John 4:41

Vv. 41 marks a two-fold advance, one in the number of believers, the other in the nature of their faith. This latter advance is expressed in the words: Because of His word, contrasted with the words: Because of the woman's story (John 4:39); it is reflectively formulated in the declaration of John 4:42. The Samaritans reserve the more grave term λόγος for the word of Jesus; they apply to the talk of the woman the term λαλία, which has in it, undoubtedly, nothing contemptuous (John 8:43, where Jesus applies it to His own discourses), but which denotes something more outward, a mere report, a piece of news. The verb ἀκηκόαμεν, we have heard, has in the Greek no object; the idea is concentrated in the subject αὐτοί : “We have ourselves become hearers;” whence follows: “And as such we know.” The reading of the Sinaitic MS.: “We have heard from him (from his mouth) and we know that...,” would give to the following profession the character of an external and slavish repetition, opposed to the spirit of the narrative. The expression: The Saviour of the world seems to indicate an advance in the notion of the Messiah in these Samaritans. The question is of salvation, and no longer merely of teaching as in John 4:25. This expression is, perhaps, connected with the word of Jesus to the woman (John 4:22), which Jesus must have developed to them: “ Salvation is from the Jews.”

Tholuck and Lucke suspect the historical truth of this term Saviour of the world, as too universalistic in the mouth of these Samaritans. By what right? Did not these people possess in their Pentateuch the promise of God to Abraham: “ All the families of the earth shall be blessed in thy seed,” to which Jesus might have called their attention? And had they not just been, during those two days, in direct contact with the love of the true Christ, so opposite to the particularistic arrogance of Jewish Pharisaism? The Alexandrian authorities reject the words ὁ χριστός, the Christ. Undoubtedly there might be seen in them the seal of the union announced by Jesus (John 4:23-24) between the Samaritans (the Saviour of the world) and the Jews (the Christ). But it is easier to understand how this term may have been added, than how it could have been rejected.

The eager welcome which Jesus found among the Samaritans is an example of the effect which the coming of Christ should have produced among His own. The faith of these strangers was the condemnation of Israel's unbelief. It was, undoubtedly, under this impression that Jesus, after those two exceptional days in His earthly existence, resumed His journey to Galilee.