Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 4:19 - 4:20
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_4:19-20. The woman now discerns in Jesus the man of God endowed with higher knowledge, a prophet,[190] and puts to Him accordingly—perhaps also to leave no further room for the unpleasant mention of the circumstances of her life which had been thus unveiled—the national religious question ever in dispute; a question which does not, indeed, imply a presentiment of the superiority of the Jews’ religion (Ewald), but one, the decision of which might be expected from such a prophet as she now deemed Him to be. The great national interest in this question (see Josephus, Antt. xiii. 3. 4) is sufficient to remove any apparent improbability attaching to it as coming from the lips of this morally frivolous woman (against Strauss, B. Bauer). Luthardt thinks that she now wished to go in prayer for the forgiveness of her sins to the holy place appointed, and only desires to know where? on Gerizim or in Jerusalem. But she has not arrived at this stage yet; she does not give any intimation of this, she does not call the place a place of expiation (this also against Lange); and Jesus, in His answer, gives no hint to that effect. Her seeking after religious information is still theoretical merely, laying hold upon a matter of popular controversy, naive, without any depth of personal anxiety, as also without any thought about the fundamental difference between the two nations, which Hengstenberg attributes to her as a representative of the Samaritans, one who first wished to remove the stumbling-block between the nations; see Joh_4:25.
θεωρῶ ] ΠΕΡΙΣΚΟΠΕῖΤΑΙ ΚΑῚ ΘΑΥΜΆΖΕΙ , Chrysostom.
ΟἹ ΠΑΤΈΡΕς ἩΜ .] As ὙΜΕῖς stands opposed, we must not go back to Abraham and Jacob (according to a tradition based upon Gen_12:6 ff; Gen_13:4; Gen_33:20), as Chrysostom, Euthymius Zigabenus, and many others, even Kuinoel and Baumgarten Crusius, do; we must simply take the reference to be to the ancestors of the Samaritans as far back as the building of the temple on Mount Gerizim in the time of Nehemiah.
ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ ] pointing to Gerizim, between which and Ebal the town of Sychem (and Sychar) lay. The temple there had already been destroyed by John Hyrcanus; but the site itself, which Moses had already fixed as that wherein the blessings of the law were to be spoken (Deu_11:29; Deu_27:12-13), was still held sacred by the people (comp. Josephus, Antt. xviii. 4. 1; Bell. iii. 7. 32), especially also on account of Deu_27:4 (where the Samaritan text has âøéæéí instead of òéáì ), and is so even at the present day. See Robinson, III. p. 319 ff.; Ritter, Erdk. XVI. p. 638 ff.; Abulfathi, Annab. Samar. arab. ed., Vilmar, 1865, Proleg. 4. Concerning the ruins on the top of the mountain, see especially Bargès, as before, p. 107 ff.
[190] Comp. 1Sa_9:9; in Greek and Latin writers: Hom. Il. i. 70; Hesiod, Theog. 38; Virgil, Georg. iv. 392; Macrobius, Sat. i. 20. 5.