Locations come loaded with meanings. When we tell stories, the location of the action communicates to us what we should expect to happen. Today, if you’re watching a horror movie and someone says “Let’s go to the basement” everyone knows what is about to happen. And although the story’s genre may change our views of those locations, we still tend to associate locations with concepts, ideas, and situations. The same is true in antiquity and also in the Bible. Places like mountains or wildernesses signal certain things; so do locations like cities or fields; and even specific settings like threshing floors or wells often indicated that certain events were about to take place. This can be a bit of an odd topic to consider, and I wanted to work through a short series of blog posts on spiritual geography, so I thought looking at wells would be a good place to start!
There are a surprising number of “Woman at the Well” passages in the Bible. Abraham’s servant meets Rebekah at a well in Paddan Aram (Gen 24.1–44), Jacob meets Rachel very near the same spot (Gen 29.1–30), and Moses meets Zipporah at a well in Midian (Exd 2.11–22). These are different people at different spots and different times, but all of these historical episodes plays out similarly. When we see such similar episodes line up closely it isn’t accidental, it’s intertextual (if you want to know a bit more about what this is, I’ve talked about it with Adam Shanks on his podcast here and here). Or, if you want to think about it more simply, I’d probably say that when we see similarities like this, it’s probably because the Holy Spirit wants us to see them and pay attention to them, so that we can use the Bible to interpret the Bible.
Genesis 24 opens this part of Abraham’s life by telling us that he is old (24.1) and that his son Isaac needs a wife (24.2–9). Abraham is too old to make a long journey, so he sends a trusted slave all the way back to Paddan Aram to find a wife who isn’t a Canaanite. This slave stops and prays that God guide his hand so that he will be faithful to his master, providing a test—whoever God chooses should offer to provide hospitality in the form of water for himself and camels from the local well (24.10–14). “Before he finished praying,” that very thing happens (24.15–28). As the rest of the story unfolds, we find out that this “random” hospitable girl is a cousin of Abraham’s and that God’s providence has guided the entire thing. As she joins in God’s provides and has faith in his future, Rebekah becomes an “Abraham Figure” herself—willing to leave her father and mother, her house and her home, because she trusts in the promise of God and goes to marry Isaac (24.29–44). We could spend more time on this story, but let’s move on.
The situation in Genesis 29 looks familiar! Just as Abraham had lived as an exile from his family in Canaan, Jacob is now exiled from his family in Canaan (29.1) and needs to find a new home and family of his own (29.2–8). He too has previously prayed that God would lead him and protect him (Gen 28.10–22), and now—like Abraham’s slave the generation earlier—meets women coming to the well, one of whom “just so happens” to be his relative and future wife (29.9–12). Like Rebekah, Rachel runs home, reports the news, and Jacob is added to the family (29.13–20). Let’s look at one more episode.
As we move from Paddan Aram to the Wilderness of Midian, we see that Exodus 2‘s situation looks quite similar to Genesis 29. Moses was forced into exile after a conflict with his brother (Exd 2.11–15). He flees home and ends up far away at a well, where he sees women coming to water the flocks (2.16–18). After this encounter, one of the women returns home and tells her father about what happened; her father invites the exile to come and make a new home with them; and Zipporah becomes Moses’ wife (2.18–22).
Of course, each of these stories has its own unique elements, but they also share a lot of similarities: the main male characters is an exile from their family and homeland (Abraham, Jacob, and Moses); they travel to a well in order to gain a new home or community; and there—guided by God’s providence—they gain a wife that carries on God’s providential care for God’s people (Rebekah, Rachel, Zipporah). There are “practical” reasons this happens (wells were the hot spot to meet folks in the ancient world!), but it is far more important that we recognize that God was caring for his people and providing what everyone needed. God provided wives to carry on their family lines; he provided homes to those who were in exile; he provided opportunities to these women to be grafted into Israel’s salvation.
So, by the time we get to Jesus and the Samaritan Woman in John 4, we have a lot of imported meaning as soon as we see Jesus waltz up to a well! There are expectations that come with this scene and you can quickly identify them: we expect the exiled man to meet a woman, find a new people, gain a wife, and be providentially led toward carrying on salvation. After all, that’s what’s happened every other time… And, a lot of those elements fit. Jesus is portrayed as an exile, far from home (indeed, he’s even come to the exact well that Jacob had fled to when his own brother hated him, and we know this is similar to Jesus’ situation); he arrives at a well and meets a woman; there’s going to be a request that she provide hospitable water. But there’s just so much that’s wrong–at least, from the perspective of our expectations:
- It’s the wrong woman. This woman isn’t Jewish, worse she’s a Samaritan (who come loaded with their own proto-racist perceptions). She isn’t a virgin, she’s been married five times and is currently living with someone who isn’t her husband. This can’t be the person who will carry on salvation and peoplehood!
- She isn’t hospitable. Jesus may ask for water, but she does not provide it! In fact, she seems far from the examples of Rachel or Zipporah, let alone Rebekah! Why this woman?!
And with the expectations of the scene, maybe now we can sympathize with the disciples who returned from grabbing food to this:
Just then his disciples arrived, and they were disturbed that he was talking with a woman. But none of them said, ‘What are you looking for?!” or “Why are you talking with her?!”
John 4.27
But Jesus–unsurprisingly!–knows exactly what he’s doing. And throughout his interchanges he both fulfils and subverts our expectations. Because he is and exile (John 4.1–6), he does find a new people (4.39–42), he does add this woman to his family (4.28–29(, and she does lead to the salvation of her people (4.30). And through this interchange–and through its intertextuality with the other women and well stories–we should be able to read something more from this story.
By reading John 4 intertextually as well as exegetically we should see that Jesus wants us to shift our understanding of what we should be primarily searching for from earthly family (a wife or husband) to spiritual family (those who want to be like Christ), and what we should value from the world’s views (in this case, virginity) to what God values (faithfulness), and who really belongs in the kingdom (those who really seem to have their lives together, like Nicodemus in the previous chapter but don’t follow him or those who do, like this woman). Jesus’ treatment of her–seeing past their own cultural animosities, her fraught past, and her own initial condescension–as a Daughter of Abraham and someone worthy of faith leads her to reject her own temptations to read Jesus according to the same script and instead embrace him as the Savior of the World (4.42).
The woman who at first mocked Jesus for not even having a bucket as he proclaimed to her the value of living water (John 4.11), left her own water jar to tell others of the waters of life (4.28).
Ben Neviim 