And it was, as we judge, the evening of a day in early summer, [1960] when Jesus, accompanied by the small band which formed His disciples, [1961] emerged into the rich Plain of Samaria. Far as the eye could sweep, the fields' were already white unto the harvest.' They had reached the Well of Jacob.' There Jesus waited, while the others went to Sychar on their work of ministry. Probably John remained with the Master. They would scarcely have left Him alone, especially in that place; and the whole narrative reads like that of one who had been present at what passed. [1962] More than any other, perhaps, in the Fourth Gospel, it bears the mark, not only of Judæan, but of contemporary authorship. It seems utterly incompatible with the modern theory of its Ephesian origin at the end of the second century. The location of the scene, not in Sebaste or Shechem, but at Sychar, [1963] which in the fourth century at least had so entirely ceased to be Samaritan, that it had become the home of some celebrated Rabbis; [1964] the intimate knowledge of Samaritan and Jewish relations, which at the time of Christ allowed the purchase of food, but would certainly not have conceded it two centuries later; even the introduction of such a statement as Salvation is of the Jews,' wholly inconsistent with the supposed scope of an Ephesian Gospel - these are only some of the facts which will occur to the student of that period, as bearing unsolicited testimony to the date and nationality of the writer.
Indeed, there is such minuteness of detail about the narrative, and with it such charm of simplicity, affectionateness, reverence, and depth of spiritual insight, as to carry not only the conviction of its truthfulness, but almost instinctively to suggest to us the beloved disciple' as its witness. Already he had taken the place nearest to Jesus and saw and spake as none other of the disciples. Jesus weary, and resting while the disciples go to but food, is not an Ephesian, but a truly Evangelic presentation of the Christ in His human weakness and want.
All around would awaken in the Divinely-attuned soul of the Divine Redeemer the thoughts which so soon afterwards found appropriate words and deeds. He is sitting by Jacob's Well - the very well which the ancestor of Israel had digged, and left as a memorial of his first and symbolic possession of the land. Yet this was also the scene of Israel's first rebellion against God's order, against the Davidic line and the Temple. And now Christ is here, among those who are not of Israel, and who persecute it. Surely this, of all others, would be the place where the Son of David, cast out of Jerusalem and the Temple, would think of the breach, and of what alone could heal it. He is hungry, and those fields are white to the harvest; yet far more hungering for that spiritual harvest which is the food of His soul. Over against Him, sheer up 800 feet, rises Mount Gerizim, with the ruins of the Samaritan rival Temple on it; just as far behind Him, already overhung by the dark cloud of judgment, are that Temple and City which knew not the day of their visitation. The one inquiring woman, and she a Samaritan, and the few only partially comprehending and much misunderstanding disciples; their inward thinking that for the spiritual harvest it was but seed-time, and the reaping yet four months distant,' while in reality, as even their eyes might see if they but lifted them, the fields were white unto the harvest: all this, and much more, forms a unique background to the picture of this narrative.
To take another view of the varying lights on that picture: Jesus weary and thirsty by Jacob's Well, and the water of life which was to spring from, and by that Well, with its unfailing supply and its unending refreshment! The spiritual in all this bears deepest symbolic analogy to the outward - yet with such contrasts also, as the woman giving to Christ the one, He to her the other; she unconsciously beginning to learn, He unintendingly (for He had not even entered Sychar) beginning to teach, and that, what He could not yet teach in Judæa, scarcely even to His own disciples; then the complete change in the woman, and the misapprehension [1965] and non-reception [1966] of the disciples - and over it all the weary form of the Man Jesus, opening as the Divine Christ the well of everlasting life, the God-Man satisfied with the meat of doing the Will, and finishing the Work, of Him that sent Him: such are some of the thoughts suggested by the scene.