John 4:16-18

“ Jesus says to her: Go, call thy husband, and come hither. 17. The woman answered and said: I have no husband. Jesus says to her: Thou hast well said: I have no husband. 18. For thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. In this thou hast said truly. ”

Westcott observes that the natural transition to this invitation, which is apparently so abrupt, is perhaps to be found in the last words of the woman: “that I pass no more this way to draw,” which suggest persons of her family for whom she is performing this duty. Must we seek the object of this request in the moral effect which it should produce on the woman, by giving Jesus the opportunity to prove to her his prophetic knowledge (Meyer, Reuss, etc.)? Certainly not, for there would then be a miracle of exhibition, which would not be in harmony with the ordinary simplicity of Jesus. The invitation must be its own justification. Others think that Jesus proposed to Himself to awaken in this woman the sense of her life of sin (Tholuck, Luthardt, Bonnet, Weiss, etc.).

But under this form of supposition also, the means used have something of indirectness, which does not seem to be in entire conformity with the perfect sincerity of the Lord. The true reason of it seems to me rather to be this: Jesus did not wish to act upon a dependent person without the participation of the one to whom she was bound, and the more because the summoning of the latter might be the means of extending His work. Meyer makes the nature of the relation which united them an objection. But the arrival of this woman, at so unusual an hour, had undoubtedly been for Jesus the signal of a work to be done; and there is nothing to show that, when addressing this invitation to the woman, Jesus had her antecedents already present to His mind. Might not the term, thy husband, indeed, be completely justified by this supposition? The prophetic insight may not have been awakened in Him till He heard the answer which struck Him: “ I have no husband: ” She had been married five times; and now, after these five lawful unions, she was living in an illicit relation. The fact that she did not venture to call the man with whom she is living her husband, shows in this woman a certain element of right character.

The reply of Jesus is not free from irony. The partial assent which He gives to the woman's answer, has something sarcastic in it. The same is true of the contrast which Jesus brings out between the number five and the: “I have no!” The emphatic position of the pronoun σοῦ before ἀνήρ implies, perhaps, the following understood antithesis: “Not thine own, but the husband of another. ” From this it would follow that she had lived in adultery. It is not absolutely necessary, however, to press so far the meaning of this construction. Modern criticism, since the time of Strauss (see especially Keim and Hausrath), connects this part of the conversation with the fact that the Samaritan nation was formed of five eastern tribes which, after having each brought its own God, had adopted, besides, Jehovah, the God of the country (2 Kings 17:30-31). The woman with her five husbands and the man with whom she was now living as the sixth, are, it is said, the symbol of the whole Samaritan people, and we have here a proof of the ideal character of this story. The view rests especially on this statement of Josephus (Antiq. 9.14, 3): “Five nations having brought each its own God to Samaria.” But 1, in the O. T. passage (2 Kings 17:30-31), there is, indeed, a question of five peoples, but, at the same time, of seven gods, two peoples having introduced two gods. 2. These seven gods were all worshiped simultaneously, and not successively, up to the moment when they gave place to Jehovah; a fact which destroys the correspondence between the situations. 3. Is it conceivable that Jehovah would be compared to the sixth husband, who was evidently the worst of all in the woman's life? If the reading six of Heracleon, has reference to the ancient Samaritan religion, it does not refer to the addition of Jehovah to the other five gods, but rather to 2 Kings 17:30, where there is an allusion to six or seven gods brought in by the Eastern Gentiles.

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

8. The turn in the conversation at John 4:16 is somewhat difficult to account for. It must be explained in connection with the progress of the story, and hence we may believe that it has reference to the end which Jesus had in view respecting the woman's spiritual life. In the case of Nicodemus, He met one of the leading men of the Jewish nation, who had come to ask Him concerning the kingdom of God. Nicodemus' attention had been already aroused and his mind had moved in the domain of this great subject. In the case of this woman, on the other hand, attention was to be aroused, and, both for herself and the people of her city, the wonder of His personality and His knowledge must be brought before her mind. For this reason, partly if not wholly, it may be supposed that He left the words concerning the living water to make their impression, and turned at once to a new point which might even more excite her astonishment and stir her thought. This new point, also, would have a bearing upon her own personal life and awaken her moral sense. Godet thinks that Jesus did not wish to act upon a dependent person without the presence of the one to whom she was bound.

The objection which Meyer presents is conclusive “the husband was nothing more than a paramour.” The reply which Godet makes, that the prophetic insight may not have been awakened in Jesus with regard to her antecedents until He heard her reply, “I have no husband,” is, as Meyer remarks, “a quite gratuitous assumption,” and, it may be added, one which contradicts all the probabilities of the case. The commentators have pursued this woman and her five husbands relentlessly, some of them even making all of the five, like the sixth, not her husbands, and some thinking of separation by divorce from some of them or that she had been unfaithful and forsaken them. But there is no foundation for suppositions of this character, as there is generally none for similar conjectures of one kind or another which, in other cases, a certain class of writers on the Old and New Testaments are disposed to make. Even Meyer, who holds that the five husbands had been lawfully married to her, says such a history had already seared her conscience, and appeals to John 4:29 as proof of this. He is obliged to add, however, “ how? is not stated. ” John 4:29 says nothing about her conscience; it says only that she saw that Jesus knew the facts of her past history. It was His knowledge that impressed her.