He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly” (John 4:16-18)
Crazy thing. You hear or read a bible passage for more than thirty years and you finally hear something you didn’t hear before. The message Sunday morning was good—the preacher stuck to the passage and applied it to his audience; little to no talking about himself or why they need to listen. Just preached. But the message was a typical John 4 Samaritan Woman at the Well message. Nothing wrong with that…I have done that. But it hit me for the first time, we assume, as do most preachers, the woman’s shame stems from an immoral or adulterous life. Heck, she has had five husbands and not is with a sixth who is not her husband. Most conclude it’s her that keeps divorcing or in some way lives immorally. But that’s not actually the possibilities in mind. Two more likely possibilities exist for the multiple husbands—both suggesting she’s been passed around a bit. One possibility is that she is barren and cannot have children, meaning the men divorced her because she could not bare a child—particularly a son. Infertility was an easy ground for divorce in Israel. The second might have been that she was the wife of a series of brothers; the family wanting to produce an heir would have provided such a possibility. There were no more sons—possibly—so no more marriages or the next son refused to marry her. Both these scenarios would have left her economically vulnerable and a walking-shame in the land. The reference to the “sixth” not being her husband could have been a cryptic reference to this woman becoming a prostitute in order to have some level of economic resource. In the end you have a woman who, indeed, is faced with shame, but not necessarily because she choose an immoral life.
Although the application of this story certainly targets the shameful place many woman can find themselves—and not necessarily of their own doing alone—but of the men who never stepped up to love this woman. No wonder the Samaritan women is shocked that Jesus, and a Jew at that, speaks to her.
Perhaps these observations just point out our poor abilities to read a text, rather than see the true needs of people and why shame is attributed to them in the first place.
Posted by Chip Anderson at 07:37 AM. Filed under: In the Margins • Gemara (expository notes) •
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