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Joh_4:22. Jesus has answered the question as to the where of worship; He now turns, unasked, to the object of worship, and in this He pronounces in favour of the Jews. The chain of thought is not: “as matters now stand,” and so on (Lücke and most others); such a change of time must have been indicated.
ὃ οὐκ οἴδατε ] ye worship what ye know not. God is meant, who is named not personally, but by the neuter, according to His essence and character, not as He who is worshipped, but as that which is worshipped (comp. the neuter, Act_17:23, according to the more correct reading); and this is simply God Himself, not τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ or τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεόν (Lücke), which would not be in keeping with the conception expressed in προσκυνεῖν ; for what is worshipped is not what pertains to God, but God (comp. Joh_4:21; Joh_4:23-24). The οὐκ οἴδατε is to be understood relatively; comp. Joh_7:28. As the Samaritans received the Pentateuch only, they were without the developed revelation of God contained in the subsequent books of the O. T., particularly in the Prophets, especially the stedfast, pure, and living development of Messianic hope, which the Jews possessed, so also they had lost, with the temple and its sacred shrines, the abiding presence of the Deity (Rom_3:2; Rom_9:4-5). Jesus, therefore, might well speak of their knowledge of God, in comparison with that of the Jews ( ἡμεῖς ), who possessed the full revelation and promise, as ignorance; and He could regard this great superiority of the Jews as unaffected by the monotheism, however spiritual, of the Samaritans. According to de Wette, whom Ebrard follows, the meaning is: “ye worship, and in so doing, ye do what ye know not,”—which is said to refer to the arbitrary and unhistorical manner in which the Samaritan worship originated. According to this, the ὅ would have to be taken as in ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ , Gal_2:20 (comp. Bengel), so that it would denote the προσκύνησις itself, which is accomplished in the προσκυνεῖν (see Bernhardy, p. 106). But in that case it would have been more logical to write ὃ ὑμεῖς προσκυνεῖτε , οὐκ οἴδατε . Tittmann, Morus, Kuinoel, also erroneously say that ὃ stands for καθʼ ὅ , pro vestra ignorantia. It is the accusative of the object, in which is included the dative, or even the accusative of the demonstrative (for προσκύν . is construed in both ways; see Lobeck, ad Phyrn. p. 463).
ἡμεῖς ] i.e. Jews, without a conjunction, and hence all the more emphatic. According to the whole connection, it must mean we Jews, not Christians, as if ἡμεῖς were intended in the Gnostic sense to denote, as something altogether new, the distinctively Christian consciousness, as contrasted with the unconscious worship of the Israelitish race in its Samaritan and Jewish branches (Hilgenfeld, comp. his Zeitschr. 1863, p. 213 ff.). That Jesus, being Himself a Jew (Gal_4:4; Joh_1:11), should reckon Himself among the Jews, cannot be thought strange in the antithesis of such a passage as this. But in what follows, the Lord rises so high above this antithesis between Samaritan and Jew, that in the future which He opens up to view (Joh_4:23-24), this national distinctiveness ceases to have any significance. Still, in answer to the woman’s question, He could simply and definitely assign to the Jews that superiority which historically belonged to them before the manifestation of that higher future; but He could not intend “to set her free from the unreality of her national existence” (Luthardt), but rather, considering the occasion which presented itself, could make no concession to the injury of the rights of His patriotism as Messiah, based as this was upon historical fact and upon the divine purpose (Rom_1:16).
ὅτι ἡ σωτ ., κ . τ . λ .] because salvation (of course, not without the σωτήρ , though this is not named) proceeds from the Jews (not from the Samaritans),—a general doctrinal statement, incontestably true, based upon the promise to Abraham, Genesis 12 (comp. Isa_2:3; Mic_4:2), concerning the σωτηρία of the Messiah’s kingdom, whose future establishment is represented as present, as is natural in such an axiomatic statement of historic fact. As salvation is of the Jews, this design of their existence in the economy of grace constitutes the reason ( ὅτι ) why they, as a nation, possessed the true and pure revelation of God, whose highest culmination and consummation is that very σωτηρία ; comp. Rom_9:4-5. It must not, indeed, be overlooked that ἡμεῖς … οἴδαμεν was not true of every individual of the ἡμεῖς (not of those who rejected the σωτηρία ), but refers to the nation as a whole in its ideal existence as the people of God, whose prerogative as such could not be destroyed by empirical exceptions. Thus the invisible church is hidden in the visible.