Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 4:21 - 4:21
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_4:21. Jesus decides neither for the one place nor for the other; nor, on the other hand, does He pronounce both wrong (B. Crusius); but now that His aim is to give her the living water, divine grace and truth, He rises to the higher point of view of the future, whence both the local centres and limitations of God’s true worship disappear; and the question itself no longer arises, because with the triumph of His work all outward localizing of God’s worship comes to an end, not indeed absolutely, but as fettering the freedom of the outward service.
προσκυνήσ .] As spoken to the woman, this refers not to mankind generally (Godet), nor to the Israelites of both forms of religion (Hilgenfeld, comp. Hengstenberg), but to the future conversion of the Samaritans, who thus would be freed from the ritual on Mount Gerizim (which is therefore named first), but were not to be brought to the ritual in Jerusalem, and therefore ἐν Ἱεροσολ . has its warrant with reference to the Samaritans (against Hilgenfeld in the Theol. Jahrb. 1857, p. 517; and in his Zeitschr. 1863, p. 103). The divine ordainment of the temple service was educational. Christ was its aim and end, its πλήρωσις ; the modern doctrine of the re-establishing of Jerusalem in its grandeur is a chiliastic dream (see Rom_11:27, note).
τῷ πατρί ] spoken from the standing-point of the future converts, to whom God, through their faith in the Reconciler, would be Father: “Tacite novi foederis suavitatem innuit,” Grotius.