Studies in the Gospel According to John1 By R. A. TORREY (These studies are for careful study, not rapid and heedless reading) II. The Public Ministry of Jesus Leading Those Who Were of the Truth to Believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of God. Ch. 1:19—12:50 (continued).
graphic picture that bears the marks of truthfulness and of the eyewitness in every line. It is not romance but reality and life that we are reading here. A change in the tense of the second verb from the tense of the first verb (in the Greek) indicates that the dis ciples came up and paused and won dered, not for an instant but as a con tinuous state of mind, i. e., that their wonder was not merely for one pass ing instant. What they wondered at was not what He had said to the woman (they had not heard that) but that He was talking to “a woman” at all. They regarded Him as a great rabbi, &nd a woman as beneath His notice. They had not as yet shaken themselves loose from the ideas and prejudices of their time. The rabbis of that day taught “a man should not salute a woman in a public place, not even his own wife,” and again that it was “better that the words of the law should be burnt than delivered to women.” Another rabbi (Eleazar) taught that a woman ought not to be wise above her distaff. No wonder that the disciples in this early and im mature day in their training should wonder that their Master, the greatest of all rabbis, should be talking with a woman. How different is the concep tion of woman that our Lord brought in (Gal. 3:28). Woman owes every thing that is best in her present posi tion to our Lord Jesus. Surprised as the disciples were they kept their wonder to themselves and asked no explanations. They were
9. The Lord Jesus’ testimony to the Woman of Samaria that He was the Christ, and the Woman’s testi mony, He “told me all things that ever I did,” (ch. 4:1-39, continued.) V. 27. “And upon this came his disciples, and (add, they) marvelled (rather, mere marvelling) that he talked (rather, was talking) with the {rather, a) woman; yet no mcm (rath er, one) said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?” The dis ciples arrived back from the city at just the right moment. The conver sation of Jesus with the woman had reached its climax and its proper end ing just at the moment they arrived. There was nothing to be added, Jesus had just proven Himself to be the Christ by reading the woman’s heart and all the hidden secrets of her life, then had declared Himself clearly and plainly to be the Christ: there was nothing more for Him to say or do. Now it was for the woman to believe and act, and she did. John, having recorded the wonderful close of the conversation proceeds to describe its wonderful effects. His disciples not having heard the conversation are filled with deep but reverent (not crit ical) wonder; the woman is taken possession of by a great and trans forming hope, which she hastens to share with others; her fellow towns men are filled with an enthusiastic longing to see and hear the wonderful person of whom she spoke, a longing that speedily led them on to an ex uberant faith. It is a marvelously 1 Copyright, by R. A. Torrey, 1914
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