Jesus said unto her,
Go, call your husband, and come here.
All Commentaries on John 4:16 Go To John 4
Theophylact of Ochrid
AD 1107
Go, call thy husband. Seeing her eager to receive what He offered and insistent that He give it, He says, Call thy husband, as if to point out, "You should share My gift with him as well." She answered, I have no husband, striving at once to hide her sin and receive the gift without delay. The Lord now reveals through prophesy His own power. He enumerates her former husbands and rebukes the man with whom she is now living secretly. Did the woman become vexed at His rebuke? Did she flee from Him in shame? No, she marveled and cleaved to Him all the more, saying Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet, and questioned Him about divine doctrines and not such worldly things as bodily health and money, so inclined was her soul to the love of wisdom and virtue. What does she ask? Our fathers worshipped in this mountain. Here she refers to Abraham and those with him. For it was on this mountain, they say, that Isaac was led up to be sacrificed. [Gen.22] And how is it, she says, ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship? Do you see how much more lofty her thoughts have become? Only moments earlier her concern was how to avoid the daily labor of satisfying one's thirst; now she asks questions concerning dogmas. Christ sees her capacity to understand spiritual thing, yet does not answer her question (for it was not an important matter), but instead reveals a greater teaching, greater than what He had disclosed to Nicodemus or to Nathaniel. The time is coming, He says, when God will be worshiped neither here nor in Jerusalem. You are striving, He says, to show that the worship of the Samaritans is superior to that of the Jews. But I say to you, that neither here nor there has the first place of honor: there will be another way, superior to both. Yet I also declare to you that the worship of the Jews is more holy than that of the Samaritans. For ye worship ye know not what: we, the Jews, know what we worship. Christ counts Himself as one of the Jews, speaking in terms of the woman's understanding. She thinks of Him as a Jewish prophet, and so He says, We worship. In what way did the Samaritans not know what they worshiped? They thought that God was limited to one location [their holy mountain]. This is why, when the lions were devouring them as was related above, they sent word to the king of the Assyrians that the God of that place did not accept them. This is also why they continued for a long time to worship idols, and not God Himself. But the Jews were free of this misconception and knew God to be the God of all, although not all the Jews understood this. For salvation is of the Jews. This has two meanings for us. First, that the good things that are in the world came from the Jews. The knowledge of God and the rejection of idols took its beginning from the Jews; and all other teachings, and even your own Samaritan worship (though it is not correct), began with the Jews. Secondly, the Lord names His own Advent, which was from the Jews, "salvation." For the Lord, Who came from the Jews according to the flesh, is Himself Salvation.
