Lecture

The story of the Samaritan woman, or the woman at the well, has captured my attention for many years, in no small part, because I believe her reconstructed character has been misunderstood by many readers. The story goes like this. Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well about noon, asks her for a drink, and tells her that He is living water. He also reveals that He knows she has had five husbands, and her current situation with a man is different, not like her other marriages. From these slim details, most commentators suggest that she is a sexually immoral woman. Given the social norms of the day, however, I suggest a different reading.

Though tragic, the Samaritan woman's marital history reflects the harsh realities of marriage, widowhood, and divorce. In first-century Roman Palestine, marriage was done sine manu, or without the transfer of authority over the woman from her father to her husband. This kept her family's wealth intact, and also prevented the husband's family from having to share its wealth. No marriage certificate was issued by the state. The official document, if there was one, would be a dowry agreement. The dowry stipulated the money, the jewelry, the clothing, that a bride brought to the marriage. And this money was the husband's to do with as he wished. But if the couple divorced, the husband must pay back the entire dowry. He can keep any interest or gains that he made on the principle, but that principle belongs to his now divorced wife. Women might have independent sources of money that were not part of their dowry. Jewish women could have a deed of gift from their father or their mother, and Roman women could inherit from their family.

We have a few ancient dowry documents that help build the picture of marriage and divorce. I'll focus on one, the Babatha Archive, from the early second century AD. This woman saved 35 documents, written in both Aramaic and Greek. These include her two marriage documents and a stepdaughter's marriage document. Babatha married a man named Jesus in AD 120, and they had a son, also named Jesus. Within four years her husband dies, and she's a widow with an orphaned son, who was assigned guardians. But Babatha becomes frustrated with her son's guardians, who are not distributing funds with the generosity that she wants. She makes several unsuccessful attempts over eight years to change this. Now the documents don't indicate why her requests were unheeded, but they were.

At some point between 125 and 128, she remarries to a man named Judah. She's now about thirty years old, and we have this marriage contract, it's written in Aramaic by her husband. This document includes the stipulation that if he dies, she can live in his house and be cared for. Most scholars believe that Babatha's second husband was also concurrently married to a woman named Miriam. Judah had not divorced Miriam before marrying Babatha. Josephus, the Jewish historian in the late first century affirms this Jewish custom of bigamy. In another document, Ben Sira assumes this practice, says he complains about in-fighting between wives. However, Rome did not accept bigamy. Now we can only speculate on why Babatha entered this bigamous relationship. Perhaps it was in part to help her legal fight concerning her son. Maybe it's because she loved Judah. It gets more interesting.

Babatha provided Judah a loan of 300 denarii that contributed to his daughter's dowry of 200 denarii, and then that dowry was added to by her husband, whose name was Judah Simber. The daughter, whose name is Shelamzion, also received a deed of gift from her father about eleven days after her wedding. Her father's gift includes half a courtyard and some rooms in a building, and she would receive the other half of the courtyard upon her father's death. Well, her father dies about two years later, and Babatha wants her loan repaid. Miriam, the first wife contests this. And we don't know how the story ends. We have no information whether Babatha did in fact receive the payment for her loan.

Alongside Babatha's story, we know of Salome Komaise, her neighbor. There's a second group of documents that reflect her life. She lived near Babatha and she saved six documents. They were written between January AD 125 and August AD 131. Now in 129, Salome had been married and divorced to a man named Sammouos, and she was living with a man named Jesus, son of Menahem. There are no documents preserved about her first marriage. But in 131, Salome and Jesus, son of Menahem, draw up a document that includes a dowry of jewelry and clothing, all valued at ninety-six denarii of silver. The text includes this phrase, “That they continue life together as also before this time.” Speaking of Salome and Jesus.

Now the question is whether this couple, their neighbors and family, and the religious leaders, would've agreed that before the document was written, those two were married. Said another way, did the document create a marriage, or did it simply state what was already known and believed? Namely, that this couple were married, and the document merely reinforced that, with stipulations about their finances. It's possible that this new document arose because Salome and Jesus now had a child, and they wanted to care for his or her inheritance.

From these documents, we can build a picture of marriage among Jews during this time. First of all, what we see is that life expectancy was quite low. Death in one's twenties and thirties was sadly commonplace, and so marriages often ended after only a few years with the death of a spouse. And this meant that many men and women remarried. And we have children then that would be listed as orphans even if their mother was alive.

Second, we see that divorce happened. Now given that women needed representation in court, they needed a guardian, a male guardian to sign documents with them. A woman could not carry out a divorce on her own but did require a man's aid. We don't know the frequency of divorce, there's little record of it except among the elite. I think, though, of the disciples' dismay when Jesus limits the divorce option. You see this in Matthew 19, and it recounts how the disciples say, well, it's better not to marry if one must stay with his wife for a lifetime.

It seems that the question of divorce, under what circumstances one could be divorced, was a hot topic in Jesus' day. Among the Pharisees, there was the school of Shammai that strictly limited divorce, and the school of Hillel, that allowed divorce for more reasons than adultery. But both drew their exegetical conclusions from Deuteronomy 24 and also from Exodus 21. And we should remember that in the case of divorce for reasons other than infidelity, the husband needed to return his wife's dowry.

Third, marriage was typically a family affair. The state did not issue marriage certificates like we have today. So the legal aspect of the relationship was tied to the dowry document, and that helped to establish inheritance for children and to care for a widow.

Let's go back now to the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4. Let's start with Jesus' claims that she has had five husbands. This is an incredible statement, for there is no extant evidence for such a situation. Agrippa, the friend of Caesar Augustus, was married to his fifth wife when he died. He buried two wives and he divorced two. Otherwise, we might see two divorces or maybe a divorce and a death of a spouse, but five husbands? That's remarkable. And likely, remarkably sad.

Recall that our Samaritan woman cannot go to court on her own. So at the very least, if one claims that she initiated five divorces, she had to have help from her family or a guardian. Moreover, if she was divorced for adultery or misbehavior, why would another man marry her, let alone four more? But the alternative is bleaker still, that she buried five husbands. In any case, such a number, five husbands, was not a good guess on Jesus' part. There was no way He could have pulled that number out of a hat. He spoke with a prophet's knowledge.

Well, one might ask why He even mentioned husbands at all. But as the Babatha archive shows, and numerous inscriptions reinforce, women were publicly identified by their family, specifically husband, or father, or son. Now, women owned property, they made loans, they had independent wealth. However, they were not able to represent themselves on their own in legal matters. Thus, they saved documents to prove their marriages.

The real concern in our passage is Jesus' statement that the man you are with now is not your husband. Everything hinges on her answer, “I have no husband,” and Jesus' statement, You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.

The issue is simple. Is she living in sin? I'm suggesting that according to her community patterns, the answer is no. However, Jesus would not affirm the general community patterns as God's best. Jesus would likely not accept as God's best a second wife, or bigamy, like what we saw in Babatha's life. That is, for Jesus, the two become one flesh, citing Genesis. Of course, Babatha identifies Judah as her husband, while the Samaritan woman states she is not with a man who is her husband at this point. But there is another relationship that might be at play here, a concubine relationship.

Now, this relationship was not considered immoral in the Roman world. The relationship involved a mismatch of social status, with the wife being of lower status. The woman could be charged with adultery just like a wife, but she had no recourse to any inheritance or funds from the man if the relationship resulted in children. Perhaps in this case with the Samaritan woman, the man she is with has heirs, sons or daughters, and they would be very reluctant for him to make any formal claims of marriage lest they lose out financially.

Again, it's possible that the Samaritan woman was with a Roman soldier who was on active duty. Roman soldiers are not allowed to marry when they're on active duty. They had to wait until they retired. Perhaps we have here a levirate marriage situation that has broken down. Maybe the wider family is not caring for her properly, perhaps for reasons similar to that of Judah in Genesis 38 or related to the kinsman redeemer in Ruth who does not want to raise up any children for another man. And so, Boaz, as we know in that story, Boaz steps in and becomes Ruth's kinsman redeemer. Census data from the time of Jesus shows that widows, if they did not remarry, would likely live with the kinsman, maybe their father, a brother, an uncle. It is also the case that widows might live with their children, or maybe with their mother or sister. Given the evidence about the various marriage practices at this time, we cannot say that the Samaritan woman's situation was viewed by her neighbors as immoral. The townsmen and women believed her without qualification when she came to them expressing, this can't be the Messiah, can it? And they would be unlikely to believe her if they felt that she was a prostitute or a sexually immoral woman.

In sum, there are several plausible scenarios that explain the Samaritan woman's current living situation and explain two other key features of this long story. First, Jesus never mentioned sin or forgiveness here as He does in other places. Or we don't learn from the narrator about some kind of sinful situation going on. And secondly, the townspeople believe her testimony. They don't say that her changed life or her remarkable shift in countenance like we saw with the Gerasene demoniac being healed, or changed actions like we saw with Zacchaeus, who promises to repay debts. She simply goes back to her town and testifies about the significant theological claims that Jesus makes, and they accept them.

Once we recognize that she is not an immoral woman, the text opens up. And we understand that there is nothing sinister in her greeting Jesus at the well at noon. He's simply hot, and tired, and thirsty, a condition that makes sense at noon, but would not make any sense at all at 7:30 in the morning. And we also pay more attention to the deep theology discussed by Jesus with this woman. It is one of the longest dialogues in John's gospel. And promotes this incredible idea that true believers will worship in spirit and in truth. Now, remember, this is an age of physical sacrifices in sacred spaces or temples. Everyone, Samaritan, Jew, pagan, they all performed physical sacrifices.

Finally, I think we'd hear Jesus' call to reap a harvest. He chastises the male disciples that the fields are ripe for harvest. Now, they had just been in the Samaritan woman's town, but they did not present the gospel to anyone. But she shares her testimony. He told me everything I'd done, and the townspeople believe because of her testimony. And they go on to declare Jesus the Savior of the world.

This story of the woman at the well is not about Jesus accepting even the worst of sinners, but of showcasing a convert who immediately makes more converts, pointing others to Jesus the Messiah. In the next session, we will hear the story of two sisters, disciples of Jesus, Martha, and Mary of Bethany.