THE STORY OF THE STRANGER AT THE WELL

While Jesus was teaching in Jerusalem and in the country places near it, John the Baptist was still preaching and baptizing.  But already the people were leaving John and going to hear Jesus.  Some of the followers of John the Baptist were not pleased as they saw that fewer people came to their master, and that the crowds were seeking Jesus.  But John said to them:  “I told you that I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.  Jesus is the Christ, the king.  He must grow greater, while I must grow less; and I am glad that it is so.”

Soon after this, Herod Antipas, the king of the province or land of Galilee, put John in prison.  Herod had taken for his wife a woman named Herodias, who had left her husband to live with Herod, which was very wicked.  John sent word to Herod, that it was not right for him to have this woman as his wife.  These words of John made Herodias very angry.  She hated John, and tried to kill him.  Herod himself did not hate John so greatly, for he knew that John had spoken the truth.  But he was weak, and yielded to his wife Herodias.  To please her, he sent John the Baptist to a lonely prison among the mountains east of the Dead Sea; for the land in that region, as well as Galilee, was under Herod’s rule.  There in prison Herod hoped to keep John safe from the hate of his wife Herodias.

Soon after John the Baptist was thrown into prison, Jesus left the country near Jerusalem with his disciples, and went toward Galilee, the province in the north.  Between Judea in the south and Galilee in the north, lay the land of Samaria, where the Samaritans lived, who hated the Jews.  They worshipped the Lord as the Jews worshipped him, but they had their own Temple and their own priests.  And they had their own Bible, which was only the five books of Moses; for they would not read the other books of the old Testament.  The Jews and the Samaritans would scarcely ever speak to each other, so great was the hate between them.

When Jews went from Galilee to Jerusalem, or from Jerusalem to Galilee, they would not pass through Samaria, but went down the mountains to the river Jordan, and walked beside the river, in order to go around Samaria.  But Jesus, when he would go from Jerusalem to Galilee, walked over the mountains straight through Samaria.  One morning while he was on his journey, he stopped to rest beside an old well at the foot of Mount Gerizim, not far from the city of Shechem, but nearer to a little village that was called Sychar.  This well had been dug by Jacob, the great father or ancestor of the Israelites, many hundreds of years before.  It was an old well then in the days of Jesus; and it is much older now; for the same well may be seen in that place still.  Even now travelers may have a drink from Jacob’s well.

It was early in the morning, about sunrise, when Jesus was sitting by Jacob’s well.  He was very tired, for he had walked a long journey; he was hungry, and his disciples had gone to the village near at hand to buy food.  He was thirsty, too; and as he looked into the well he could see the water a hundred feet below, but he had no rope with which to let down a cup or a jar to draw up some water to drink.