For Part I, click below. Otherwise, please scroll down.
What she initially made of Jesus’ interaction with her is not stated.
She may well have suspected him of impure motives. We’re not told.
And rightly so.
Consequently, Jesus’ initial request to the woman (δός μοι...) reappears on the lips of the woman (δός μοι τοῦτο τὸ ὕδωρ) (cp. 4.7 w. 15).
‘Go and call your husband’, he says.
Why has Jesus changed the subject?
Why has he simply ignored the Samaritan woman’s request?
If the Samaritan woman wants to receive the water Jesus has to offer, certain issues of morality first need to be dealt with.
but not as far as the *spirit* of the law is concerned (cp. 4.24’s statement about the need for ‘spirit *and* truth’).
And, to her surprise (again), Jesus is aware of both the sense in which her statement is true and the sense in which it isn’t.
Five of them have been and gone, one is present, and the other has yet to come (17.10).
The parallels between these details and the text of John 4 seem too specific to be a coincidence.
She has five men in her past (cp. the five people-groups with whom Samaria is populated in 2 Kgs. 17.24?),
And, in the person of Jesus, a seventh has now arrived.
Needless to say, however, Jesus is a different kind of king of the earth,
and he has come to offer the Samaritan woman a different kind of future.
and to speak to her about an ‘hour’ when she will be able to worship in spirit and in truth.
As such, she dissociates herself from the woman of Rev. 17 and aligns herself with a different woman in the book of Revelation, namely the bride of Christ (Rev. 19).
We have a 7th water-jar (given the six water-jars in chapter 2),
though in the end the woman leaves her water-jar behind (4.28a), since she herself becomes a vessel in which water is taken back to her city (4.28b).
And we have the 7th occurrences of a number of significant words in John’s Gospel:
and Jesus’ reference to ‘the Father’ is also a 7th occurrence (4.21),
as is the woman’s (pivotal) reference to ‘the Christ’ (4.29).
THE END.
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