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Joh_4:15-16. The woman as yet having no apprehension of the higher meaning of the water spoken of (against B. Crusius, Lange), yet being in some degree perplexed, asks, not in irony, as Lightfoot and Tholuck think, but sincerely, for this wonderful water, which at any rate must be of great use to her.
Jesus breaks off suddenly, and commences, by a seemingly unimportant request, “Call thy husband,” to lay hold of the woman in her inner life, so that the beginnings of faith in Him might be connected with His supernatural knowledge of her peculiar moral relations. This process must be accompanied with the awakening in her of a sense of guilt (see Joh_4:29), and thus pave the way for μετάνοια ; and who dare deny that, besides the immediate object, this may have been included in the purposes of Jesus? though He does not directly rebuke, but leaves the feeling to operate of itself (against Strauss and most others).
φώνησ . τ . ἄνδρα σου ] We are not to ask here what the husband was to do (Chrysostom, Euthymius Zigabenus: “that he might partake with her of the gift of salvation that was before her;” so also Lücke); because the command was only an apparent one, not seriously intended, for Jesus knew the relations of the woman, and did not merely discover His prophetic gift by the answer she gave, as Lücke and Godet quite gratuitously assume. The τ . ἄνδρα σου was the sore spot where the healing was to begin. According to Lange, L. J. II. p. 530 f., it would have been unseemly if Jesus, now that the woman showed a willingness to become His disciple (?), had continued to converse longer with her in her husband’s absence; His desire, therefore, was in keeping “with the highest and finest sense of social propriety.” But the husband was nothing more than a paramour!
ἐλθέ ] in the sense of come back, as the context shows. See Hom. Od. a. 408, β . 30; Xen. Anab. ii. 1. 1, v. 1. 4; Bar_4:37; Tob_1:18; Heind. ad Plat. Prot. p. 310 C. Comp. Joh_14:18; Luk_19:13.