Luke 9:52

The messengers that Jesus sent ahead were apparently to arrange overnight accommodations for Jesus and His disciples. They were not on a preaching mission. Normally Jewish pilgrims on their way from Galilee to Jerusalem passed through Samaria. [Note: Marshall, The Gospel . . ., p. 406.] They were unwelcome visitors. A trip directly from Galilee to Jerusalem would have taken about three days.

The Jews had regarded the Samaritans as apostates and half-pagans since the Exile. The Samaritans descended from the poor Israelites who remained in the land when the Assyrians captured the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. The Jews believed that the Samaritans were the descendants of Israelites who intermarried with the non-Jews that the Assyrian kings imported into the land (2 Kings 17:6; 2 Kings 17:24-26). However they may have been the pureblooded descendants of the Israelites who remained in the land. [Note: Zondervan Pictorial Bible Encyclopedia, s.v. "Samaritans," by J. L. Kelso, pp. 244-47.] Eventually the Samaritans rejected the Jewish Scriptures except the Pentateuch. The two groups of people were still mutually hostile in Jesus’ day (cf. John 4:9). [Note: Jeremias, Jerusalem in . . ., pp. 352-58.]