Welcome to Episode #138 of Way of the Bible podcast. This is our second of eight episodes in our eighteenth mini-series which is entitled, Son of God and Son of Man.
On this episode we are going to join the disciples of Jesus as they walk along with Jesus. And as we do, let us surely do as they did, wonder together about “who is this man?”
Jesus in his short three-year ministry did a lot of walking. He began ministering and selecting disciples in the region of Galilee which was fifty to eighty miles north of Jerusalem on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. The walk from his hometown of Nazareth to Jerusalem was approximately sixty miles. At a normal walking pace of two miles an hour that would be a thirty hour walk minimum with no time for rest, stops, etc. And that was if you went through Samaria which constituted much of the area of the former northern kingdom of Israel.
The northern kingdom of Israel was defeated by the Assyrian’s in 721 BC. The Assyrian takeover strategy was to export the vanquished to other counquered territories and import foreigners to occupy and resettle the land. The resettling is described in 2 Kings 17:24 – And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities.
The text continues and says because the people who were brought to the land did not fear the Lord, God sent lions in among them to attack and kill the people. The king of Assyria ordered that a priest of Israel be sent back into the land to instruct the people. So a priest was found who moved to Bethel and taught the people how to fear the Lord. The result is described in 2 Kings 17:33 – So they feared the LORD but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.
The exiled Jews resettled in Judea did not like the Samaritans for a multitude of reasons. Samaritans were considered unclean and perhaps more unclean than Gentiles. Samaritans recognized this hostility and responded with hostility toward the Jews.
The tension was bad enough that Jews of Judea going north made it a point to walk around Samaria by going east across the Jordan and then north on the king’s highway through the Decapolis till just south of the Sea of Galilee where they’d cross into Galilee. This route to avoid Samaria dramatically increased the duration of a trip north.
I present that as background as we’ll spend the first part of our episode in that region. I’ll comment briefly as I read the text.
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