siah was to be David's Lord and also David's Son. (Mark xii. 37.)
"20. — [Our fathers worshipped, tfrc.] To see the full dtiffc of tliia ver.-e, we must carefuKy remember the state of the Samaritan woman's mind at this moment. I think that she spoke under spiritual anxiety. She was alarmed by having her sins suddenly exposed. She found herself for the first time in the presence of a prophet. She felt for the first time the necessity of religion. But at once the old question between the Jews and Samaritans aro?e before her mind. How was she to know what was truth ? What was t^he to believe ? Her own people said that the Sa- maritan mode of worshipping Grod was coirect. The Jews said that Jerusalem was the only pace where men ought to worship. Between these two conflicting opinions what was she to do ?
The natural ignorance of almost all unconverted people, when first nr(jused to thought about religion, appears strikingly in the woman's words. Man's first idea is to attach great importance to the outward mode of worshipping God. The first refuge of an awakened conscience is strict adherence to some outward form, and zeal for the external part of religion.
The woman's readiness to quote " the fathers " and their cus- toms, is an instructive instance of man's readiness to make cus- tom and tradition his only rule of faith. " Our fathers did so," is one of the natural man's favourite arguments. Calvin's com- ments on the expression "fathers " in this verse are very useful. He remarks, among other things, " None should be reckoned Fathers but those who are manifestly the sons of God."
When the woman spoke of "this mountain," she doubtless meant the hill on which the rival temple of Samaria was built, to the bitter annoyance of the Jerusalem Jews. It is said rhat this temple was first built in the days of Nehemiah by San- ballat, and that his son-in-law, the son of Joiada, whom Nehe- miah " chased from him," was its first high-priest. (Neh. xiii. 29.) Some have gone so far as to maintain that the hill Gerizim at Samaria was the hill on which Abraham offered up Isaac, and that the words of the woman refer to this. The more com- mon opinion is that Mount Moriah at Jerusalem was the place.
When the woman says, " Ye say," she doubtless includes th^ whole Jewish nation, of whom she regards our Lord as a repre- sentative.
Musculus, Baxter, Scott, and Barnes, think that tlie woman, in this verse, desired to turn away the conversation from her own sins to a subject of pubhc controversy, and in this way to change the subject. I am not however sati-fied that this view is correct. I prefer the view of Brentius, which I have already