My last post focused on the location of Jacob’s well. This small area around Sychar, known as Shechem in the Old testament, is a “spiritual ground zero” with a rich history going all the way back to Abraham.

This post will focus on the history of the Samaritans as a people. Its important to understand some of this before we can fully grasp the deep significance of this passage. So let’s go back to the time of Solomon, a time when the Lord divided Israel into two kingdoms.

The Divided Kingdom

Solomon took on many wives from surrounding pagan cultures who brought their foreign gods with them into the relationship. As a result Solomon lost his singular focus on the Lord and began to worship the false gods himself.

The God of Israel hates idolatry. The almost continuous idolatry of Israel brought judgement as would Solomon’s idolatry. The Lord told Jeroboam, a servant of Solomon, that, because of Solomon’s unfaithfulness, Israel would be divided into two kingdoms. Jeroboam would receive 10 tribes in the north but the tribe of Judah would be set apart by the Lord “that My servant David may have a lamp always before Me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen for Myself to put My name” (1 Kings 11:29-36). These tribes became the northern kingdom of Israel and Judah became the southern kingdom .

The Northern Kingdom

The Northern kingdom of Israel was a place of rampant idolatry under Jeroboam, the first king of Israel (1 Kings 13:32-34). The region of what is called Samaria was originally the tribal land west of the Jordan river allotted to the tribe of Manasseh (Joshua 17:7-9). Omri, a wicked King of Israel, purchased the “hill of Samaria” from Shemer. There he built a city which he called Samaria. The whole region of Manasseh became know as Samaria over time.

God’s judgement eventually came with the people forced into exile by the king of Assyria (2 Kings 17:6). 

Later, in the time of Hezekiah, Esarhaddon became king of Assyria and brought people from exile and settled them in the cities of the region of Samaria (2 Kings 17:24-25). These foreigners brought with them their own idolatry and mixed with the Jews still living in the land. The Assyrian king sent them one of the Levites (priest of God) to teach them of the “god of the land” which, of course is the Lord.  So the tribes of the north were diluted both spiritually and ethnically through their continued interaction and intermingling with pagan foreigners.  They feared the Lord but also “served their idols” according to the traditions of the foreigners.

The Southern Kingdom

Judah was having its own problems with idolatry and rebellion against God, so they were exiled to Babylon for 70 years.  During that 70 years they seem to have maintained some sense of identity both ethnically and spiritually, probably due to the will of God to preserve for himself this tribe as He had told Jeroboam.

The prophet Daniel in exile with the people of Judah, knew of the prophecy of Jeremiah that indicated return from exile after 70 years. Daniel remained faithful and held high position in Babylon which may have given him influence over the people of Judah to remember the Lord and look forward to their eventual return to their homeland. I believe it was Daniel’s leadership as well as the blessing of God that maintained the integrity of the Jewish community in Babylon. So, unlike the northern kingdom which had become somewhat absorbed into the Assyrian empire, the Jews were able to remain intact as a tribe.

Note: Daniel refused to participate in the pagan culture of Babylon. He retained his Jewish name, rejected their gods under the threat of death, and even rejected their food. I think there is an example here for modern day Christians who desire to remain faithfulto Christ. Daniel remained fully committed to the Lord, refusing to be enticed away by the Babylonian culture, regardless of the potential consequences, even his life. Are we ready to do the same?

The Return From the Babylonian Exile

After the Babylonian exile was over, the Jews returned from Babylon with a decree from the Persian king to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple (Ezra 3:8-13).  Note: this decree was predicted by the angel to Daniel in one of his visions and served as a marker in time, starting the countdown to the Advent of Messiah. This is one of the most amazing prophecies in the Bible in that the decree from a Persian king was predicted, his name was given, the exact content of the decree was given, and the precise time (to the day) of the Messiah was also provided.

So, back to the Samaritans…

The Samaritans were already in the land when the Jews returned to Jerusalem. They wanted to assist in the rebuilding of the the city and the temple, but Zerubbabel refused saying that the Samaritans “have nothing in common with us”. (Remember, the Samaritans were of mixed ethnicity, mixed loyalties to various gods of the land, and also were of the northern kingdom of Israel, often at enmity with the southern kingdom of Judah – so there are a lot of reasons why Zerubbabel rejected them.)

After being rejected, the Samarians harassed the Jews slowing their progress in rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple (Nehemiah 4). They even sent a letter full of accusations to the Persian King Darius who then ordered a stop work in rebuilding the temple (see Ezra 4).  The Jews, in a rebuttal letter pointed Darius to the decree from his predecessor to rebuild the temple so he had no choice but to allow the work to proceed since the decree of a previous king could not be rescinded.

The Samaritans went on to erect a rival temple on Mount Gerizim, which was, however, later destroyed by a Jewish king during the Maccabee period.  The ruins of the temple remain to this day. They then built another at Shechem. It would seem the Samaritans desired to worship God but were not welcome in Jerusalem where the temple was. As the woman said to Jesus:

So the Samaritans had built their own place of worship, another temple that the Jews believed illegitimate, and perhaps rightfully so given the command of the Lord that Jerusalem is the place, not Shechem. So this was another reason that hatred developed and festered over the centuries leading up to the time of Messiah. Jesus was about to change that.

Fast forward to the meeting at the well with Messiah and we find from the conversation some things the Samaritans believed which seems different than the Jews. The Samaritans were clearly knowledgeable about the history of the region going all the way back to Jacob:

• They claimed Jacob as their ancestor just as the Jews did.
• They knew Jacob had lived in this very place.
• They knew Messiah was coming and would “declare all things to them”. There seemed to be an anticipation that was not evident in Jerusalem. Messiah, they believed, would come with truth and revelation. They did not apparently think of Messiah as a political figure sent to throw off the Roman oppression and restore Jewish rule in the land as the Jews did.

No doubt the Jews rejected the worship of God in any other place except the temple built for them in Jerusalem. This may go back to Deuteronomy 12:11-14, with the Lord’s instructions to worship only in the place he designated. And yet the Samaritans were not welcome in Jerusalem. Clearly they wanted to worship the God of Israel and so continued to do so in Sychar. So their mixed ethnicity, their rejection during the time Jerusalem was rebuilt, and what the Jews viewed as invalid worship is why there existed a deep rift between the Jews and Samaritans which persisted for hundreds of years up to the time of our Lord and this meet at the well.

This is a very brief history of Samaria, part of the back story of the encounter at the well. Next, pulling it all together: the prophecy, the mission, and a profound revelation that established a prerequisite for the early church and the advancement of the gospel and impacts us even to this day. And the curious thing is Christ makes this revelation, not to his disciples who were not even present, but to a middle aged sinful woman who was not only rejected by the Jews but probably ostracized by her own village.

God is amazing!