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1–42. Christ among the Samaritans. – 43–54. Return of Christ to Galilee. John 4:1. When Jesus learned about the rumor that had reached the Pharisees that He was making more disciples and baptizing than John, John 4:2. although Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples did John 4:3. then he left Judea and went again to Galilee. The Pharisees received news of the outstanding success that the work of the new Baptist had in Judea. These Pharisees could draw the attention of the Jewish leaders to Christ, and therefore Christ, knowing that the hour of His suffering had not yet come, did not find it necessary to prematurely enter into disputes with the Pharisees and stopped His activities in Judea. He could do this without prejudice to the preparation of people to accept the Kingdom of Heaven, since John the Baptist continued his preaching about the approach of this Kingdom and still performed the baptism of repentance. The Evangelist notes that Christ Himself did not personally baptize, leaving this task to His disciples. This is explained by the fact that “preparatory baptism for the Kingdom could not be performed by the Person who laid the foundation for this Kingdom” (Edersheim, p. 492). Then it is immediately noted that the removal of Christ to Galilee, which the evangelist begins to talk about, was secondary: the first removal or return took place after Christ received baptism from John in the Jordan (John 1:43). John 4:4. It was necessary for Him to pass through Samaria. For his readers who did not have a clear enough idea of ​​the geography of Palestine, the evangelist notes that Christ, during His journey to Galilee, had to pass through Samaria. In this way, it was most likely possible to reach Galilee (when relations between the Jews and Samaritans became strained, the Jews went to Galilee in a roundabout way: either along the western bank of the Jordan, or even along the eastern bank of this river). John 4:5. So He comes to the city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (About Samaria, the Samaritans and the attitude of the Jews towards the Samaritans, see comments on Matthew 10:5; Luke 9:52; 2 Kings 17:29). The city of Sychar was obviously not a significant city, otherwise the evangelist would not have given it the closest definition. Most likely, this refers to the small place of Askar, which still exists on the southeastern slope of Mount Ebal. It is indeed located not far from the plot of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Emmor (Gen. 33:19) and which, according to Jewish tradition, he added to Joseph’s inheritance plot (cf. Gen. 48:22). John 4:6. Jacob's well was there. Jesus, weary from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about six o'clock. Before reaching the city itself, Christ, tired from traveling in the intense heat (it was already midday, hot, when in the east people usually sit at home), stopped to rest at a well. The evangelist calls this well “Jacob’s well” in accordance with the tradition of the Samaritans (cf. verse 12), but there is no mention of such a well in the Old Testament. From the words of the Samaritan woman it is clear that this well was fed by springs coming out of the ground. The water, however, was very low in the well, so it was impossible to get a drink from it without a special drawer. Jesus was obviously more tired from the journey than His disciples, who went to Sychar to buy food. The time was “about six o’clock,” i.e. according to Jewish reckoning, around twelve o'clock in the afternoon is the hottest time of the day. The tired Christ sat down at the well “so” (οὕτως; this word in the Russian Gospel remained without translation), i.e. just probably right on the ground. His beloved disciple John could have been nearby. John 4:7. A woman comes from Samaria to draw water. Jesus says to her: Give me something to drink. John 4:8. For His disciples went into the city to buy food. At this time, a Samaritan woman, perhaps from the nearby city of Sychar, came to the well. Christ turns to her asking her to give Him water to quench his thirst. John 4:9. The Samaritan woman said to Him: How can You, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? for Jews do not communicate with Samaritans. The Samaritan woman probably recognized Christ as a Jew by his facial features, his clothing, and, finally, his pronunciation. Travelers say that the Samaritans are of a different type from the Jewish type. The clothes of the Samaritans had blue tassels on them, while those of the Jews had white tassels. Finally, in the pronunciation of some vowels and consonants, the Samaritans differed from the Jews. For example, they could not pronounce the sound “s” (Edersheim, p. 516). “For the Jews...”. This, of course, is the remark of the evangelist himself. John 4:10. Jesus answered her: if you knew the gift of God and Who says to you: Give Me a drink, then you yourself would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. Christ answers the Samaritan woman that His request addressed to her does not really correspond to His position. But He says this not in the sense that He is a Jew, but in the sense that in relation to all people He is the Giver, and not the Receiver from them. He gives out an incomparably higher gift than what people could give him, namely the real gift of God. This gift of God, which Christ can give to people at their request, He figuratively designates as “living water,” obviously in order to compare it with the gift (water) that He asked from the Samaritan woman. By this gift Christ meant, without a doubt, the grace of the Holy Spirit, which He was to impart to those who believed in Him (cf. John 7:37-39) and which believers in part should have expected to receive even before the death and resurrection of Christ (Luke 11:13). John 4:11. The woman says to Him: Master! You have nothing to draw with, but the well is deep; where did you get your living water from? Since Jacob’s well was considered by the Samaritans to be a gift from God given to the patriarch, and since it also contains living water (cf. verse 6), the Samaritan woman believes that Christ wants to free her from the labor of getting water from a deep well herself. But now she objects to herself that this cannot be done by a Jewish wanderer, since he does not have the necessary equipment for this. John 4:12. Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it, and his children and his cattle? The Samaritan woman wonders where this Jew can get living water here. Patriarch Jacob, whom the Samaritans considered their forefather, was great in the eyes of God, and yet he dug this deep well with his own efforts - a well so rich in water that there was enough for the entire family of the patriarch, very numerous, and for all his livestock. This same Jew, the Samaritan woman thought to herself, does not have any helpers or tools for digging any new well. Maybe he will use his rod, like Moses, to bring water out of the stone? But then who is he? The Samaritan woman harbored such thoughts. John 4:13. Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again, John 4:14. and whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. Christ diverts the Samaritan woman’s thought from simple water to spiritual water. Why talk for a long time about this simple water, which cannot satisfy a person forever? Let it be the water of a spring gushing out from under the ground, but after drinking such water, you will want to drink again. No, there is a different kind of water that will quench a person’s thirst forever. This water can only be given by Christ and, moreover, not now (“I will give” is the future tense). But not only will this new water quench man’s thirst forever, it will itself appear in man as a source, the water of which will flow into eternal life. Christ is obviously talking here about the grace of the Holy Spirit, which will be given to believers in Christ thanks to His saving merits. This grace will not remain as dead capital in the heart of the believer, but will begin to increase more and more and, finally, flow like a river abundant in water into the wide sea, into eternal life. Here on earth, this stream of grace does not have to flow for long; it, so to speak, itself strives for the wider expanses of the Heavenly Kingdom. John 4:15. The woman says to Him: Master! give me this water so that I won’t be thirsty and won’t have to come here to draw. The Samaritan woman is amazed by the words of Christ. With respect she calls Him lord. However, she cannot understand what Christ is telling her about the grace of God. An excuse for this misunderstanding could, however, be the fact that the Samaritans did not accept any other books besides the books of Moses, and meanwhile, only among the prophets was the grace of the Spirit of God depicted under the image of “water” (Is. 44:3). John 4:16. Jesus says to her: Go, call your husband and come here. Since the Samaritan woman turns out to be unable to understand the speeches of Christ, He commands her to call her husband here to talk with Him, who, it is assumed, will explain to her later what she herself is not able to understand. John 4:17. The woman answered: I have no husband. Jesus says to her: you said the truth that you have no husband, John 4:18. for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband; That's right what you said. In response to the Samaritan woman’s answer that she does not have a husband, Christ says that she told the truth. In fact, she no longer lives in a legal marriage with one person. At the same time, Christ adds that in general she is not a high woman in moral terms: she has already had five husbands. Did the Samaritan woman lose these husbands naturally, i.e. were they taken from her one by one by death, or was there a divorce? Christ says nothing about this. John 4:19. The woman says to Him: Lord! I see that you are a prophet. John 4:20. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where we should worship is in Jerusalem. The Samaritan woman was amazed that the unknown passer-by knew all the circumstances of her life. At the same time, she apparently felt ashamed in front of such a husband, whom she even calls a prophet, as if recalling that prophet whose coming was foretold by Moses (Deut. 18:18). Therefore, she wants to quickly divert the conversation from her personality, from her disapproving behavior, and turns to Christ with a question of general religious significance. Maybe she really wasn’t alien to patriotic feelings. Be that as it may, she wants to know from the prophet, who, of course, she thinks, will tell her the whole truth, where the place of worship or worship pleasing to God is located. The “fathers” of the Samaritans, that is, the Samaritan woman thinks so, are the patriarchs: Noah, whose ark stopped, according to the beliefs of the Samaritans, on Mount Gerizin; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who also made sacrifices on this mountain, all bowed down on this mountain. Here, relatively recently, there also stood a Samaritan church, destroyed shortly before Christ by the Jewish leader John Hyrcanus. Meanwhile, the Jews argued that worship of God was possible only in Jerusalem. John 4:21. Jesus says to her: Believe Me, that the time is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. In response to the Samaritan woman, Christ says that soon the Samaritans will “worship the Father” (as Christ calls God here in order to instill in the Samaritan woman the idea of ​​the closeness that should exist between people and God) not in their Garizin and not in Jewish Jerusalem. Here, undoubtedly, lies a prophecy about the conversion of the Samaritans, at least a significant part of them, to faith in Christ. This prophecy was fulfilled shortly after the ascension of Christ (Acts 8:14). John 4:22. You do not know what you bow down to, but we know what we bow down to, for salvation comes from the Jews. But for now, Christ recognizes the Jews’ right to be considered true worshipers of God. However, He does not say that the Samaritans do not know the true God: they only do not understand, as they should, the true essence of religion, and therefore their worship of God cannot be fully compared with the Jewish cult. Christ explains the advantage of Jewish worship by indicating that “salvation is from the Jews,” i.e. Salvation through the Messiah should be the lot of all the nations of the earth, but, as the prophets said, it will first appear in the people of Israel (Is. 2: 1–5). There, to Zion, the peoples of the earth must for now turn their gaze; the Israeli people still continue to be the only bearer of the promises of God, and the divine service performed in Jerusalem, with its rituals, foretells the great sacrifice that the Messiah will soon bring for the salvation of all people (cf. Rom. 9: 4-5). John 4:23. But the time will come and has already come when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is looking for such worshipers for Himself. However, the time will soon come when Judaism will lose its right to be considered the one true religion to which the eyes of all mankind should turn. This time, one might say, has already arrived; at least, a turn towards it is being noticed. Christ characterizes this coming era as a time when the “true”, i.e. fully worthy of this name, worshipers or admirers of God will bow to the Father (cf. verse 21) “in spirit and truth.” The word “spirit” here denotes the opposite of the flesh and everything that has a carnal character that limits the freedom of the spirit. The Jews and Samaritans had the idea that the success of prayer depended on external conditions, mainly on the place where the service was performed. Soon this connectedness of man will no longer be a known place; people everywhere, in all places on the globe, will bring worship to God. But besides this, another change will soon take place: service to God will be performed “in truth,” i.e. all falsehood that existed in Jewish and all other worship services will end, when hypocrites also participated in worship and were considered true worshipers of God (Matthew 15:7 et seq.). Divine services will be performed only from a sincere heart, in a pure state of mind. Thus, here Christ does not say a word against worship in general, does not deny the need for man, as a being living in the flesh, to express his feelings before God in known external ways (cf. Matt. 6:6). He speaks only against those narrow views of worship that existed then among all peoples, not excluding the Jews. The fact that He recognizes the need for external worship is evident not only from His own example (He, for example, before turning to the Father “lifted up His eyes to heaven” - John 11:41; knelt down during prayer in Gethsemane - Luke 22:41), but also from the fact that He, speaking here about the future worship of the Father, uses a verb that designates precisely the bending of a person to the ground, i.e. external expression of prayerful feeling (προσκυνήσουσιν). John 4:24. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. God pleases precisely those who bow to Him “in spirit,” who stand above attachment to one specific place, are pleasing because He Himself “is the Spirit,” a Being standing beyond all boundaries of time and therefore close to every soul that seeks Him (Acts 17:24–29). John 4:25. The woman says to Him: I know that the Messiah will come, that is, Christ; when He comes, He will tell us everything. The Samaritan woman does not dare to make any objections to Christ regarding His teaching about the advantages of the Jewish people and about the new worship of God: she sees in Him a prophet. But at the same time, she is afraid to admit what the unknown prophet is telling her. She herself is not able to understand these most difficult questions of religion, although she previously turned to Christ for a solution to one of them. Only the Messiah, she says, will explain everything to us (the expression: “that is, Christ” belongs, no doubt, not to the Samaritan woman, but to the evangelist, who added it for his Greek readers). It is impossible to say anything reliable about how the Samaritans then imagined the Messiah. One can, however, plausibly assume that the Samaritans could not help but assimilate some of the Jewish ideas about the Messiah. They called Him "Tageb", i.e. restorer, and they said that He would restore the tabernacle of meeting with all its vessels and explain the hidden meaning of the law of Moses. Tageb will appear, however, not only as a Teacher, but also as a King to whom Israel and all the nations of the earth will submit. John 4:26. Jesus says to her: It is I who speak to you. Since the Samaritan woman obviously belonged to the people who waited with all their souls for the Messiah and His salvation, Christ directly reveals to her that He is the Messiah she is waiting for. In the same way, He revealed Himself to John’s disciples at the very first conversation with them, since they were prepared to believe in Him (John 1:41). The Samaritan woman expressed her readiness to believe in Christ as the Messiah by recognizing Him as a prophet (verse 19). John 4:27. At this time His disciples came and were surprised that He was talking to a woman; however, not one said: what do you require? or: what are you talking to her about? Among the Jews, it was considered not entirely appropriate for a man, and especially a rabbi, to talk to a woman on the road. But the disciples did not dare to express their bewilderment out loud to their Teacher. John 4:28. Then the woman left her waterpot and went into the city and said to the people: John 4:29. come, see a man, who told me all things that I have done: is not this the Christ? John 4:30. They left the city and went to Him. Meanwhile, the Samaritan woman, probably embarrassed by the arrival of the prophet’s disciples, who could ask their Teacher what kind of woman this was talking to Him, hastened to leave and quickly inform her fellow citizens about the appearance of the amazing prophet, so that her fellow citizens would have time to talk with Him before He left on the journey. She herself does not dare to directly declare in the city that the Messiah spoke to her; she leaves the solution to the question of the prophet to more knowledgeable people. At the same time, however, she does not hesitate to remind her fellow citizens of her dishonest life and speaks so convincingly that a crowd of people follows her. John 4:31. Meanwhile, the disciples asked Him, saying: Rabbi! eat. John 4:32. But He said to them: I have food that you do not know. John 4:33. Therefore the disciples said among themselves: Who brought Him anything to eat? John 4:34. Jesus says to them: My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work. In response to the disciples’ offer to refresh themselves with the food they brought from the city, Christ says that He has other food and this food consists in the fact that He can do the will of His Father and complete, or, more precisely, bring to completion the Father’s work (τελειοῦν). Christ does not want to say by this that He does not need ordinary food; He only makes it clear that under certain circumstances, fulfilling the divine will is also a means for Him that strengthens His bodily strength, and sometimes replaces ordinary food for Him. It should be noted that Christ considers His mission here as the completion of that great work (ἔργον), which the Heavenly Father began to accomplish in humanity long ago. It was the Father Himself who prepared the Samaritan woman and her fellow tribesmen for faith in Christ, it was He who awakened in the souls of these semi-pagans the desire to know the truth, and the task of Christ was only to develop those germs that were placed in the hearts of people by God. John 4:35. Don't you say that there are still four months and the harvest will come? But I say to you: lift up your eyes and look at the fields, how they are white and ripe for harvest. Christ wants to instill in his disciples greater modesty in understanding their purpose. He does this in a figurative form. Since the conversation was about food and, in particular, about bread, which, of course, the disciples brought with them from the city, Christ naturally turns his thoughts to the fields where the bread grew. The well near which Christ sat was located on a certain hill, from where the fields that belonged to the inhabitants of Sychar were visible. “You say,” this is how Christ’s figurative saying can be conveyed, “that there are still four whole months left before the harvest, and this is absolutely correct. But there is another harvest, more important for us - the conversion of souls, and this harvest here in Samaria must begin now, because the fields have already turned white - the spiritual bread has already ripened.” From the visible, Christ turns the eyes of His disciples to the invisible. However, it can be assumed that even then, her fellow citizens, led by the Samaritan woman, began to head out of the city from the city (cf. verse 30), and Christ could point to them to His disciples, saying: “Lift up your eyes.” It should be noted that on the basis of this verse it is possible to approximately determine the time of Christ's public activity within the borders of Judea. Christ says that there are still four months left before the harvest, and the harvest in Palestine usually began on the 16th of Nisan and continued until the Feast of Pentecost, i.e. until the month of Sivan (in our opinion, from April 1 to May 20). The wheat harvest, in particular, began two weeks later, i.e. April 15th. If the fields of the Samaritans were sown with wheat, which is very likely, then it is clear that Christ was in Samaria at the beginning of January or even at the end of December, before which more than eight months had passed since Easter. Christ spent this entire period of more than eight months in Judea. John 4:36. He who reaps receives his reward and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps will rejoice together, While Christ's disciples, at best, could compare the religious state of the Samaritans only with green fields that still had a long time before the harvest, Christ tells them that now (the particle ἤδη, left untranslated in the Russian text and incorrectly assigned in the Slavic translation to the end of the 35th verse, should stand at the beginning of the 36th verse; see Tischendorf, 8th ed.), and not in four months or centuries later, the reaper receives a reward and gathers fruit into eternal life, and this leads to the fact that the sower and the reaper rejoice together. “Eternal life” here is represented as the area where the spiritual harvest arrives - all these souls saved by Christ. This is how the bread that is reaped goes into the granary (cf. Matt. 3:12). The disciples of Christ must understand that the inhabitants of Sychar are already fully ripened wheat, which now must be reaped. This harvest itself is a “reward” to the one who reaped, because he receives it not only according to his own labors, but also as a result of the labors of the one who sowed this wheat. In this spiritual harvest, however, there is something different from what happens during an ordinary harvest. Not only the spiritual reaper rejoices, but also the spiritual sower. John 4:37. for in this case the saying is true: one sows, and another reaps. John 4:38. I sent you to reap what you did not labor for: others labored, but you entered into their labor. In relation to the spiritual harvest, the saying “one sows, another reaps” finds its perfect fulfillment. If during an ordinary harvest the gatherer of the grain, as a rule, is the one who sowed this bread, then during a spiritual harvest it is always different. God sows (cf. verse 34), and Christ and after Him the apostles will gather this divine spiritual seed when it grows and ripens. In fact, neither Christ nor the apostles had hitherto engaged in the conversion of the inhabitants of Sychar, and the Sycharians were already ready to accept the gospel teaching. God Himself prepared them for this conversion, perhaps through the books of Moses, which the Samaritans accepted from the Jews, perhaps in some other ways. Therefore, the apostles should not be proud of their successes, as if the result of only their own labors: these successes, first of all, are the result of God’s activity in the world, and their work is mainly the work of reapers. On the other hand, Christ thereby reassures the apostles regarding the results of their activities: let them boldly go into the world - there the harvest has already been prepared for them by God Himself. "I sent.." Christ, undoubtedly, had previously told His disciples about what He was calling them for, and they could perform baptism only as those sent for this by Christ (John 4:2). "Others worked.." Here Christ could have in mind the Jewish priests who taught the Samaritans the law of Moses (2 Kings 17:28 et seq.), as well as John the Baptist, whose activity could hardly pass without a trace for the Samaritans. John 4:39. And many Samaritans from that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman, who testified that He told her everything that she had done. John 4:40. And therefore, when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. John 4:41. And an even greater number believed at His word. John 4:42. And they said to that woman: We no longer believe because of your words, for we ourselves have heard and learned that He is truly the Savior of the world, Christ. In addition to those Samaritans who came to Christ and believed in Him at the word of the woman, many believed in Him during those two days that Christ spent in Sychar at the request of the inhabitants of this city. It is remarkable that the Samaritans believed only in the teachings of Christ, without asking Him for miraculous evidence of the truth of His divine mission, and thereby showed themselves to be better than the Jews, who, if they believed Christ, it was only because they saw the miraculous signs performed by Christ (John 2:23). And the first who turned to Christ on the basis of the woman’s testimony themselves, from their conversation with Christ, came away with the firm conviction that He really is the Savior of the world. They were led to this, of course, by the fact that Christ’s teaching about His Kingdom completely coincided with the expectations that the Samaritans had for their Tageb, or Redeemer of Jews and Gentiles (see verses 25-26). When asked why Christ remained in Samaria for only two days, Loisy replies: “Jesus does not remain in the place where He was recognized as the Savior of the world, because it was not within the framework of Providence that the glory of the Incarnate Word should be recognized by all before His death” (p. 368). John 4:43. And after two days He left there and went to Galilee, John 4:44. for Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. The reason why Christ this time retires to Galilee, the evangelist sees, is that “a prophet has no honor in his own country,” which, according to the evangelist, Christ Himself once testified to. What does the evangelist understand here by the “fatherland” of Christ? He could not mean Galilee because Christ is going to Galilee this time. He could not mean here that the city of Nazareth actually turned out to be inhospitable towards Christ (Luke 4:24), because everywhere in the Gospel Nazareth is included in Galilee, and, therefore, the evangelist could not contrast Nazareth, to which Christ did not go, with Galilee, to which He went. This would be just as impossible to say as it is impossible to say, for example, about yourself to a Russian person: “I went to Russia because I don’t want to go to Moscow.” Therefore, the only correct interpretation should be recognized as the one according to which by the “fatherland” of Christ the evangelist understood the actual fatherland of Christ as a descendant of David in the flesh, that is, the city of Judah of the tribe Bethlehem and Judea in general, as opposed to Samaria and Galilee. Here, in Judea, Christ really did not receive honor for Himself, as was evident from the attitude of the Pharisees towards Him (John 4:1-3). This is not contradicted by the fact that, according to the weather forecasters, His homeland is Nazareth (Luke 4:23) and Galilee in general (Matt. 26:69). The weather forecasters speak only about the popular idea that has developed about the origin of Christ, while John speaks about the reality. John 4:45. When He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, seeing everything that He did in Jerusalem on the feast, for they also went to the feast. The Galileans accepted Christ much better than the inhabitants of Judea. The evangelist explains this by the influence on them of everything that Christ did in Jerusalem. They, therefore, understood the meaning of Christ’s speech in the Jerusalem Temple and, seeing His miracles performed at Easter, began to be inclined to recognize His Messianic dignity. John 4:46. So Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he turned water into wine. There was a certain courtier in Capernaum whose son was sick. John 4:47. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he came to Him and asked Him to come and heal his son, who was dying. Without going to Nazareth, Christ goes to Cana of Galilee, probably because the population of this city, where Christ performed his first sign, was more inclined to accept Christ with the honor due to Him. After some time, Herod Antipas’s courtier, i.e., probably some secular person who served at court, appeared in Cana from Capernaum. This man had a sick son, and therefore he came to ask Christ to come to him in Capernaum and heal the sick man. It is not clear that the courtier had faith in Christ as the Messiah; the further reproach that Christ addresses to him (verse 48) shows that he did not yet have such faith. But, in any case, he saw in Christ a miracle worker, who was sent from God, a great rabbi, as, for example, Nicodemus imagined Christ (John 3:2). John 4:48. Jesus said to him, “You will not believe unless you see signs and wonders.” Christ classifies the courtier among those people who, in order to be assured of the truth of the divine messenger of Christ, need signs and wonders. But with this reproach He does not take away from the courtier the hope that his request will be granted (cf. John 2:4). John 4:49. The courtier says to Him: Lord! come before my son dies. The courtier does not contradict Christ, but at the same time he does not abandon the work he has begun. He asks Christ to go to Capernaum as soon as possible in order to find his son alive. Without hoping that Christ can restore life to someone who has already died, he is confident, however, that the prayer of Christ, as a man of God, can heal the sick. With his last words, the courtier expresses the idea that Christ will still go to Capernaum, which for some time was the place of permanent residence of Him and His family (John 2:12). Let Him hurry. John 4:50. Jesus says to him: Go, your son is well. He believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went. The courtier undoubtedly had faith in Christ, although imperfect, and Christ, in order to exalt this faith, tells him to go home calmly, since his son has already successfully survived the crisis and is currently on the road to recovery 21 . It is remarkable that the courtier believed this word of Christ, without yet seeing its fulfillment. It is clear that his faith suddenly became a strong confidence in the invisible as if in the visible, in what was desired and expected as if in the present (Heb. 11:1). Christ, thus, healed his son from a physical illness, and his father from a spiritual illness, from weakness of faith. John 4:51. His servants met him on the road and said, “Your son is well.” John 4:52. He asked them: at what time did he feel better? They told him: yesterday at seven o'clock the fever left him. John 4:53. From this the father knew that this was the hour at which Jesus said to him, “Your son is well, and he and his whole house believed.” The courtier, apparently, set off on his journey only in the evening and then spent the whole night traveling (between Cana and Capernaum it was considered about 25 miles). In the morning he was met on the road by servants, who hastened to report to their master that his son had successfully survived the crisis of illness. It turned out that this crisis occurred precisely at the 7th hour or at the first hour of noon, when Christ told the courtier that his son had recovered. “And he himself believed...”. Although the courtier had previously accepted the word of Christ with faith (verse 50), he now believed in Christ as the true Messiah and joined the ranks of His followers along with his entire household. John 4:54. Jesus performed this second miracle when he returned from Judea to Galilee. This miracle was the second sign after the miracle of turning water into wine, which took place about nine months ago. And after this miracle, John does not report any other that Christ would have performed at this time in Galilee. It is obvious that Christ did not yet want to appear in Galilee as a teacher and preacher; He still had not yet called His disciples to constantly follow Him. Only from the 2nd verse of the 6th chapter does John begin to depict the consistent activity of Christ in Galilee. It can be assumed that Christ initially wanted to once again walk through His “fatherland” - Judea, in order to be the first to proclaim the word of salvation to him. The working of miracles described here by John is not the same as the working of miracles reported by Matthew (Matthew 8:5–13) and Luke (Luke 7:1–10). First of all, the time of both events is not the same. The weather forecasters are talking about an event that falls during the great Galilean activity of Christ, which began after the capture of John the Baptist (Matthew 4:12), and here - about an event that happened when the Baptist was still free (John 3:24). Then, that miracle was performed in Capernaum, and this one was performed in Cana. There the centurion is a pagan, and here the official is a Jew; Christ directly classifies the latter among those Galileans who expected miracles from Him (verse 48). According to the weather forecasters, the sick person is a servant, and here is a son, who, moreover, was sick with a fever, while the servant lay relaxed. Finally, there the centurion is an example of zealous faith: according to his conviction, Christ can heal the sick with one word; and Christ accuses the courtier of weakness of faith: according to the courtier, in fact, in order to perform healing, Christ needs to go and visit the sick person. This is indicated by the expression ζῇ here, i.e. lives, gets better, goes towards complete recovery, whereas before he was heading towards death. You might be interested in: