And still others rise, as we think of the connection in the narrative of St. John of this with what preceded and with what follows. It almost seems as if that Gospel were constructed in cycles, each beginning, or at least connected, with Jerusalem, and leading up to a grand climax. Thus, the first cycle [1967] might be called that of purification: first, that of the Temple; then, inward purification by the Baptism from above; next, the symbolic Baptism of water; lastly, the real water of life given by Jesus; and the climax - Jesus the Restorer of life to them that believe. Similarly, the second cycle, [1968] beginning with the idea of water in its symbolic application to real worship and life from Jesus, would carry us a stage further; and so onward throughout the Gospel. Along with this we may note, as another peculiarity of the Fourth Gospel, that it seems arranged according to this definite plan of grouping together in each instance the work of Christ, as followed by the illustrative word of Christ. Thus the fourth would, both externally and internally, be the pre-eminently Judæan Gospel, characterised by cyclical order, illustrative conjunction of work and word, and progressively leading up to the grand climax of Christ's last discourses, and finally of His Death and Resurrection, with the teaching that flows from the one and the other.
It was about six o'clock in the evening, [1969] when the travel-stained pilgrims reached that parcel of ground' which, according to ancient Jewish tradition, Jacob had given to his son Joseph. [1970] Here (as already stated) by the Well of Jacob' where the three roads - south, to Shechem, and to Sychar (Askar) - meet and part, Jesus sat down, while the disciples (probably with the exception of John) went on to the closely adjoining little town of Sychar to buy food. Even this latter circumstance marks that it was evening, since noon was not the time either for the sale of provisions, nor for their purchase by travellers. Once more it is when the true Humanity of Jesus is set before us, in the weakness of His hunger and weariness, [1971] that the glory of His Divine Personality suddenly shines through it. This time it was a poor, ignorant Samaritan woman, [1972] who came, not for any religious purpose - indeed, to whom religious thought, except within her own very narrow circle, was almost unintelligible - who became the occasion of it. She had come - like so many of us, who find the pearl in the field which we occupy in the business of everyday-life - on humble, ordinary duty and work. Men call it common; but there is nothing common and unclean that God has sanctified by making use of it, or which His Presence and teaching may transform into a vision from heaven.
There was another well (the 'Ain 'Askar), on the east side of the little town, and much nearer to Sychar than Jacob's Well;' and to it probably the women of Sychar generally resorted. It should also be borne in mind, that in those days such work no longer devolved, as in early times, on the matrons and maidens of fair degree, but on women in much humbler station. This Samaritaness may have chosen Jacob's Well,' perhaps, because she had been at work in the fields close by; or else, because her abode was nearer in that direction - for the ancient Sychar may have extended southward; perhaps, because, if her character was what seems implied in verse 18, the concourse of the more common women at the village-well of an evening might scarcely be a pleasant place of resort to one with her history. In any case, we may here mark those Providential leadings in our everyday life, to which we are so often almost as much spiritually indebted, as to grace itself; which, indeed, form part of the dispensation of grace. Perhaps we should note how, all unconsciously to her (as so often to us), poverty and sin sometimes bring to the well by which Jesus sits weary, when on His return from self-righteous Judæa.