《Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures – John (Ch. 4~Ch. 8》(Johann P. Lange) 04 Chapter 4

We worship that which we know.—Designating the Jewish fellowship in its living unity, as represented in fact by Himself. [The ἡμεὶς in the mouth of Christ in relation to God, is without example, but is easily explained by the fact that here He speaks as a Jew, defending the Jewish worship as the true one against the Samaritan. Otherwise He always calls God His Father, and puts Himself, as the only begotten Song of Solomon, in a unique and exclusive relation to Him. In John 4:23-24 He drops the ἡμεῖς and speaks of the Christian worshippers in the third person.—P. S.]

For salvation is from the Jews.—[ἐστίν, the present, not ἕσται, for salvation was already at hand in the person of the Saviour.—P. S.] Σωτηρία: (1) Chrysostom, et al.: All benefits of salvation; (2) Erasmus: The prophetic knowledge of salvation; (3) The true Jews worship the God of continuous revelation. The proof of this lies in the fact that salvation breaks forth out of Judaism (Leben Jesu, II. p533). Similarly Tholuck, Meyer. In ἐκ τῶν (see Romans 9:4 ff) are intimated (1) the personal issuing of salvation out of Judaism, (2) its inward connection with Judaism, (3) its distinction from it. The expression is an evidence that John names the Jews not in a hostile sense alone.

[By this declaration Christ sets the seal of His authority on the Jewish religion as a divine revelation to prepare mankind for His coming, and sets aside all other religions as false, or at best as groping in the dark after “the unknown God.” This preparation by law, types, and prophecy, running back in unbroken succession to Abraham, and even to the very gates of paradise lost ( Genesis 3:14), forms one of the most convincing evidences of Christianity, as the final and perfect religion of mankind—P. S.]

John 4:23. When the true worshippers.—The hour now is. Christ was the centre of these worshippers, and about Him was gathering the discipleship of the true worship. The hour Isaiah, and the hour cometh. The true: the inward, whose prayer is truly prayer. The true worshippers are not so called for being beforehand worshippers in spirit and in truth (excepting Christ), but they are such as become so under the Christian revelation. [Οἱ ἀληθινοὶ προσκυνηταί are distinguished not only from hypocrites, but also from all worshippers before Christ, whose worship was necessarily imperfect.—P. S.]

In spirit and in truth.^[FN73]—[The preposition ἐν signifies the element and the sphere in which worship moves.] This is the space-less place of prayer, in distinction from [and yet at the same time including both] Gerizim and Jerusalem. [Also πνεῦμα in opposition to flesh (σάρξ), ἀλήθεια in opposition to falsehood (ψεῦδος), both in opposition to mere forms and symbols (σκιά and τύποι).—P. S.] In spirit, as opposed to external, stiffened, and even carnally fanatical modes of worship; in the life of the spirit, the life of the human spirit moved by the Spirit of God ( Romans 8:14; Romans 8:16; Romans 8:26).^[FN74] The distinction itself shows that πνεῦμα here cannot denote the Holy Ghost (Luthardt, after the ancients); yet neither can it denote the human spirit as such by itself. This is doubtless in especial opposition to some fanatical, carnal devotion of the Samaritans. In truth.—Neither subjective truth of the Prayer of Manasseh, sincerity, of itself (which is involved earlier in ἁληθινοί);^[FN75] nor objective truth as such (which would mean in unity with God, or in the doctrine of God); but the opposite of a merely symbolical, formal, ritualistic worship; in real, actual religious life, i.e., in a true interaction between the personal worshipper and the personal God, in a religious vitality of the worshipper worthy of the living God. This probably in especial opposition to the Jewish symbolical system of prayer. Athanasius, et al.: Πνεῦμα is the Holy Ghost; ἀλήθεια, the Son of God.^[FN76] Augustine, et al., with reference to the place: In spiritu, in distinction from space: Foras eramus, intromissi sumus; in templo vis orare, in te ora.^[FN77] Lücke, et al.: That which is akin to God in spirit, the sphere of true prayer. Calvin, et al. with reference to the mode: The actio spiritualis itself; Bucer, et al.: The posture of mind corresponding to the Spirit of God. We must not overlook the close connection of “spirit and truth” as in an ideal unity. It implies that one cannot exist without the other. The rendering with the article—in the Spirit, etc. [in Luther’s5]—is substantially not incorrect, yet it does not let the connection of the two things stand out strongly enough.

For such [τοιούτους, emphatically placed first] worshippers the Father also [καὶ γάρ, nam et pater (Vulg.), denn auch] seeketh.—On the part of the Father Himself this living prayer is sought, as on its own part it seeks the Father. Such He desires and requires; such He would have, and must have.—Interpretations: 1. The Father also, besides the Son [Besser]. 2. Also seeketh (referring the καί to ζητεῖ, which makes the antithesis not clear). 3. The Father also seeketh what these worshippers do (Meyer). More accurately: He seeketh for Himself such worshippers, as these worshippers seek for themselves such a God.

John 4:24. God is spirit.—Emphasis on πνεῦμα.^[FN78] The mode of prayer must correspond to the object of prayer. Hence it is now become the law of life for all worshippers, that they must worship God in spirit and in truth. Every other sort of praying is thereby done away, as well as, or in proportion as, the provisional system of religion. The mode of prayer is to be conformed to the mode of religion. God as the living Spirit, and as pure Spirit, is present to His worshippers, and He rejects an outward prayer or a false prayer from a carnal mind, as well as a symbolical prayer from a trammeled mind. God’s being spirit was neither a thing already known, now emphasized (Hofmann, Meyer), nor a thing entirely new to the Old Testament (Köstlin, etc.). The Old Testament speaks of the Spirit of God, and intimates also the spirituality of God ( Exodus 20:4; Numbers 16:22; 1 Kings 8; Isaiah 31:3), the New speaks of God as spirit; being in this matter also the finished revelation. Common prayers, liturgies, are not hereby forbidden; they may be regarded as the embodiment of the Christian spirit of prayer (Stier); but here is established the condition that this body be living, under perfect discipline, spiritual.

[“God is spirit”; “God is light” ( 1 John 1:5); and “God is love” ( 1 John 4:5), all from the pen of John, are the briefest and profoundest definitions, or divine oracles rather, concerning the nature of God, which can be found anywhere. The first refers mainly to His metaphysical, the second to His intellectual, the third to His moral essence; but, of course, the line cannot be so distinctly drawn. Light refers to purity and holiness as well as to truth. Although no metaphysician can exhaust these words, yet even the ignorant Samaritan woman could understand them sufficiently for all practical purposes, viz. that God, being a spiritual being, is not confined to Gerizim or Jerusalem or any other place, but is omnipresent, and can be worshipped everywhere. Trench applies to this passage the well-known saying, that the Scripture has depths for an elephant to swim in, and shallows for a lamb to wade,—a saying which seems to date from Gregory the Great (Preface to his Com. on Job: “Divinus sermo…est fluvius planus et altus, in quo et agnus ambulet el elephas natet”). Spirituality of Christian worship does, of course, not exclude forms, which are indispensable, as man consists of body as well as soul, but puts them in a subordinate position, as vehicles and aids of devotion, while formalism makes them substitutes for, or hindrances of, the inner service of the heart.—P. S.]

John 4:25. I know that Messiah cometh.—Here, too, comes a decidedly incorrect estimate of the woman in Tholuck: “The woman is not inclined to enter into so high matters, and therefore answers like Felix, Acts 24:25.” Similarly, De Wette, Lücke, [Scott, Barnes]. Would Christ have revealed Himself as the Messiah to such a woman? Meyer better: “The woman is apprehended by the answer of Jesus, but does not as yet apprehend it, and appeals to the Messiah.” Evidently the words of the wonderful Unknown quicken in her the Samaritan expectation, of the Messiah. Even a presentiment that this might be the Messiah, may readily be imagined (Luthardt); and then her answer would have to be construed as a feeler for the true solution; perhaps as Lampe explains her words: “Give me this water.” At all events, she now felt the old system to be shaken, and with a longing for the inner life, the longing for the Messiah awoke (see Leben Jesu, II:2534).^[FN79]

A. Maier (p344): “If the Messianic hope of the Samaritans, who acknowledged only the Pentateuch, based itself on Deuteronomy 18:15, they must have expected in the Messiah chiefly a divine teacher, who like Moses, should make known to them the divine will, and lead them into hidden truths.” The Samaritans expected the Messiah of old, and they expect Him to this day. “The latest on this subject is in the work of Barge’s; Les Samaritains de Naplouse, 1855. They call Him הַשָׁהֵב, or הַתָּהֶב, which Gesenius, Anecdota Samarit., p65, etc., [and Ewald] would interpret conversor, Hengstenberg [and Meyer], with greater probability, restitutor,^[FN80] which the Samaritan priest in Barge’s confirms.” Tholuck. For other interpretations see the note in Tholuck, p150. The woman may have well known the Jewish term, and have chosen it instead of the Samaritan. According to V. Ammon, and others, the term [the explanation: Who is called Christ] is the Evangelist’s;^[FN81] which is very questionable, since he generally prefers to record the original expressions.

John 4:26. I am he [̓Εγώ εἰμι, ego sum, viz., the Messiah].—The subject of ἐγώ εἰμι is to be supplied from the text. Thus He now voluntarily presents Himself to this sinful woman openly as the Messiah, as in the old covenant the angel appeared first to Hagar as angel of the Lord ( Genesis 16:7), and as the risen Jesus appeared first to Magdalene. Among the Jews Jesus long avoided the name of Messiah,^[FN82] because its meaning was distorted by Chiliastic notions; the Samaritan idea of the Messiah was stunted, but not as yet encumbered with Chiliastic inferences, and therefore could here be introduced. [The Jews looked upon the Messiah as the King of Israel, and expected from Him first of all political changes (comp. John 6:15): while the Samaritans, deriving their Messianic expectations chiefly from Deuteronomy 18:15-19, regarded Him simply as a prophet or teacher, and were less liable to abuse this revelation for disturbing political purposes.—P. S.]

John 4:27. Marvelled that he talked with a woman.—Not with this woman as such (Kuinoel), but with a woman, on the low level assigned her by the rabbinic views. Two considerations met here: 1. The Oriental custom which imposed rigid restriction on intercourse with the female sex: Pirke Aboth i5. “Docuerunt Sapientes, ne multiplices colloquium cum muliere. Cum uxore dixerunt, quanto minus cum uxore alterius.” (Lightfoot, Schöttgen.) 2. Rabbinical scholastic prejudice. “According to Jewish Rabbinical ideas the female sex was incapable of religious instruction.” (Tholuck. It should doubtless be: Rabbinical instruction.)^[FN83] Yet no man said.—Expressing reverence, and the acknowledgment that He might well establish a new and higher custom. An enlargement of their horizon. Comp. Luke 10:38. Tίζητεῖς is hardly: What desirest Thou? (Meyer without connecting it with μετ’ αὐτῆς.) Plainly the ζητεῖν, in distinction from λαλεῖν, is to discuss in rabbinical style; the latter meaning merely to talk (chat). Μέντοι in the New Testament is almost peculiar to John.

John 4:28. The woman then left her water-pot.—“Now for the first time the force of the argument from His prophecy comes powerfully upon the woman, perhaps under the additional influence of an awakened conscience.” Tholuck. Why: Now for the first time? and why: perhaps? “She forgets her work, as the Redeemer had forgotten His need.” Luthardt: “Nicodemus went away silent and burdened; this woman hastens away in joyful certainty, with a burning heart, to be the herald of His name.” And she calls now not her husband, but the whole city. [Meyer: “What a power of the decided awakening of a new life in this woman!” She has been justly regarded as a fit illustration of the proper work of the church, viz., to be a witness of Christ, and thus to lead men to Him as the Saviour of the world.—P. S.]

John 4:29. Who told me all things that ever I have done.—Under the sense of her guilt she thinks He has told her everything she had done, that is everything wrong. The testimony of an awakened conscience.^[FN84] Unquestionably what Jesus said to her contained the sum of her particular transgressions. Besides this she had no doubt perceived by His look and tone, that He saw through her whole life. It may indicate still her legal spirit, that she speaks in the plural of her sins; yet she may also intend by this to magnify the wonderful vision of the prophet. The ὅσα, instead of ἅ, is full of emphasis.

Is this the Christ?—On the negative, doubtful element in the μήτι, comp. Meyer and Tholuck against Lücke (is He really the Messiah?) De Wette, however, suggests the analogous μήτι in Matthew 12:23, which calls for an affirmative answer. Considering the boldness of the announcement, especially in presence of the authorities, the interrogative form is perfectly intelligible in the mouth of this poor outcast, and yet so shrewd and dexterous woman.^[FN85] The more, that she passes over Christ’s announcement of Himself, in order perhaps to take to herself somewhat of the honor of a glorious discovery. A sinful ambition may well still cleave to her confession of guilt which was more public than it was perfectly open. That she herself believes, or is inclined to believe, is evident from her extraordinary agitation, which impels her beyond all the bounds of reserve, bashfulness, and despised condition. Compare the woman who was a great sinner, and ventured into the house of the Pharisee, Luke 7:37.

John 4:31-33. In the meanwhile.—The woman was gone, the Samaritans had not yet come. The mistake of the disciples: “Quid mirum, si mulier non intelligebat aquam? ecce discipuli nondum intelligunt escam.” August. [Tract. xvi31.—P.S.].

John 4:34. My food is.—A very intelligible figure. Not merely satisfaction, but nourishment and quickening. An opposite judgment of the disciples, c1. A parallel, Matthew 4 Ἳνα adds to the nature of the food (ὅτι) its suitableness to its purpose. The aorist τελειώσω denotes the act which completes the ποιεῖν.

John 4:35. There are yet four months.—Τετράμηνος, sc. χρόνος. Harvest began in April [in the middle of Nisan], about, Easter, and lasted till Pentecost. Four months run back to December. Seed-time itself fell in the beginning of November (the month Marcheshvan). The fields, therefore, were probably green; and the more piquant was the expression: The fields are white for the harvest. The figure follows the analogy of the food. The Lord, as represented by John, is perfectly consistent in His use of the earthly as the symbol of the heavenly. Probably the Samaritans were already coming through the green fields, and they were the fields white for harvest. The disciples saw the green seed-field, He saw the white harvest-field, and to this He wished to open their spiritual eye. Many have taken the four months proverbially: “From seeding to harvest there are four months” (so also in the Talmud); and in this view the passage would lose its chronological value,^[FN86] and only denote in general some time before harvest (Lightfoot, Grotius, Lücke, etc.). Against this Meyer: The proverb does not elsewhere occur [nor is the seed-time mentioned]. After all there seems to be something proverbial about the expression. Yet it is suitable only at seed-time. It may then be an expression as well of joyful hope (only four months yet), as of waiting patience (yet four whole months). Lücke rightly chooses the latter sense. In the natural world we must wait yet four months; in the spiritual, it is already the time of harvest.

Yet this again may be understood in different ways1. In the natural world four months intervene between seeding and harvest; here a harvest follows immediately upon the sowing. John 4:38 goes against this2. In the natural world it is now seeding time; in the spiritual the harvest time is opening. Chemnitz, Baur (Stier, Luthardt, Tholuck), and others find in the harvest not only the harvest of the Samaritans ( Acts 8), but also the harvest of the Gentiles.^[FN87] But then where would be the previous sowing? Primarily the talk is only of a field now white for the harvest, though betokening, to be sure, all future harvest fields.

John 4:36. And he that reapeth, etc.—The connection with the preceding is this: The field is white for harvest. Be reapers. Reaping in the spiritual field is full of promise. Tholuck: Christ thought of the conversion of far-off Gentiles. Then came the sad thought, that He Himself would not live to see it in this world; which relieved itself with the joyful thought that their joy would also be His. So De Wette, Meyer. In that case Christ would have mixed two figures; one representing Himself as already harvesting, another representing Him as sower. But harvest is the subject here, and the disciples are supposed to be reapers with Him. The sowing, therefore, must be sought at some previous time (Chrysostom: The prophets were the sowers). Even in Samaria spiritual seed had been sown by Moses and the Pentateuch, by Jewish teachers, last perhaps by John the Baptist (see John 3:23, p141 f.). As little can we accept the exposition of Meyer, Tholuck, and others, which makes the καί after μισθόν λαμβάνειν only expletive: that Isaiah, he gathereth fruit unto eternal life. This again is simply contrary to the figure, which represents an employed reaper. Hunnius and Calov: The μισθός is the gracious reward, the gradus gloriæ; the καρπός is the converts. But since the wages of the reaper are represented as given in this world, over against the gathering of fruit unto eternal life, the primary idea is the immediate spiritual blessings and joys of the harvesters, the joy of spiritual harvest, the communion of the converts themselves. A different and further joy is that of carrying the fruit into heaven, to gladden there the sower who passed thither long before, and to have with Him a common and simultaneous (ὁμοῦ) rejoicing; a thing not possible in the kingdom of nature, but belonging to the kingdom of grace. The ζωὴ αἰώνιος is here again represented objectively, as above; there under the figure of the ocean ( John 4:14), here under the figure of a garner (Lücke).

John 4:37. Herein is that saying fully true [ἀληθινός, not ἀληθής].—The fundamental thought is the wonderfully great distance between seeding and harvest, in contrast with the wonderful fact that reaper and sower rejoice together in heaven. This, however, they can do only in heaven; in this world they are far, often very far, apart. Here, therefore, is the proverb fully true; here it reaches its proper truth; whereas in earthly life the sower is generally the reaper, and the proverb simply exaggerates into a general rule the exceptional fatality of the sower not living to see the harvest time, or at least not himself receiving and enjoying his harvest. [The words of Joshua spoken to the tribes of Israel at Shechem: “I have given you a land for which ye did not labor (οὐκ ἐκοπιάσατε), and cities which ye built not,” etc. Joshua 24:13, form a striking parallel to this saying of our Lord uttered on the same spot, and perhaps with reference to it.—P. S.] Tholuck, after De Wette, incorrectly: Ἄληθινός may here mean only ἀληθής.^[FN88] Then the proverb in its ordinary sense would be declared false. It has, however, some truth; but it does not sustain its truth throughout; as earthly things are not ἀληθινά, but only symbols of the infinite, though they all have their ἀληθές. And since in the spiritual sphere sowing and reaping seem often almost to coincide, we must not overlook the actual reference to the present case. Yet the ἐν γάρ τούτῳ does not mean in this instance, but in this matter. Then, too, the proverb must here be a universal law. The crop in the kingdom of God ripens slowly.^[FN89] The full harvest is the end of the world. The earliest seed was the word of God in paradise, or the earliest sowers were the earliest patriarchs. The kingdom of God is the mightiest realm of nature and history; and Christ is the root of nature in His slow growth towards His appearance in the middle, and again at the end of time. (On the proverb: Wetstein.)

John 4:38. I sent you to reap.—Ἀπέστειλα (comp. John 17:18.) Hardly merely “in the sense of the prophetic future” (De Wette, Tholuck). They are not yet apostles by a distinct appointment; still they were already disciples to whom an apostolic commission is prospectively affixed. Hence thus: I have chosen you for apostles, or, to keep the figure, for laborers, to send you into the harvest-field. Ye are destined pre-eminently to reap a spiritual harvest which has been long preparing (so also Meyer). According to Meyer the ἅλλοι and αὐτῶν refer simply to Jesus, in the plural of category.”^[FN90] But Jesus here evidently sets Himself above the distinction of sowers and reapers as the Lord of the harvest (Olshausen, with reference to Matthew 23:34). The older expositors [also Grotius, Bengel, Luthardt, Ewald] include at least the prophets [and John the Baptist] with Him. Bucer: even the heathen philosophers and their elements of truth. [Tholuck: All the preparatory organs of the economy of salvation.] The seed here in view, however, is not the seed of general culture and intelligence, but the seed of theocratic faith.

Others have labored. The painful labors and toils of the prophets. Their sowing was a sowing in tears. It should shame and encourage the disciples, that they so suddenly come into the great harvest of the history of the world, for which the grandest seeds-men have for centuries labored. This does not exclude either the relative harvest which exists at every stage of the kingdom of God, or again the great sowing in the work of the apostles; yet the sight of a present harvest predominates, as in Matthew 9:38; especially here, that the disciples might feel reverence before the hidden work of God in the despised Samaritans, and believe in their susceptibility to conversion, as they were just now approaching. They could no more take offence it the labors of Jesus with the Samaritans, than at His helping the Canaanitish woman; here as there His leading of their spirit corresponds to His outward act.

John 4:39. And many of that city believed.—These first believers, who were gathered by the word of the woman, are distinguished from the much greater company afterwards won by the word of Jesus ( John 4:41). These believers are now come to Him (see John 4:30). [Olshausen: “If the Redeemer had been like any other Prayer of Manasseh, His λόγος could have had no more weight than that of any other, and in support of His own cause, it would have been still less effective. But as the sun proves its existence and reality merely by the light and the animating warmth which it imparts: so Christ, as the Sun of the spiritual world, in all ages past, and to this day, has had but one witness for Himself, viz., His own operation upon souls. By this one means He so entirely takes possession of every unprejudiced mind, that through the reception of His higher vital energies, it becomes to them experimentally certain that the salvation of the world rests in Him. Hence conceptions of the truth and doctrinal knowledge are not principles in the life of faith, but effects resulting from the reception of the spiritual element.”—P. S.]

John 4:40. The evangelist makes record that Jesus tarried two days teaching in the Samaritan city. [Orthodox Jews besought the Lord to depart from their coasts ( Matthew 8:34), took up stones against Him, and plotted for His overthrow ( Matthew 8:34; Luke 4:29; Luke 13:31-32, etc.). Heretical Samaritans besought Him to tarry with them. The first became last, and the last first.—P. S.]

John 4:41. And many more believed, etc.—From the great result, analogous to that in Judea, we infer a great work of Jesus, which however was, at least for the most part, a labor in word. [In these two days of incidental labor Jesus made more converts among the half-heathenish, yet less bigoted and prejudiced Samaritans, without working miracles, than in the preceding eight months of official work in word and signs among the Jews in Jerusalem. The harvest in Samaria was only an episode in the life of our Lord, and yet how rich in immediate results and future promise! His servants also often accomplish most in times and places where they least expect it. Not seldom the meaning of many years or a whole life is condensed into a few days or hours. No labor for the Lord, however, is in vain; if it bear not the proper fruit in this world, it will do so at the final harvest of history.—P. S.]

John 4:42. And said unto the woman.—Under the direct impression which Jesus made upon them, the indirect testimony of the woman certainly became to them a λαλιά; not as contemptuous, but as now appearing insignificant.^[FN91] Meyer justly notices that John himself, as an impartial narrator, says of her word: τὸν λόγον. We must here take into account also the serenity of happy feeling, to understand that the expression has no malice, more than that of the governor of the feast: “Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” (Comp. the remarkable expression in John 8:43.)