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John Chapter 4:1-26
Then when the Lord knew that the Pharisees heard that Jesus made more disciples and baptized more than John (2) (though truly Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), (3) He left Judea and went away into Galilee again. (4) And it was needful for Him to pass through Samaria. (5) And He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the piece of land Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (6) And Jacob’s fountain was there. Then being wearied by the journey, Jesus sat thus on the fountain. It was about the sixth hour. (7) A woman came out of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give Me some to drink. (8) For His disciples had gone away into the city that they might buy provisions. (9) Then the Samaritan woman said to Him, How do You, being a Jew, ask to drink from me, I being a Samaritan woman? For Jews do not deal with Samaritans. (10) Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who is the One saying to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked Him, and He would give you living water. (11) The woman said to Him, Sir, You have no vessel, and the well is deep. From where then do You have living water? (12) Are You greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well, and he and his sons and his livestock drank out of it? (13) Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone drinking of this water will thirst again; (14) but whoever may drink of the water which I will give him will not thirst, never! But the water which I will give to him will become a fountain of water in him, springing up into everlasting life. (15) The woman said to Him, Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. (16) Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here. (17) And the woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, Well did you say, I have no husband. (18) For you have had five husbands, and now he whom you have is not your husband. You have spoken this truly. (19) The woman said to Him, Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. (20) Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to worship. (21) Jesus said to her, Woman, believe Me that an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem. (22) You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews. (23) But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeks such, the ones worshiping Him. (24) God is a spirit, and the ones worshiping Him must worship in spirit and truth. (25) The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, the One called Christ. When that One comes, He will announce to us all things. (26) Jesus said to her, I AM! the One speaking to you.
Arcana Celestia 2702 by Emanuel Swedenborg
As “Jacob’s fountain” signified the Word, the “water” truth, and ” Samaria” the spiritual church (as is frequently the case in the Word), the Lord spoke with the woman of Samaria, and taught that the doctrine of truth is from Him; and that when it is from Him, or what is the same, from His Word, it is a fountain of water springing up unto eternal life; and that truth itself is living water.
Arcana Celestia 2702 by Emanuel Swedenborg
The “fountain of Jacob” denotes the Word and the doctrine of truth therefrom. Because the “fountain of Jacob” signified the Word and the doctrine of truth therefrom, when the Lord came to the fountain of Jacob, He spoke with the woman of Samaria, and taught what is signified by a “fountain” and by “water,”
Arcana Celestia 4430 by Emanuel Swedenborg
[4] ….Jesus came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near to the field which Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob’s spring was there (John 4:5, 6)…..by this city is signified interior truth,
AR 384. And shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, signifies, and lead them by the truths of the Word to conjunction with Himself. Since by “a living fountain of waters” is signified the Lord, and also the Word, and by “waters” are signified truths (n. 50), and since by the Divine truths of the Word, when they are made of the life, which is done when one lives according to them, conjunction is effected with the Lord, therefore by “leading them to living fountains of waters,” is signified to lead by the truths of the Word to conjunction with the Lord.
Arcana Celestia 3321 by Emanuel Swedenborg
For I am weary. That this signifies a state of combat, is evident from the signification of ” weary,” or of “weariness,” as being a state of combat (n. 3318). Mention is here again made of being weary, for the sake of confirmation that the conjunction of good with truth in the natural [mind] is effected by spiritual combats, that is, by temptations. In regard to the conjunction of good with truth in the natural [mind], the case in general is this: Man’s rational [mind] receives truths before his natural [mind]; and this to the end that the Lord’s life, which is of love, may flow in through the rational [mind] into the natural [mind], and [order it], and reduce it to obedience. For the rational [mind] is purer [than] the natural [mind]; or what is the same, the rational [mind] is interior and the natural [mind] exterior; and it is according to order that the interior or purer can flow into the exterior or grosser, but not the reverse.
We should now be seeing that the land of Canaan is really a map of the human mind and that the Lord’s movement through it corresponds to the changes of state brought about by our willingness to live from the truths we have received into our understanding. Its boundaries and divisions and geographical features all speak to things found within the psycho-spiritual landscape of our inner world. In our reading from the Word today we have a movement of Lord in its literal sense from Judea into Samaria on His way to Galilee. These three regions were the major divisions of the land in New Testament times, and they correspond to the three levels of mind to which the three great divisions of the heavens correspond which in turn correspond to the three levels of meaning found in the Word. We can see from this that the teachings for Spiritual Christianity offer a wonderfully consistent interlocking view of reality on all its levels. These great divisions are called the celestial, the spiritual and the natural degrees.
As far as the Word is concerned its inmost degree is called celestial, this level’s meaning concerns itself with the Lord and the glorification of His human or the process by which the Lord makes His human divine and his divine human. The next level meaning in the Word is its spiritual meaning. This level concerns itself with those processes related to a human being’s regeneration while the final level or degree is its natural meaning, what is found in its literal sense. Each level serves as a container for the levels above it with the lowest level or the literal sense being the container and support for both the spiritual and celestial senses.
Now because the Word is structured in this way so everything that flows from it, that is everything that has come into being and exists, also reflects this three fold form. On the highest scale of creation we find that the heavens take the form of the Word, the inmost being the celestial heaven, the inner heaven being the spiritual heaven and the outer heaven being the natural heaven. Those in the celestial heaven are closest to the Lord for those in this state of life are those who have love to the Lord as the whole of their focus and life. The love of those who dwell in the celestial heaven is such that they have an intuitive sense of what is true and as such don’t have to think about it being immediately responsive to it as a matter of life and so are in a state of willing good.
This is different to those in the spiritual or middle heaven for these have a different state of life, they are in love towards the neighbour and as such are more into working with truth intellectually to see if it is so before responding to it. They don’t have the acute sensitivity found in the perceptive faculties of the celestial heaven who hear and immediately do as a matter of delight. The delight of those of the spiritual heaven is in seeing truths are truths and then acting from them. Those of the natural heaven are different again being in a life of obedience without a deep understanding and so are more externally focussed as to their life. The celestial quality within the Word is for those of the celestial heaven, the spiritual quality within the Word is for those of the middle or spiritual heaven, and the natural quality of the Word are for those who are in the natural heaven. Each of the Word’s degrees of meaning serves to provide goods and truths for the life of each heaven.
On a lesser scale, that of the human mind we also find this pattern reproduced. On the inmost level we have those things that correspond to what is celestial and have to do with our will or affections, on the inner level with have the things to do with the understanding and so correspond to what is spiritual, and on the outermost level we have the will and understanding taking expression in external obedience of the body corresponding to the natural. To provide us with a way of coming to understand how the Lord works in these various levels of our life we find in the Word a representative image of all this in the actual geographical features of the land of Canaan that sets the context for the Lord’s journeying while He was on earth. This is why we find the land divided into three distinct areas called Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.
Judea corresponds to the will or affectional things within the mind, Samaria to those things to do with the understanding and Galilee to bringing these things into life. Judea was in the south, Galilee in the north and Samaria linked the two being in between them. So when we see the Lord working in Judea, we have represented in the literal sense the operation of Divine Truth in the area of the will or affections. The Lord gives us the ability to understand truths from the Word and when we take these an make them principles for life we are working from the principle of love to the Lord, because to love the Lord is to keep His commandments, or keep His Word, for the term commandments in its broadest sense means everything that proceeds from the mouth of God. To love the Lord then is to live from His Word, and while the natural man has the image in the literal sense of the Lord’s disciples following Him in the world, the spiritual man sees in that image something deeper, being those principles that have been drawn from the Word to serve living the spiritual life.
These principles when used in self examination make possible repentance, and so the activity is described as the disciples of Jesus baptising in Judea. The natural man thinking in natural terms sees described in these words a physical activity taking place in a historical context. Not so the spiritual man who clearly perceives baptism in terms of the inner purification of the affections by means of Divine Truth. When the affections are being purified there is a desire to have the external life give expression to these newly imparted affections that centre on loving the Lord. This desire to live more fully in the truths one has received presents in the literal sense of the Word to the natural man as a desire of the Lord to go to Galilee. But before these purified affections can find expression in the good of life represented by Galilee there is needs to be a reordering of the understanding. This need to have the understanding reordered is captured in the words found in verse 4;
“And it was needful for Him to pass through Samaria.”
Here he comes to a city of Samaria called Sychar. We can see in the associated meanings of these names that the Lord being in Samaria has to do with the influence of divine truth on the understanding faculty for Samaria means watch-tower and as a watch-tower is something high used for observation so it corresponds to the area to do with vision or seeing, and spiritually seeing has to do with understanding something. Sychar on the other hand literally means “drunken” and by association strong drink, which again points us to those heady, or spiritual, or interior truths (AC 4430). Then we have the imagery of the Lord sitting by a well, this word is more accurately translated fountain. Wells and fountains correspond to the Word, in this case water that only temporarily quenches the thirst correspond to natural truths whereas the water that the Lord says He will give corresponds to spiritual truths that have life in them.
Apocalypse Explained 483b
It is clear that the “water” that the Lord gives does not mean water, but Divine truth; for it is said that in drinking of the water the woman of Samaria came to draw, one thirsts again, but not of the water that the Lord gives. That “that water shall become in him a fountain of water springing up unto everlasting life” means that in that truth is life….The Lord said these things to the woman of Samaria, when He sat by Jacob’s fountain, because by the “Samaritans” the Lord meant the Gentiles that were to receive Divine truths from Him; and by the “woman of Samaria” a church constituted of such; and by “Jacob’s fountain” Divine truth from Himself, that is, the Word.
From verse six we see the nature of what’s going on within the mind for we read there that;
“…being wearied by the journey, Jesus sat thus on the fountain…” and that “it was about the sixth hour”.
Journeys spiritually have to do with changes in states of the mind and to grow weary as a result of these changes speaks to the nature of the processes involved for changes in our mental states to occur. Of course the Lord God never grows weary, so this statement spiritually describes a state in the mind receiving the Divine inflow. When scripture states that the Lord grows weary it means that there is a lack of good and or truth to sustain the spiritual life. Just as the natural body needs natural food and drink if it is to be sustained on a journey so the spiritual man need spiritual food and drink to sustain the spiritual body in its journey through the various mental states of life that it experiences.
In this particular instance of weariness, because we are working in Samaria and so in those things to do with our understanding of doctrine or truths from the Word, the weariness speaks of a lack of truths as a result of temptation. This is further reinforced due to the statement that it was the sixth hour. Six is a number associated with temptation or spiritual work, we see this in that the creation story with the Lord working six days before resting on the seventh. All transformation from what is natural to what is spiritual involves temptation. We saw this same idea at the wedding in Cana where the number six occurred in relation to the six stone jars that held the water that was changed into wine.
A lack of truths corresponds to thirst and so we see that the encounter with the Samaritan woman centres around the Lord asking her to get Him water to drink. The Lord is by a fountain, because He is the Word and fountains and wells correspond to the Word as the source of all that is true. The source of water in this case appears to be both a well and a fountain and is most likely a well fed by an underground spring which is a wonderful illustration combining the reciprocal relationship between us and the Lord as the Word. For as a well we must go to the Word and draw what we need, but as a fountain we see that it is the Lord who is active in pouring out what is of Himself to quench our spiritual thirst. Something the Samaritan woman has yet to discover, but discover she shall.
The Word states here that Jesus has come to rest, for He is said to sit on Jacob’s fountain. It is clear that to sit is to be stationary or not moving, and in this sense it describes a state where the way in which the Word is understood can no longer move a person forward in terms of their spiritual life. There are things in our lives which need opening up and our attention drawn to if we are to move on with the Lord into our spiritual Galilee. The general aspects of these are captured in the subject matter of the Lord’s discussion with this woman. These include questions as to who the Lord is and whether we are we able to recognise Him as the one who sits upon Jacob’s fountain asking for a drink? What have Jews to do with Samaritans? What is our status as to our marriage? And what is the nature of worship? These questions are considered in Samaria, in the city of Sychar because they relate to straightening out our thinking in relation to how we are to live in relation to our neighbour and it is to the spiritual meaning of these questions we shall turn next time.
Amen.
