But these are only symbols; the barest facts of the narrative are themselves sufficiently full of spiritual interest. Both to Jesus and to the woman, the meeting was unsought, Providential in the truest sense - God-brought. Reverently, so far as the Christ is concerned, we add, that both acted truly - according to what was in them. The request: Give Me to drink,' was natural on the part of the thirsty traveller, when the woman had come to draw water, and they who usually ministered to Him were away. [1973] Even if He had not spoken, the Samaritaness would have recognised the Jew by His appearance [1974] and dress, if, as seems likely, He wore the fringes on the border of His garment. [1975] His speech would, by its pronunciation, place His nationality beyond doubt. [1976] Any kindly address, conveying a request not absolutely necessary, would naturally surprise the woman; for, as the Evangelist explanatively adds: Jews have no dealings with Samaritans,' [1977] or rather, as the expression implies, no needless, friendly, nor familiar intercourse with them - a statement true at all times. Besides, we must remember that this was an ignorant Samaritaness of the lower order. In the mind of such an one, two points would mainly stand out: that the Jews in their wicked pride would have no intercourse with them; and that Gerizim, not Jerusalem, as the Jews falsely asserted, was the place of rightful worship. It was, therefore, genuine surprise which expressed itself in the question: How is it, Thou, being a Jew, of me askest to drink?' It was the first lesson she learned, even before He taught her. Here was a Jew, not like ordinary Jews, not like what she had hitherto thought them: what was the cause of this difference?
Before we mark how the answer of Jesus met this very question, and so as to direct it to spiritual profit, another and more general reflection presses on our minds. Although Jesus may not have come to Sychar with the conscious purpose of that which ensued, yet, given the meeting with the Samaritan woman, what followed seems almost matter of necessity. For it is certain that the Christ, such as the Gospels describe Him, could not have been brought into contact with spiritual ignorance and want, any more than with physical distress, without offering it relief. It was, so to speak, a necessity, alike of His Mission and of His Nature (as the God-Man). In the language of another Gospel, power went out from Him;' and this, whether consciously sought, or unconsciously felt after in the stretching forth of the hands of the sightless or in the upward look of the speechless. The Incarnate Son of God could not but bring health and life amidst disease and death; the Saviour had come to seek and to save that which was lost.
And so it was, that the How is it?' of the Samaritan women so soon, and so fully, found its answer. How is it?' In this, that He, Who had spoken to her, was not like what she thought and knew of the Jews. He was what Israel was intended to have become to mankind; what it was the final object of Israel to have been. In Him was God's gift to mankind. Had she but known it, the present relation between them would have been reversed; the Well of Jacob would have been a symbol, yet but a symbol, of the living water, which she would have asked and He given. As always, the seen is to Christ the emblem of the unseen and spiritual; Nature, that in and through which, in manifold and divers colouring, He ever sees the supernatural, even as the light lies in varying hues on the mountain, or glows in changeful colouring on the edge of the horizon. A view this of all things existent, which Hellenism, even in its sublimest poetic conception of creation as the impress of heavenly archetypes, has only materialised and reserved. But to Jesus it all pointed upward, because the God of Nature was the God of Grace, the One Living and True God in Whom all matter and spirit lives, Whose world is one in design, workmanship, and purpose. And so nature was but the echo of God's heard Voice, which ever, to all and in all, speaks the same, if there be but listening ears. And so He would have it speak to men in parables, that, to them who see, it might be the Jacob's ladder leading from earth to heaven, while they, whose sight and hearing are bound in the sleep of heart-hardening, would see but not perceive, and hear but not understand.