Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (5-9) Jesus comes to a well in Sychar of Samaria. The need wasn’t because of travel arrangements or practical necessities, but because there were people there who needed to hear Him. It says that Jesus needed to go through Samaria. Those who were not so strict went through Samaria.” (Morris) This was considerably longer, but it avoided contact with the Samaritans. “Their route from Jerusalem to Galilee lay through the region beyond the Jordan. This obviously made relations between the Jews and the Samaritans even worse. The Samaritans built their own temple to Yahweh on Mount Gerizim, but the Jews burned it around 128 B.C. Most of the Jews in Jesus’ time despised the Samaritans, disliking them even more than Gentiles – because they were, religiously speaking, “half-breeds” who had an eclectic, mongrel faith. Because the Samaritans had a historical connection to the people of Israel, their faith was a combination of commands and rituals from the Law of Moses, put together with various superstitions. These ones left behind intermarried with other non-Jewish peoples who slowly came into the region, and the Samaritans emerged as an ethnic and religious group. 136 years later, the Babylonians conquered the southern kingdom of Judah and followed a similar policy. All they left behind were the lowest classes of society. When the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel (722 BC), they exiled almost all the Jewish population, removing them from the land. They did so because there was a deep distrust and dislike between many of the Jewish people and the Samaritans. He needed to go through Samaria: Although the road through Samaria was the shortest route from Jerusalem to Galilee, pious Jews often avoided it. By not Himself baptizing, he made the superiority of His position above that of John the Baptist to be felt.” (Godet, cited in Morris)Ĭ. “By baptizing, He attested the unity of His work with that of the forerunner. This also means that when the disciples began the practice of Christian baptism on Pentecost (Acts 2:41), their prior experience of baptizing was in connection with repentance, cleansing, and identification with the Messiah’s work. Here we learn that in the actual baptizing work, Jesus delegated that work to His disciples. Jesus considered it important to also do John’s work of baptizing as a demonstration of repentance and cleansing in preparation for the Messiah. Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples): Jesus’ work of baptism was first referred to in John 3:22. Yet, Jesus knew that the time was not yet right for a confrontation in Jerusalem, so He returned to Galilee.ī. When the Lord knew… He left Judea: Jesus knew that because of His rising prominence and popularity, there would soon be a confrontation with the religious establishment (among whom were the Pharisees). Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. (1-4) Jesus travels from Judea to Galilee, passing though Samaria.
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