John 4:4

The most direct and most popular route from Judea to Galilee went through Samaria. [Note: See the map "Two Routes between Judea and Galilee" at the end of these notes.] Even though the Jews and the Samaritans did not get along, most Galilean Jews chose to travel through Samaria rather than taking the longer route through Perea, east of the Jordan River, which Judean Jews preferred. [Note: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 20:6:1; Edersheim, 1:394.] Therefore John’s statement that Jesus "had to" pass through Samaria does not necessarily mean that divine compulsion alone moved Him to choose that route. However most students of this passage have believed that one of the reasons Jesus took this route was to minister to the Samaritans.

Politically Samaria was part of the Roman province of Judea in Jesus’ day. Nevertheless culturally there were ancient barriers that divided the residents of Samaria from the Jews who lived in Galilee and Judea. Wicked King Omri had purchased the hill on which he built Samaria as the new capital of the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 16:24). The name Samaria eventually came to describe the district in which the city stood and even the whole Northern Kingdom. After the Assyrians captured the city and terminated the kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C., they deported the substantial citizens and imported foreigners who intermarried with the remaining Israelites. Most of these foreigners continued to worship their pagan gods (2 Kings 17-18). The Jews who returned to Jerusalem after the Exile regarded the residents of Samaria as racial half-breeds and religious compromisers. The Samaritans resisted Nehemiah’s attempts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 4:1-2). They built a rival temple on Mt. Gerizim opposite Shechem about 400 B.C., which they dedicated to Zeus Xenios. John Hyrcanus, the Hasmonean ruler of Judea, destroyed it and Shechem about 128 B.C. These actions all resulted in continued hostility between the two groups. The Samaritans continued to worship on Mt. Gerizim and accepted only the Pentateuch as canonical. A small group of Israelis who claim to be able to trace their ancestry back to the Samaritans survives to the present day.