THE KING’S BUSINESS
274
ing after a night’s traveling, still more put it at noon, and others still at six in the evening. It depends en tirely upon how John reckoned time. The usual method of reckoning hours with Romans and Greeks as well as Jews was to count the hours from sunrise; the Jews reckoning their hours from sunset to sunrise, and from sunrise to sunset. But the Romans reckoned their civil days from mid night just as we do and not from sun rise or from sunset. It has also been discovered that in Asia Minor, where John wrote his Gospel, there are traces of reckoning the hours from midnight (Polycarp is said to have been mar tyred at Smyrna at the eighth hour and the circumstances show that he was martyred at 8 a. m. It is also recorded that Pionius was martyred at Smyrna at “the tenth hour” and this cannot well have been at 4 p. m. since such exhibitions usually occurred be fore noon). We may therefore pre sume that John was following trie practice of the province in which he was living when he wrote this Gospel, and therefore followed our modern mode of reckoning from midnight un til noon and noon until midnight. John mentions the definite hour of the day four times in this Gospel, chapters 1: 39; 4:6; 4:52; 10:14. If John reck oned time as statetl above, these vari ous passages can better explained than if he reckoned as some have supposed from sunrise. The strong probability, therefore,'is that the sixth hour here means six in the evening. It is furthermore unlikely that the woman would come from a distance at midday to the well; the evening was the usual time. Furthermore, Sychar was about the usual distance of a day’s journey from within the borders of Judea. The disciples, being Jews, would most naturally make arrange ments to spend the night outside the city and it was only by special invita tion that they afterwards entered the
east of Shechem. It is called to this day “Jacob’s Spring” or “Jacob’s Well,” two different words being used corresponding to the two Greek words used in this chapter. It is lined with rough masonry and is now about sev enty feet deep, but was originally much deeper, the bottom now being filled with stones and rubbish. When it was measured by an earlier ex plorer, its depth was 105 feet. It is located on the highway from Judea to Galilee. The real humanity of our Lord comes out in the statement that he was “wearied with His journey.” He is shortly to reveal Himself as Divine, by reading the woman’s thoughts and telling her all that ever she did, but we have here first a revelation of His true humanity. Constantly in the New Testament we find the genuine hu manity of our Lord placed in closest juxtaposition with His Deity. It is in John’s Gospel, which is the one Gospel that brings out the Deity of our Lord most clearly, we also find the clearest traces of the Lord’s per fect manhood. He alone of the four evangelists records the word, “I thirst” in the account of His cruci fixion (ch. 19:28). John constantly kept in mind the error of the Docetists, the forerunners of Christian Science, who denied the reality of the body of Jesus, holding that the body of Jesus was only an appearance or an illusion. We here find it was real and that our Lord ’was weary, as a little further down we find that He was really thirsty. He was a complete man physically as well as spiritually. The eternal word became flesh (John 1: 14) , partook of flesh and blood (Heb. 2 :14) ; Jesus Christ had a true human body and was subject as a man to the physical limitations of human nature. Wide differences of opinion are found among commentators as to what hour of the day the “sixth hour” sig nifies. Some have put it in the morn
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker