous."

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'Here," says another traveler, "there is no wilderness; here there are no wild thickets; yet there is always shade, not of the oak or of the terebinth, but of the olivegrove, so soft in color, so picturesque in form that, for its sake, we can willingly dispense .with all other wood. Here there are no impetuous mountain torrents, yet there is water, water, too, in more copious supplies than anywhere else in the land; and it is just to its many fountains, rills and water-courses, that the valley owes its exquisite beauty. The exhalations remain hovering among the branches and leaves of the olive-trees, and hence the lovely bluish haze that gives such a charm to the landscape. The valley is far from broad,—in some places not exceeding a few hundred feet. This you find generally enclosed on all sides; there, likewise, are the vapors condensed. And so you advance under the shade

of the foliage, along the living waters, and charmed by the melody of a host of singing birds,-for they, too, know where to find their best quarters,-while the perspective fades away and is lost in the damp vapory atmos phere."*

The Samaritans, whom Jesus was about to visit, were not of the seed of Abraham, but were descended from a colony that Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, had planted there, after the country had been depopulated by the captivity of the ten tribes of Israel. This colony finally embraced the religion of Moses; and as, in the course of ages, many renegade and outcast Jews mingled with them, they at length began to assert their true and lineal descent from Abraham, through Jacob and Joseph. Under the direction of Manasseh, a priest who had married a Samaritan woman,-Sanballat built a temple on Mount Gerizim, which for two hundred years rivalled that at Jerusalem. After its destruction by the Asmonean prince, John Hyrcanus, about one hundred and fifty years before the time of our Lord, they still continued to venerate the mountain on which it had stood; and there, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, a feeble but interesting remnant of the race still offer the paschal lamb, and celebrate such rites of the law as their circumstances permit.

For this attachment to Mount Gerizim as a place of preeminent sanctity, the Samaritans had many plausible arguments. Modern scholars are inclining to the conviction that this was the mountain on which Melchizedek officiated as priest of the Most High, and that the Salem which lies a few miles to the east was the place of his residence. Mount Gerizim was the first spot on which Abraham halted, after he crossed the Jordan, where he rested

*Vandebîlde, quoted by Stanley, "Sinai and Palestine," pages 230

and 231.