as He was," without any regular scat, without looking for any convenient position, without any pride or formality, not upon a throne, not upon a cushion, but simply upon the ground.
Some think, as Doddridge, that " thus " means immediately, and find a parallel for it in Acts xx. 11.
Some think, as Calvin, Lightfoot, Dyke, Bullinger, Beza, Parkhurst, Stier, Alford, and Burgon, that " thus " refers to the weariness just mentioned. Jesus, being wearied, sat down on the well accordingly, after the manner and according to the fashion that any weary person would sit. He was weary, and so He sat on the well.
The question is one that I feel unable to settle. The last meaning seems to me, on the whole, the most probable one, though it fiails to carry complete conviction with it. The use of the word "so," in Acts vii. 8, is somewhat like it. The Greek word for " so " in that case is the same as the one here rendered " thus."
Burgon remarks on this sentence, " that Jacob and Moses each found his future wife beside a well of water ; and here it is seen that One greater than they, their divine Antitype, the Bride- groom takes to Himself His alien spouse, the Samaritan Church, at a well likewise."
Quesnel remarks, " The rest of Jesus Christ is as mysterious and full of kindness and beneficence as His weariness. — It is a great matter for a man to learn how to rest Himself without being idle, and to make his necessary repose subservient to the Glory of God."
'[It ivas about the sixth hour.] What time of the day was this, according to our calculation of time ? — By far the most common opinion is, that the sixth hour here means twelve o'clock, the hottest and sultriest time of the day. It is notorious that the ■ Jewish day began at six o'clock in the evening. Our seven o'clock was tlieir one o'clock, and their sixth hour would be our twelve o'clock.
It is however only just and right to say, that some commenta- tors, as Wordsworth and Burgon, maintain strongly that in St. John's Gospel the Jewish mode of reckoning the hours of the day is not observed. They say that, writing later than the other Evangelists, and in Asia Minor, St. John uses the Roman or Asiatic mode of reckoning time, and that the Roman mode w ;8 like our own. They say, therefore, that when the disciples f )!• lowed Jesus, (John i. 39,*^) at the tenth hour, it wns ten o'.;lock in the morning, and when the fever left the ruLr's ?on at the seventh hour, it was seven o'clock in the evening. (John iv. 52.) They say that when Pilate brought f rih Jesus to the Jews, on