Woman at the Well - Part 5

“The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.”

Most commentaries seem to pitch their tent here. They dwell on the woman’s guilt and shame. They even go so far as to dismiss the woman’s next statement as an attempt to deflect attention away from herself.

So, let’s talk about her shame for a moment. Of course there is a sense in which this woman must be faced with her true self, to experience repentance, to feel the need of the gift that Christ has come to give her. But I don’t believe His words were intended to deepen her sense of shame. She was already living an isolated existence. She was profoundly and daily aware of her condition before God and men—just as the lepers knew what it was to be a leper, and the blind knew what it was to be blind.

Christ did not speak to the woman in a way that would entrench her lowly status. Quite the opposite, His actions seem deliberately designed to lend her dignity, credibility and honour. After all, He was a Jew asking a Samaritan for water. He was a man alone, conversing with a woman. He was a person of good reputation associating with an outcast. In every practical way He was treating her with dignity far beyond her status.

By His words, Christ reveals that He is, in fact, someone greater than Jacob. And simultaneously, He reveals that he knows her, knows everything about her, and that He made no mistake when He spoke to her. She was not condemned on her previous accounts (of being a woman, being a Samaritan), and she is not condemned now.

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.”

I don’t believe that the woman is hanging her head in shame at this point. More likely, she is elated, released. She has been offered the opportunity to think and act and speak like a person after living a de-humanized existence. She knows, now, that the man in front of her is greater than every person who has condemned her, and yet He is talking with her as though she were worthy of His attention.

And so I conclude that the woman’s next statement, a question, is not borne out of shame—a mere deflection of attention away from herself. I believe it is the surfacing of a long-hidden hope to know God. A hope held lightly, as she could see no way to reconcile it with the reality of her life.

“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”