10. If thou knewest, etc. Answering rather something latent in the question than the question itself, as in Jesus’ first answer to Nicodemus.
The gift (Swpedv). Only here in the Gospels, though Luke uses it in Acts four times, and the kindred adverb, dwpear, Freely, is found once in Matthew. The word carries the sense of a bountiful, free, honorable gift. Compare dépnpa, gift, and see on James i. 17.
Asked (jrnoas). Jesus uses the same word for ask which the woman had employed of his asking her, the word express- ing the asking of the inferior from the superior. Here it is the appropriate word.
Living water (#dwp Sov). Fresh, perennial. A familiar figure to the Jews. See Jer. ii. 13; xvii. 18; Zech. xiv. 8. Not necessarily the same as water of life (bdwp Swis, Apoc. xxi. GrexXil. Isak):
11. To draw with (a@vTAnjpa). The noun means what zs drawn, the act of drawing, and the thing to draw with. Here the bucket, of skin, with three cross sticks at the mouth to keep it open, and let down by a goat’s-hair rope. Not to be con- founded with the water-pot (bépta) of ver. 28. The word is found only here in the New Testament.
Well (¢péap). See on ver. 6. It may have been fed by liv- ing springs (mnyat).
That living water (To ddwp 7d Cov). Lit., the water the living.
12. Art thou greater (u7 od pelfov). The interrogative particle indicates that a negative answer is expected: Surely thou art not. ‘The od, thou, first in the sentence, is emphatic, and possibly with a shade of contempt.
Our father Jacob. The Samaritans claimed descent from Joseph, as representing the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh.