Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Typically, when someone comes to me for counsel, they are coming (1) because there is a problem and (2) because the problem has escalated to such a degree that they feel like they can’t handle it.

They desire input, perspective, and counsel.

In these moments, I want to understand the backstory.

I want to know the details that led up to this problem.

And, most often these details go back years, if not decades.

Therefore, I attempt to put together a timeline in the first few counseling sessions.

Typically, when someone comes to me for counsel, they are coming (1) because there is a problem and (2) because the problem has escalated to such a degree that they feel like they can’t handle it.

They desire input, perspective, and counsel.

In these moments, I want to understand the backstory.

I want to know the details that led up to this problem.

And, most often these details go back years, if not decades.

Therefore, I attempt to put together a timeline in the first few counseling sessions.

Typically, when someone comes to me for counsel, they are coming (1) because there is a problem and (2) because the problem has escalated to such a degree that they feel like they can’t handle it.

They desire input, perspective, and counsel.

In these moments, I want to understand the backstory.

I want to know the details that led up to this problem.

And, most often these details go back years, if not decades.

Therefore, I attempt to put together a timeline in the first few counseling sessions.

Similarly, for us to best understand the dynamics of the conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well, putting together a quick timeline can be very helpful.

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.

Jesus did not want to be pitted against John the Baptist.

They were on the same team.

This “competition” may have resulted in premature conflict with the religious leaders.

Seeing that it was not the Father’s will for this conflict to occur at this point, Jesus was led away.

And he had to pass through Samaria.

It was the Father’s divine will that Jesus go through Samaria.

While the quickest route to Galilee was through Samaria, it was not necessary that they go through Samaria.

In fact, it was not uncommon for devout religious Jews to go around Samaria.

When John tells us that Jesus, “had to pass through Samaria” that focused on the need to obey the Father’s direction, not to save time and energy.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

Jacob’s well is found at the foot of Mt.

Gerizim () and is about one-mile SE of Nablus.

It is near the fork of a road which comes from Jerusalem and branches to Samaria and Tirzah.

The well is only a few hundred yards away from Joseph’s tomb.

Jesus arrives at the well at the 6th hour.

This would have been about noon, which explains why he would have been thirsty at this point in the day.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.

Where do you get that living water?

12 Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.

What you have said is true.”

().

Now then, the significance of this interaction, in large part, is due to the historic tension and hatred between the Jews and Samaritans.

Tension Between Israel and Samaria

930 BC.

Solomon died around 930 BC[1] and the United Kingdom of Israel is divided.

880 BC.

About fifty years and 6 kings later, between 880 and 870[2] Omri, who was an officer in Israel’s northern kingdom, took power and established Samaria as the Northern Kingdom’s capital.

It remained the capital until the fall of Israel in 722 BC.[3]

735 BC.

The divided kingdom was anything but peaceful and harmonious.

Israel even attacked Judah along with Syria in 735/734 BC.

The Assyrian empire was expanding westward, and Syria and Israel wanted to form an alliance to fight Assyria.

Judah refused, so Syria and Judah attacked them.

Nineveh as well attacked them from the west.

722 BC.

After the Assyrians captured Samaria in 722-721 BC, they deported all the Israelites of substance and settled the land with foreigners, who intermarried with the surviving Israelites and adhered to some form of their ancient religion ().[4]

And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel.

And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. ( ESV).

These people did not fear the Lord, so the Lord sent lions among them and killed some of them.

As a result, the king of Assyria sent a priest to the people to teach them about the “god of the land” ().

The remaining Samaritans intermarried with these foreigners and embraced an idolatrous religion.

Therefore, the Jews considered them to be “half breeds” and despised them in general.[5]

Samaritan perception of their origination.

On the other hand, the Samaritans think they are from the line of Manasseh and Ephraim.

indicates that Nehemiah did send an invitation to the remnant in those two tribes to join the worship in Jerusalem.

Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel . . . . 10 So the couriers went from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them.

11 However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem (, ).

444 BC.

The Jews returned from Babylon and began to rebuild the wall and the temple.

The most significant challenge to the rebuilding was the Samaritans who did everything they could to stop the building (; Cf. ).

It appears that their failure to stop the rebuilding of the temple resulted in them building there own temple on Mount Gerizim and declared it to be the holy place – where to this day they celebrate Passover.[6]

Mount Gerizim.

The Samaritans believe, based on their version of the Torah, that Gerizim was established by God (in ) as the place for worship.

That day Moses charged the people, saying, 12 “When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.

13 And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.

14 And the Levites shall declare to all the men of Israel in a loud voice: ( ESV).

According to Josephus, some years later, Sanballat promised to build a temple on Mount Gerizim – if only Sanballat would keep his daughter for a wife.

Josephus.

Whereupon Manasseh came to his father-in-law, Sanballat, and told him, that although he loved his daughter Nicaso, yet was he not willing to be deprived of his sacerdotal dignity on her account, which was the principal dignity in their nation, and always continued in the same family.

And then Sanballat promised him not only to preserve to him the honor of his priesthood, but to procure for him the power and dignity of a high priest, and would make him governor of all the places he himself now ruled, if he would keep his daughter for his wife.

He also told him further, that he would build him a temple like that at Jerusalem upon Mount Gerizzim, which is the highest of all the mountains that are in Samaria; and he promised that he would do this with the approbation of Darius the king.[7]

The Jews would have considered Mount Gerizim a special place, but believe God appointed Jerusalem as the place for worship.

On several occasions in Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people that they would need to worship in “a place that he would choose.”

That place was Jerusalem.

However, the Samaritan Torah reads “the place that God did choose” and refer this back to Mount Gerizim.[8]

128 BC.

Hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans increased after the Maccabean revolt.