John 4:25

John 4:25. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh (which is called Christ). There is nothing surprising in her avowal that a Deliverer was looked for. We know from other sources that this was, and still is, an article of the Samaritan as of the Jewish faith; from age to age this people had waited in expectation of ‘the Converter' or ‘the Guide.' But the use of the Jewish name ‘Messiah' is more remarkable. We might suppose that it pointed to an approach towards Jewish faith and thought effected in this woman's heart by the teaching of Jesus, were it not that John 4:29 seems to show that the name was understood by Samaritans in general. Yet it could hardly be otherwise. Separated as the nations were, the famous name which the Jews universally applied to the Deliverer, for whose coming both peoples alike were waiting, would naturally be known far beyond the limits of Judea. The explanatory parenthesis, ‘which is called Christ,' was no doubt added by the Evangelist, who afterwards (John 4:29) translates the word without any mention of the Hebrew form.

When he is come, he will tell us all things. There can be little doubt that the Samaritan hope was mainly founded on the great passage in the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy 18:15-18 (see note on chap. John 1:21). The language here used, ‘He will tell us all things,' at once reminds us of Deuteronomy 18:18, ‘He shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.' The dependence of the Samaritans on the Pentateuch alone would naturally lead to their giving prominence to the prophetic aspect of the Coming One, so emphatically presented in this passage of the Law, rather than to the aspects under which the Deliverer is viewed in the later books of the Old Testament. The woman's words, indeed, may not convey her whole conception of Messiah, for the context has pointed only to revelation and teaching; but it is more than probable that many elements of the Jewish faith on this subject would be unknown in Samaria. If, however, the Samaritans expected less than the fuller revelation warranted, they at least escaped the prevalent Jewish error of looking for a Conqueror rather than a Prophet, for a temporal rather than a spiritual King.