John 4:4

Conversation With a Samaritan Woman

4:4 But he had ¹  to pass through Samaria. ² 

John 5:30

5:30 I can do nothing on my own initiative. ³  Just as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, ⁴  because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the one who sent me. ⁵ 

John 6:39

6:39 Now this is the will of the one who sent me – that I should not lose one person of every one he has given me, but raise them all up ⁶  at the last day.

John 7:5

7:5 (For not even his own brothers believed in him.) ⁷ 

¹ sn Travel through Samaria was not geographically necessary; the normal route for Jews ran up the east side of the Jordan River (Transjordan). Although some take the impersonal verb had to (δεῖ, dei) here to indicate logical necessity only, normally in John’s Gospel its use involves God’s will or plan (3:7, 3:14, 3:30, 4:4, 4:20, 4:24, 9:4, 10:16, 12:34, 20:9).

² sn Samaria. The Samaritans were descendants of 2 groups: (1) The remnant of native Israelites who were not deported after the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 b.c.; (2) Foreign colonists brought in from Babylonia and Media by the Assyrian conquerors to settle the land with inhabitants who would be loyal to Assyria. There was theological opposition between the Samaritans and the Jews because the former refused to worship in Jerusalem. After the exile the Samaritans put obstacles in the way of the Jewish restoration of Jerusalem, and in the 2nd century b.c. the Samaritans helped the Syrians in their wars against the Jews. In 128 b.c. the Jewish high priest retaliated and burned the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim.

³ tn Grk “nothing from myself.”

⁴ tn Or “righteous,” or “proper.”

⁵ tn That is, “the will of the Father who sent me.”

⁵ tn Or “resurrect them all,” or “make them all live again”; Grk “raise it up.” The word “all” is supplied to bring out the collective nature of the neuter singular pronoun αὐτό (auto) in Greek. The plural pronoun “them” is used rather than neuter singular “it” because this is clearer in English, which does not use neuter collective singulars in the same way Greek does.

⁷ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.