June 15
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RESTING AT THE WELL AT THE SIXTH HOUR
Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4 And He had to pass through Samaria. 5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob’s well was there. So, Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
– John 4:1-6
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Jesus and his disciples walked on foot. Jesus knew that the Pharisees were going to make a big deal of his disciples baptizing more people than John the Baptist so, he left Judea. Though John talks about Jesus’ divinity in the earlier chapters, we are shown here how he is also fully human and experiences the limitations of a human body. He was tired and needed to rest. Verse 4 tells us that he had to pass by Samaria, the purpose of which we will know in the later part of this chapter. He sat resting at Jacob’s well. John refers to the time of day as the “sixth hour.” There is some debate over which time system John uses in his gospel. Roman time, which starts at noon, would make this around 6pm which is most likely. However, we can see that John’s clock is interpreted differently from version to version. Some bible translations are more modern in their mention of the time. The other possibility is that John may be using the same time-system as the other gospels, which start the day at 6am. So, Jesus may be sitting at the well at noon or at 6pm. Either way, this is hot and inconvenient hour of the day to get water at the well.
In this story, we get a glimpse of Jesus’ humanity. He gets tired of the religious leaders constant grumbling, walking miles and miles in the heat and yet mindful that he needs to meet someone at the well. We know that the next part of the chapter talks about the Samaritan woman whom he purposefully planned to save. It is interesting that despite all the tiredness and challenges that the religious people posed on his ministry, he still continued to take on the work of bringing others to salvation. John, once again gave us a character sketch of the faithfulness of Jesus to follow God’s purpose to save people from their sins as we are about to witness how He interrupted the Samaritan woman’s living in a state of sin, hopping from one man to another in the ensuing verses. What a loving God!
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REFLECTION
• How do we know that Jesus was both God and human in this story?