The Signs of the Times, vol. 13

July 14, 1887

“The Samaritans” The Signs of the Times 13, 27, p. 423.

“PLEASE give an explanation of John 4:20. J. S.” SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.1

The text reads, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” These are the words of the woman of Samaria to Jesus, as he talked with her at the well. Samaria was a hill that 925 years before Christ belonged to a man by the name of Shemer. When Omri had reigned as king of Israel six years in Tirzah, he bought this hill from Shemer for two talents of silver, and built a city on the hill, “and called the name of the city which he built,” Samaria, “after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill.” 1 Kings 16:23, 24. Omri thus made it the capital of the kingdom of Israel, and it remained the capital of the ten tribes as long as they were a kingdom. SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.2

About 740 B.C. Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, carried captive a part of the ten tribes. 2 Kings 15:29. About 721 Samaria fell after a siege of three years by the Assyrians, and Sargon, a king of Assyria, destroyed Samaria and carried the remainder of the ten tribes captive unto Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Habor, by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. Then to re-people the land he “brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel.” SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.3

But by taking the inhabitants away, the lions had multiplied in the land. And when he brought up the new people the lions slew some of them. Then they sent word to the king of Assyria that, as they did not know the manner of the God of that land, the lions were slaying them, and asked him to send up there some of the priests who had been carried away captive, so that they should teach the newcomers the way of the God of the land. The king did so, and the priests taught them how they should fear the Lord. So then they all feared the Lord, so as to have him keep the lions off, and went on worshiping their own gods. So “the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Aarammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.” 2 Kings 17:6, 24-34. It will be seen at once that this introduced a mixed and most corrupt worship. Afterward there were some Arabians transported there by Sargon, and several peoples by Esar-haddon. Ezra 4:2, 9, 10. SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.4

When the children of Israel returned from the captivity of Babylon, B.C. 535, these people of Samaria proposed to join with them in rebuilding the temple and in re-establishing the worship of God. But Zerubbabel and Joshua and their companions would have nothing to do with them. Then the Samaritans set about to hinder the work all they possibly could, and even hired counselors against them at the court of the kings of Persia, all the time of Cyrus and Cambyses. And thus began an enmity between the two peoples, that never was quenched, but which grew more and more bitter as ages passed by. SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.5

The efforts of the Samaritans were in vain with Cyrus and Cambyses, but when the impostor Smerdis came in, they succeeded in obtaining a decree from him putting a stop to the work at Jerusalem. So it ceased for about two years, till the second year of Darius Hystaspes, B.C. 520. Then the prophets Haggai and Zechariah stirred up the Jews against to go to building. But no sooner had they begun to build than the Samaritans were on hand again to stop them. There was a new governor over them, however, by this time, and he appears to have been a very honest man himself, he sent to Darius an honest account of the matter, and the effect of it was to bring a decree that not only should they let the work at Jerusalem go on, but that they should help speedily with money from the king’s tribute, and with bullocks, rams, and lambs, wheat, salt, wine, and oil, all that was needed at Jerusalem. Ezra 4-6. SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.6

After this the Jews were bothered no more by the Samaritans for about seventy years, till Nehemiah went up to Jerusalem to complete the work. Then they tried their best to get the advantage of him, but failed at every effort, which only increased their bitterness. This was at Nehemiah’s first visit to Jerusalem. But he returned to the court of Persia and stayed several years, and then went up again to Jerusalem. There he found that in his absence the Jews had intermarried with the heathen, and even with the Samaritans. Eliashib the priest had actually brought Tobiah the Ammonite to Jerusalem and had set him up at housekeeping in the chambers of the temple of God. And one of Eliashib’s grandsons had married a daughter of Sanballat the Horonite, who seems to have been then governor of Samaria. SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.7

When Nehemiah arrived at Jerusalem, and found matters thus, he pitched all the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chambers that had been given him, and commanded the chambers to be cleansed. Then he made all the Jews who had strange wives put them away. But this grandson of the high priest, Manasseth by name, who had married Sanballat’s daughter, would not give her up, therefore Nehemiah chased him clear out of Jerusalem. Then Manaseh went with his wife over to Samaria to Sanballat, as also did others who, like Manasseh, clung to their heathen wives, and rebelled against the authority of Nehemiah. In B.C. 409 Sanballat obtained from Darius Nothus a grant to build on Mount Gerizim near Samaria, a temple like that at Jerusalem, and he made this Manasseh the high priest of the temple and its worship. Thus the enmity became still more bitter, and continued so down to the time of the Saviour, by which time the hatred was so bitter that when the Pharisees would apply to Jesus the most bitter epithet that they could command, it was, “Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil.” John 8:48. And Jesus when giving in a parable an example of perfect obedience to the divine command to love our neighbor as ourself, pictured an instance of a Samaritan helping a Jew. And in this same conversation with the woman of Samaria, as Jesus sat on the well, the woman came, and he asked her to give him a drink. She was surprised that he, a Jew, should speak to her, a Samaritan, and so she asked, “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” John 4:7-9. SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.8

When Sanballat and Manasseh built that temple on Mount Gerizim, there was thenceforth a false worship there as rival to the true worship in Jerusalem. At first it was the mixed worship of the idolatrous Samaritans and apostate Jews. But this was not only a place of rival worship, but it became an asylum for all the rebellious, discontented Jews, and by this means it came about in the course of time that the worshipers there were mostly made up of apostate Jews and their descendants, and as the Pentateuch was used in the Samaritan temple, and as the service was made as near like that at Jerusalem as possible, the worship of the false gods was soon dropped entirely, and the Samaritans claimed to be the true people of God, and claimed that Mount Gerizim, and not Jerusalem, was the place which God had chosen, that there Abraham and Jacob had built altars and worshiped God, and that therefore theirs was the true temple and the true worship. And that is why it was that the woman said to Jesus, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain [the mountain was right over their heads]; and ye [that is, the Jews] say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” That also was why Jesus replied to her, “Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews.” Their worship was a false, corrupt worship from the beginning, and Jesus exposed it all in a word, “Ye worship ye know not what.” SITI July 14, 1887, page 423.9

J.