THE WOMAN AT THE WELL – JOHN 4. 

This story in John 4 was illuminated to me when I was looking into true meaning of marriage – that marriage of a man and lady is simply the antitype/type or a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ and His bride.

There is a little content here that I have plagiarised from someone else’s work following my initial discovery but I have actually amended a lot of that and also added a little of my own interpretation too.

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Jesus Meets the Woman at the Well.

I’m proposing an opinion that the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is as of the bridegroom proposing marriage to his bride. This will not become fully obvious and clear though unless we understand both the principle of biblical typology and also that of Spiritual Israel, that Israel is the church and the church is Israel – they are one and the same thing (Jewish old Testament believers were just as much the ‘church’ (Acts 7:38 KJV) as we new Testament believers are Jews (Rom 8:28,39), and the true ‘Israel of God’ (Gal 6:16) in Christ Jesus).

Scripture depicts a male foreigner, a woman and a well as a setting for betrothal.
Moses, a type of Jesus, meets his future bride at a well (Exodus 2:15-17, 21). Isaac, a type of Jesus, has his future bride Rebekah found at a well by Abraham’s servant (Genesis 24:14, 15-16), a type of the Holy Spirit. Jacob, later Israel, meets Rachel, his future bride, at a well — the very same well that Jesus, the True Israel, is sitting beside when He meets the Samaritan woman.

And just as Moses, Abraham’s servant and Jacob are male foreigners in a strange land, so too Jesus is a foreigner on Samaritan soil (John 4:4-6). And just as Abraham’s servant asks Rebekah for a drink of water to find out if she is the bride (Genesis 24:14-21), so too Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for a drink of water (John 4:7). And just as Jacob encounters Rachel at the well at “high day” or “midday” (Genesis 29:7), so too Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at “the sixth hour,” right around noon (John 4:6). It’s a small wonder scholars say the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman “contains the initial elements of a betrothal type-scene.”

And it’s a small wonder the disciples are shocked to find Jesus talking to a half-breed — half Israelite, half Gentile — whose religion is an adulterous mixture of Jewish and pagan beliefs. But Jesus is not the first prophet to marry an adulterous woman. The prophet Hosea marries a prostitute, Gomer, as a sign of Israel’s harlotry. These are prophetic signs designed to be shocking in order to catch our attention.

And it got the Samaritan woman’s attention. She admits she’s adulterous, having had five husbands. Or does she? Is that just what we’ve been taught? The woman only actually says she hasn’t got a husband…
Question. Right throughout the gospels we see Jesus turning a conversation from physical context to a spiritual one, could he be doing the same here?
Look at the context, the background context we must always remember every time we read scripture is that the people of the day were very different from the people of our day in that they knew about spiritual issues, they led spiritual lives, and we need to look through their very spiritual eyes and Hebrew mindset. She immediately recognises Jesus is a prophet and starts talking spiritually – about worship. Do you think that possibly she immediately recognised Jesus was talking about spiritual adultery?

(It is crucial now to read 2 Kings 17 and Hosea chapters 1 and 2 now and these appear at the bottom here. But I think that to keep the flow and keep the theme running here it’s a good idea just to carry on reading, then read the aforementioned Scriptures and then come back and read again from here to the end of the article).

The house of Israel was scattered after Solomon’s reign and the few Israelites that remained in Samaria after Babylon conquered them were called Samaritans. They had five gods, called “Baals” — the Canaanite word for “husbands” (think about that one for a long while before you move on, Baal so often means ‘husband’) or “lords”. In addition to the five gods, the Samaritans also worshipped a sixth deity: the God of Israel. So Jesus’ statement to the woman, “you have had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18), takes on a whole new meaning. The God of Israel is not the true husband of the Samaritan people because their worship is tainted by the worship of “false gods” or “false husbands”.

This makes Jesus’ prophetic encounter with the Samaritan woman the initiation of an age when the people of Samaria will be incorporated into the NEW SPIRITUAL ISRAEL by being united to the true bridegroom: YHWH, the living God of Israel. But there’s more.

Just as Zipporah and her sisters went home to their pagan father, Jethro, and told him about Moses, so that Moses came to stay with them and be wed to Zipporah (Exodus 2:19-21), so too the woman at the well tells the Samaritans about Jesus and many come to faith. And just as Rachel ran home to tell her father and family that Jacob was her father’s kinsman, so that they might invite Jacob to stay with them (Genesis 29:12), so too the Samaritan woman goes home to her kinsmen and tells them about Jesus the bridegroom, and they then invite him to stay with them. Through this encounter with Jesus, the non–Jewish peoples of the world begin to be betrothed to God as husband.

And there’s still more to see in the conversation between Jesus and the
woman at the well. For instance, Jesus offers the woman “living water.” This too is a picture of betrothal. This water will be poured out of Jesus’ side on the cross. We’ll consider this another time.

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2 Kings 17:24-41

Foreign people come to live in Israel*

24 The king of Assyria brought foreign people to live in the towns of Samaria. They came from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim. They lived in places in Samaria where the Israelites had lived. They took Samaria for themselves and they lived in its towns. 25 When those people first lived in Samaria, they did not worship the Lord. So the Lord sent lions among them. The lions were killing some of the people. 26 People told the king of Assyria, ‘You sent some nations of people to go and live in the towns of Samaria. But they do not know how to obey the rules of that country’s god. So he has sent lions to attack them. The lions are killing them because they do not know the rules of that country’s god.’

27 The king of Assyria replied, ‘You took some Israelite priests away from Samaria as prisoners. Send one of them back to live there. Then he can teach the people what the god of that country wants them to do.’

28 So they sent back one of the priests that they had caught and taken away to Assyria. He went to live in Bethel. He taught the people how to worship the Lord properly.

29 But the people of each nation that had gone to live in Samaria made their own idols to worship. They put them at the altars that the Israelites had built on the hills. They did this in each town where they lived. 30 The people from Babylon made idols of the god called Succoth-Benoth. The people from Cuthah made idols of the god called Nergal. The people from Hamath made idols of the god called Ashima. 31 The people from Avva made idols of their gods called Nibhaz and Tartak. The people from Sepharvaim burned their children in fire as offerings to their gods, Adrammelech and Anammelech.

32 The foreign people in Samaria also worshipped the Lord. They chose some of their own people to serve as priests at the altars on the hills. 33 In this way, they worshipped the Lord, but they also served their own gods. They did that in the way that they had always done in their own countries. That was what they did before the Assyrians sent them to live in Samaria. 34 Even today, they still do things in the same way that they have always done them. They do not truly worship the Lord. They do not obey his rules, his laws or his teaching. They do not obey the commands that the Lord gave to the descendants of Jacob. Jacob was the man that the Lord gave the new name ‘Israel’. 35 The Lord made a covenant with the descendants of Israel. He said to them, ‘Do not worship any other gods. Do not bend down low to give them honour. Do not serve them. Do not offer any sacrifices to them. 36 Instead, you must worship only the Lord. He is the one who used his great power to bring you safely out of Egypt. Bend down low to give him honour. Offer sacrifices to him. 37 You must be careful to obey his rules, his teaching his laws and his commands that he wrote for you. You must not worship other gods. 38 Never forget the covenant that I made with you. Do not worship any other gods. 39 Instead, you must only worship the Lord your God. It is he who will save you from the power of all your enemies.’
40 But the foreign people who now lived in Samaria would not accept the Lord’s teaching. They continued to live in the way that they always had done. 41 Even while they were worshipping the Lord, they continued to serve their own idols. Their children and their grandchildren continue to live as their fathers did, even today.

Note* Just as a side note here regarding the means of destroying a nation’s identity, there really is nothing new under the sun is there….!!! Within the Church we know there is no male no female, no Jew no Gentile, no English no African but WE ARE ALL ONE, IN CHRIST JESUS. But many of those outside the Church need to read this passage, study what is happening today all over the Western world today and instead of focussing on our racial/cultural differences as some do, must realise that we are all simply pawns on a chessboard being played by some higher authority, an authority that is clearly above any individual national government or state leader. Until we realise that, the ‘King’ on the chessboard, the god of this world, will continue to get away with manipulating us all for his agenda.

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Hosea 2

Israel Punished and Restored.

(please read this restoration not as a physical restoration of the land but read this through the lens of Spiritual Israel ie faith in Jesus Christ, and see if it now makes total sense. I also assume that readers here all know prophets use poetic language and we must not read all of their words literally but must spend time studying and learning their poetic language and figures of speech).

2 “Rebuke your mother,(B) rebuke her,
    for she is not my wife,
    and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous(C) look from her face
    and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
3 Otherwise I will strip(D) her naked
    and make her as bare as on the day she was born;(E)
I will make her like a desert,(F)
    turn her into a parched land,
    and slay her with thirst.
4 I will not show my love to her children,(G)
    because they are the children of adultery.(H)
5 Their mother has been unfaithful
    and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,(I)
    who give me my food and my water,
    my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’(J)
6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
    I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.(K)
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
    she will look for them but not find them.(L)
Then she will say,
    ‘I will go back to my husband(M) as at first,(N)
    for then I was better off(O) than now.’
8 She has not acknowledged(P) that I was the one
    who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,(Q)
who lavished on her the silver and gold(R)—
    which they used for Baal.(S)
9 “Therefore I will take away my grain(T) when it ripens,
    and my new wine(U) when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
    intended to cover her naked body.
10 So now I will expose(V) her lewdness
    before the eyes of her lovers;(W)
    no one will take her out of my hands.(X)
11 I will stop(Y) all her celebrations:(Z)
    her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
    her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.(AA)
12 I will ruin her vines(AB) and her fig trees,(AC)
    which she said were her pay from her lovers;(AD)
I will make them a thicket,(AE)
    and wild animals will devour them.(AF)
13 I will punish her for the days
    she burned incense(AG) to the Baals;(AH)
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,(AI)
    and went after her lovers,(AJ)
    but me she forgot,(AK)”
declares the Lord.(AL)
14 “Therefore I am now going to allure her;
    I will lead her into the wilderness(AM)
    and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
    and will make the Valley of Achor[b](AN) a door of hope.
There she will respond[c](AO) as in the days of her youth,(AP)
    as in the day she came up out of Egypt.(AQ)
16 “In that day,” declares the Lord,
    “you will call me ‘my husband’;(AR)
    you will no longer call me ‘my master.[d]’
17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;(AS)
    no longer will their names be invoked.(AT)
18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
    with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
    and the creatures that move along the ground.(AU)
Bow and sword and battle
    I will abolish(AV) from the land,
    so that all may lie down in safety.(AW)
19 I will betroth(AX) you to me forever;
    I will betroth you in[e] righteousness and justice,(AY)
    in[f] love and compassion.(AZ)
20 I will betroth you in[g] faithfulness,
    and you will acknowledge(BA) the Lord.(BB)
21 “In that day I will respond,”
    declares the Lord—
“I will respond(BC) to the skies,
    and they will respond to the earth;
22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
    the new wine and the olive oil,(BD)
    and they will respond to Jezreel.[h](BE)
23 I will plant(BF) her for myself in the land;
    I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.[i](BG)’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people,[j]’ ‘You are my people’;(BH)
    and they will say, ‘You are my God.(BI)’”