For a Jewish man like Jesus who obviously had some education to talk with a Samaritan woman who obviously came from the wrong side of the tracks-that was a total breach of everything that was good and proper, and the woman was shocked.īut Jesus struck up a conversation with her anyway. For a Jewish man to talk to a Samaritan woman was even worse. For a Jew to talk to a Samaritan was quite a breach of etiquette. The Samaritans returned the favor and couldn’t stand the Jews. The Jews looked down on the Samaritans as half-breeds. It would not be too much to say they hated each other. In that day, the Samaritans and the Jews didn’t have anything to do with each other. When Jesus saw the woman coming, he said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” The woman was shocked because she was a Samaritan and she recognized that he was a Jew. Weary travelers from throughout Israel knew it as a place where they might drink from the spring flowing some 150 feet below the surface. It was called Jacob’s Well, after the patriarch who had first dug it some 2000 years earlier. The well was about one-half mile from a town near the point where the two trade routes came together. Sychar was thus located at a very strategic point in central Palestine. Sychar was built at the confluence of two trade routes, one which came up from Jerusalem on its way to Capernaum, and one which came west from the Jericho region toward the Mediterranean Sea. It was in Samaritan territory, nestled between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. The Bible says she came from the tiny village of Sychar. It wasn’t the normal time, and it was unusual for a woman to come to a well alone. He sat on the lip and wished to himself, “O, if only I could have a drink of water.”Īt precisely that moment, the woman came along. He came to a well with a rock edge built up above the ground in the typical manner of the Middle East. They were hurrying to make their way through this part of the country as quickly as possible. To make matters worse, he had been traveling with his friends since sunrise. It was probably mid to late-July when the temperature can top out at over 105 degrees. It was a hot day in Palestine, and the sun beat down on the man’s head. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” John 4:35-38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Thus the saying, “One sows and another reaps” is true. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. “Do you not say, “Four months more and then comes the harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look on the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
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