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Updated: June 1, 2025
Yet of the Samaritans it is said: 'They feared the Lord, and served their own gods. It was a half-and-half religion, Judaism and heathenism mixed up together, the worship of God and the worship of idols side by side. Satan, now-a-days, has his modern temple of Gerizim. He does not try to lead nominal Christians to throw up religion altogether, for he sees that it would be of no use to do so.
The Montanists, who were settled in Phrygia, shut themselves up in their churches, set them on fire, and perished in the flames; and, from this time forth, nothing was to be seen in the Roman Empire except massacres and flight. Justinian straightway passed a similar law with regard to the Samaritans, which produced a riot in Palestine.
Cleopatra had given the command of her army to two Jews, Chelcias and Ananias, the sons of Onias, the priest of Heliopolis; and hence, when the civil war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra helped the Jews, and perhaps for that reason Lathyrus helped the Samaritans.
With this pious design certain Samaritans interfered, finally procuring an injunction from the successor of Cyrus by which the building of the temple was interrupted for several years. On the accession of Darius, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah stirred up the people to resume the work, and at length succeeded in getting from the great king complete authority to proceed with it.
Now they have TASTED that the Lord is gracious. Now they can say, with the Samaritans, 'Now we believe, not because of thy saying, but because we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. And when sadness and affliction come on them, as it must come, they can look back, and so get strength to look forward.
They were probably more akin to the Pharisees than to the Sadducees, for the latter were hostile to the Herodian claims, from the first; yet in spirit they seem more like to the worldly aristocracy than to the pious scribes. The Samaritans lived in the land, a people despising and despised. Their territory separated Galilee from Judea, and they were a constant source of irritation to the Jews.
This very inferiority was doubtless the cause which drew them to Jesus, and gained them his favor. Comp. He treated the Samaritans in the same manner. This poor sect, which had neither the genius nor the learned organization of Judaism, properly so called, was treated by the Hierosolymites with extreme harshness. They placed them in the same rank as pagans, but hated them more.
We understand now why the woman was so surprised that a Jew should condescend to speak to her, and why the Jews would have 'no dealings with the Samaritans. As we have seen, a great barrier divided her from all ordinary Jewish teachers she had been taught to believe in an altered Bible.
Better to have been one of those ignorant Samaritans, than to have been King Ahab, or King Hoshea, in all their glory, with all their proud Jewish blood.
Sister Emmerich used to say that the life of this Samaritan woman was prophetic that Jesus had spoken to the entire sect of Samaritans in her person, and that they were attached to their errors by as many ties as she had committed adulteries. Mara of Suphan was a Moabitess, came from the neighbourhood of Suphan, and was a descendant of Orpha, the widow of Chelion, Noemi's son.
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