Note 81 — Chapter IV · JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.1

Meanwhile, continues the narrative (v. 27), the disciples of Jesus returned from the city with provisions, and marvelled that he talked with a woman, contrary to rabbinical rule.81 While the woman, excited by the last disclosure of Jesus, hastens homeward to invite her fellow-citizens to come and behold the Messiah-like stranger, the disciples entreat him to partake of the food they have procured; he answers, I have meat to eat that ye know not of (v. 32). They, misunderstanding his words, imagine that some person has supplied him with food in their absence: one of those carnal interpretations of expressions intended spiritually by Jesus, which are of perpetual recurrence in the fourth gospel, and are therefore suspicious. Then follows a discourse on sowing and reaping (v. 35 ff.), which, compared with v. 37, can only mean that what Jesus has sown, the disciples will reap.82 We admit that this is susceptible of the general interpretation, that the germ of the kingdom of God, which blossomed and bore fruit under the cultivation of the apostles, was first deposited in the world by Jesus: but it cannot be denied that a special application is also intended. Jesus foresees that the woman, who is hastening towards the city, will procure him an opportunity of sowing the seed of the gospel in Samaria, and he promises the disciples that they at a future time shall reap the fruits of his labours. Who is not here reminded of the propagation of Christianity in Samaria by Philip and the apostles, as narrated in the Acts?83 That, even abstracting all supernaturalism from our idea of the person of Jesus, he might have foreseen this progress of his cause in Samaria from his knowledge of its inhabitants, is not to be denied; but as the above figurative prediction forms part of a whole more than improbable in an historical point of view, it is equally liable to suspicion, especially as it is easy to show how it might originate without any foundation in fact. According to the prevalent tradition of the early church, as recorded in the synoptical gospels, Jesus laboured personally in Galilee, Judea, and Perea only,—not in Samaria, which, however, as we learn from the Acts, embraced the gospel at no remote period from his death. How natural the tendency to perfect the agency of Jesus, by representing him to have sown the heavenly seed in Samaria, thus extending his ministry through all parts of Palestine; to limit the glory of the apostles and other teachers to that of being the mere reapers of the harvest in Samaria; and to put this distinction, on a suitable occasion, into the mouth of Jesus!