In chapter 4 of John’s gospel, we are told the story of Jesus trekking through Samaria and meeting with a woman drawing water at a well. Jesus asks her for a drink. Scandalous!
Why?
Imagine for a moment that you are in a church. You see a pastor up front, flanked by a woman in a long white dress and a man with a tuxedo. What is happening? A wedding of course. Just as the imagry above evoked a common sense understanding of what was taking place, this scene at the well evoked another similar trope in Ancient Palestinian Hebrew literature.
Consider Genesis 24, Genesis 29, and Exodus 2. In each, we find the patriarchs finding their lovers from chance meetings at wells, where they (or their animals) are given water. It became a trope in Hebew literature, much like the picture of the wedding above.
So when Jesus comes to this woman and asks for a drink, the scandal is threefold. 1) She is a samaritan (more about that later), 2) she is a woman (Rabbis shouldn’t be fussing with women out in the open) and, 3) it appears Jesus is suggesting something akin to courtship to her.
She picks up on the scandal and asks Jesus what the heck he thinks he is doing.
At once, Jesus turns the tables and insinuates that her current water supply is not ideal. He suggests that perhaps, in contrast to the well, she would like “living water”. We Christians are trained to think of living water as some kind of spiritual euphemism, probably from this passage, but the Hebrew phrase meant water that flowed in from a source and out again. In other words, non-stagnant water. Jesus wants to give her that. Any woman who needs to keep coming to a well in the middle of the day (is she outcast? Why not come in the early morning or evening when is is cool and customary to do so?), would jump at the chance to bathe and collect water from a clean, pure, “living” water source.
Jesus then makes a comment in keeping with the above scandal and asks her to get her husband. In other words, “are you married?” More on that, the prophet Jeremiah, and the anti-temple rhetoric next time. Until then, consider Jesus a prophet, doing something along the lines of Hosea, but subverting it a bit.
I appreciate the Hebrew Bible into the New Testament reading. That’s one of my favorite things to do.
But besides that, I also like empire studies. A possible reading of John 4a is that the woman represents (problematic- women as nation-states), while her husbands represent the number of nations that have colonized her 5 husbands, or in aramaic, would have been 5 lords, according to Allen Dwight Callahan. foreigners from 5 different lands– Babylon, Cuthah, Avvah, Hamath, and Sepharavaim or 5 different empires–Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Assyrian, and Judean based Jerusalem during the monarchy. The sixth lord is not a husband, but Rome, which has placed Samaria in a position of political concubinage. I disagree with Callahan’s anti-Judean conclusions about this passage, but I can see the usefulness in his anti-empire approach.
Damn, Rod. You took the wind out of my next blog on 4b. Haha! But I actually sympathize with callahan a bit if you substitute anti-judean for anti-temple. We’ll get there next blog, though.
Ooooops. Sorry, but hey, I think we hold similar views on this passage. Maybe it has something to do with us taking the same course on John, lols.
Yes, I believe that is it. It actually didn’t occur to me until I read your post. I am actually teaching through John at church currently, so John is on my mind. Callahan was eye opening for me when I read it the first time.
Good. But Callahan did not point out Jeremiah or Hosea as you have. So, I really think you got something going on. In my opinion, John depends on so many of the prophets, we could even include Ezekiel in John 4a, being the water of life that flows from the temple.