Woman at the Well, Part 3: The Messiah Who Sees
Hagar and the Samaritan woman talk theology at a watering hole and discover they share intriguing similarities. To find out why, we'll eavesdrop on their conversation, inspect John's motives for writing, and even uncover an ancient (chiastic) pyramid. Get ready to dig.
In the last two articles, we looked at the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, and the story of Hagar. Today we’ll see what those two stories have to say to each other and I’ll share my theories on what John was up to when he alluded to Hagar in his gospel. By the way, “theories” is the right word choice, here. Scholars agree they’re connected, but I found very little about why. If you know of a source I’ve missed, please let me know!
Two women walk into a watering hole.
In the spirit of conversations with a friend, I’ve imagined how a conversation between Hagar and the Samaritan woman might sound. They have a lot in common, you know. Let’s make the setting a watering hole. You can decide which kind.
Samaritan Woman: Do you come here often?
Hagar: Uh, yeah. Still no indoor plumbing.
Samaritan Woman: I know. Bad joke. Have you ever met anyone interesting here?
Hagar: You’d never believe me.
Samaritan Woman: Try me.
Hagar: Well, I ran into God once.
Samaritan Woman: No way. What’s God like?
Hagar: Well, God sees me. To my core. God knows my story and doesn’t condemn it. God calls me by name and makes me feel like an actual person, not somebody’s slave-girl.
Samaritan Woman: I know exactly what you mean. He knows my past, sure. But he also fully sees who I am right now, what I’m capable of. And he’s given me a future.
Hagar: What kind of future?
Samaritan Woman: It’s hard to explain, but I feel alive, you know? Like there’s joy in me I can’t contain? I told my whole town after I met him. Some people say I became the spiritual mother of many that day.
Hagar: Huh. The God-who-sees-me told me I’d be the mother of many, too. Hey, I don’t really know how to say this, but do you feel like God allowed you to see him, too?
Samaritan Woman: I do. I do see him. I know him. I guessed who he is-Messiah.
Hagar: Yeah. I named God, too. I keep asking myself, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?
Samaritan Woman: I get it. I keep wondering, ‘He can’t be the Messiah, can he?’ It’s a lot to take in.
Hagar: Theology question for you: Why do you think the God of Israel came to us, an Egyptian slave and a Samaritan woman?
Samaritan Woman: He loves us. And has life for us.
Hagar: And God desires to bind up the broken-hearted, to unite the divided.
Samaritan Woman: And God wants our stories to be part of The Story.
Hagar: I like you. We well-women need to stick together. I know a few others you should meet.
The magic of allusion
All credit for bringing these two women together goes to John. Readers who catch his allusions know we should pick up meaning through their connection. Both stories are about unseen women who are seen by God and then see God. There is a subversive quality to these stories that is amplified by reading them together. Hagar and the Samaritan woman are not people who are merely accidentally left out. They’re not wall-flowers. There’s a good amount of feist in them, the kind of people unafraid of a dirty look or a sassy pun. If they’re not being seen, people are making the conscious choice not to see them. Abraham and Sarah don’t see Hagar because they need to consider her a slave-girl. If they humanized her, they would have to treat her humanely. And at least some Jews avoided Samaritans because of their “wrong” views and their “wrong” mixed-race status. These intentionally not-seen women are who God goes to and who God sees. These intentionally not-seen women are then the ones who have the honor of both seeing God and naming God.
First century context
Before diving deeper into my theories about John’s allusion to Hagar, we need to understand who he’s writing to and why. John’s first audience is most likely Gentile and Jewish believers in Jesus who were not present to see the signs and wonders of Jesus for themselves (Green et al. 372). The author writes between 50 and 100AD to encourage their faith. A question hangs in the air: are Jews who believe in Jesus still Jewish? It’s an antagonistic time. According to Paul Achtememeier and his co-authors, traditional Jews and Jewish followers of Jesus are each “struggling to define themselves with respect to the other, and ultimately over against the other” (202). This antagonism shows itself clearly within John’s gospel as he uses the term “the Jews” 70 times to refer not to an ethnic or religious group, but to those who don’t believe in Jesus, (Achtemeier et al. 201). The term seems to especially apply to a class of hereditary Temple religious authorities who stand in the way of belief in Jesus (Coogan et al. 147) by expelling believers from the synagogue (9:22, 12:42, 16:2). John uses some serious rhetorical tactics to discredit these authorities, also used unfortunately to support anti-semitism throughout the centuries. His rhetoric seems quite harsh at times, but for John, belief in Jesus is a matter of life and death, and nothing matters more than encouraging the young church.
One tactic John uses in laying out the argument against “the Jews” and in favor of continued faith in Jesus is portraying the authorities as uncaring shepherds, haughty and condescending, and less concerned about honoring God than finding favor with the world. (Coogan et al. 146) In John’s characterization, they are more interested in preserving their power than the Jewish faith. In contrast, John uses many of the stories and symbols of that faith to show that Jesus is both a continuation and culmination of Judaism, both preserving it and renewing it. Finally, John resorts to name-calling. In John 8:44, during an intense argument with the Pharisees, Jesus tells them, “you are from your father the devil,” and the Pharisees hurl back in verse 48, “you are a Samaritan and have a demon.” Whew. To your corners, gentlemen. We know from this language that the authorities didn’t like Samaritans. If John wants to further discredit “the Jews,” who intimidate followers of Jesus by severing their ties to the Jewish faith, the story of the Samaritan woman is a clever way to do it. John places her story right after one about a Pharisee, Nicodemus, who has an extensive conversation with Jesus in chapter 3. Nicodemus is an educated, male “leader of the Jews” who stays in the dark about Jesus, while the Samaritan woman fully sees him in the light of day. Good tactics, John. I won’t be playing chess with you.
Jesus, the God of Abraham
John is not merely a tactician, though. He is also an artist. By connecting the Samaritan woman and Hagar, John also connects Jesus to the God-Who-Sees-Hagar, the God of Abraham and Sarah. John proclaims to his first audience of Jewish believers, “Here is the One who covenanted with our Father, Abraham. Here is the One who chose our ancestors to be His people. Here is the one who saw the oppression of Hagar the Egyptian and freed our people from enslavement in Egypt. Here is the One who carried us out of exile. Here he is, in flesh and blood: Jesus.”
This God who sees those marginalized and oppressed is who God has always been. The Israelites knew it, proven by the inclusion of Hagar’s story in those they remembered and compiled. To our modern sensibilities, the behavior of Sarah and Abraham is abominable. Disney would give them warts, bad teeth, and an evil glint in their eyes. But the earliest listeners may not have seen them that way because their behavior is according to ancient law. Don C. Benjamin writes that Sarah was required to have children, and when it seemed she couldn’t, she was also charged to find a surrogate (27). He continues, citing the ancient Codes of Ur-Nammu and Hammurabi regarding situations similar to hers, “Because Hagar has already conceived a child, she cannot be sold, so, as the law allows, Sarah punishes Hagar” (29). The earliest listener would find remarkable not necessarily how Abraham and Sarah behave, but how God does in showing up for the Egyptian slave-girl and accepting the name she gives. Though they may have been surprised by this facet of God’s character, the earliest followers of God didn’t try to hide it.
A different kind of ancient pyramid
Instead, they amplified it. Here comes my very favorite detail about Hagar’s story. Your mind will be blown, either by what a nerd I am or how cool this is. But it’s complicated, so stick with me. Imagine a block pyramid five blocks high. One block at the top stands alone, right? Then there are steps going down from there, and each step on one side has a corresponding step on the other. Now imagine you’re laying that pyramid flat over the stories of Abraham and Sarah, covering chapters 12-22 of Genesis. As the stories magically arrange themselves on your pyramid, you notice an amazing pattern! The story of Hagar in chapter 16 lands on the very top block. One step lower, the two outer blocks contain accounts of God’s covenant with Abraham, chapters 15 and 17. Descending another step, the outer blocks hold the stories of Abraham’s nephew Lot, with chapters 13-14 on one side and 18-19 on the other. The pattern continues for two more steps, with parallel stories on each side! Woah! This structure is called a chiasm, and there are lots of them in the Bible. I love this one because Hagar’s story is at the top. David Dorsey writes, that usually, this central location “is the most important position, highlighted by events before and after” (30). What’s crazy is the events before and after Hagar’s story are covenant stories, stories of the foundational promises God makes with God’s people. I can’t imagine anything more essential to the identity of the people of God than the covenant, yet the structure highlights not those stories but Hagar. I wonder who first told the story with this structure, whether it was a matriarch telling tales by the fire or an exiled artist compiling Israel’s most important stories. Whoever it was, I believe their message was, “Yes, remember the covenant. Remember God’s promises. But never, never forget how God saw Hagar.”
So what?
What can we know from these stories about this “God-Who-Sees Messiah?” First, God sees the abused, broken, powerless Hagar, whose ethnicity, gender, and class make her one of the most marginalized people in the Bible. God sees the Samaritan woman whose culture, religion, and mysterious past make her an outsider to the established religious system of the day and perhaps to John’s readers themselves. Not only does God see them, God makes an effort to find them. At the beginning of the Samaritan woman’s story, John tells us Jesus had to go through Samaria. (vs. 4). Here’s the thing. He didn’t. He could have taken the long way around Samaria that many Galileans took (Green, et al. 728.) Love compels Jesus to go to Samaria, not lack of a detour.
Once God finds these women He loves, He asks for their stories, even though He already knows them. He listens, and when they reach the limit of what they’re willing or able to share, He leads them to the rest of their stories. His listening never condemns. Instead, it illuminates their human value. God sees them in a way the world does not.
And what happens after that? Somehow, seeing themselves be seen, viewing themselves fully worthy in God’s eyes, they see God. Friends, what if we saw others this way? What if we could get past our insecurities enough to fully hear others’ stories, even if they touch tender places we would all rather protect? What if we decided not to argue with someone who voted for the other guy but just tried to understand them? What if we could make ourselves vulnerable enough to just listen to the black man who doesn’t feel safe driving his car? What if we chose to see the gender non-conforming teen who, like the rest of us, is just trying to figure life out? If we did that, without judgment or fear, would they feel so seen they could see God? Would we see God, too?
In his gospel, John characterizes ‘the Jews’ as arrogant authorities who care more about their power and status than the people, and who intentionally look away from those God seeks out. By alluding to Hagar as he tells the Samaritan woman’s story, John reinforces that the heart of the God-Who-Sees beats inside Jesus. To the young church, John says, this is who we follow, though we ourselves may be excluded or persecuted for it. We follow the God who sees both Hagar and the Samaritan woman. We follow the God who blessed our ancestors and now blesses us. But remember, God’s intent in blessing us is not to privilege us, but so that we might be a blessing to the world. Let’s be that church.
Hagar’s story is not the only one artsy John alludes to! Remember that light, joyful mood in the Samaritan woman’s story? It doesn’t match very well with Hagar’s story, does it? It does with the next one! Get ready for a bit of romance. Hubba Hubba.
Works Cited
Achtemeier, Paul J., et al. Introducing the New Testament, Its Literature and Theology. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001.
Benjamin, Don C. “Stories of Hagar.” The Bible Today, 35, 1997.
Coogan, Michael D., et al., editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001
Dorsey, David. The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis-Malachi. Baker Books, 1999.
Green, Joel B., et al., editors. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. Intervarsity Press, 1992.
