Samaritan Woman ≠ Divorced Whore, Part 1:

Who is she, really?

In the past month, I have heard two pastors refer to the Samaritan woman at the well as a "whore". I’d like to be kind, gentle, and loving in this blog, but intentional altruisms have fallen flat on our pastoral community. So, true to what I feel God leading me to do, I am going to hopefully offer a scripturally sound perspective on our Samaritan woman.

Be warned: this blog may carry a bit of spunk and spice. 

I do not believe the Samaritan woman at the well is a divorced whore.

The story of the woman at the well has been dissected ad nauseam which is why I’m baffled when I still hear her referred to as a divorced whore. The entire scripture I'll be referencing can be found in John 4:4-42.

I have a deep compassion for the Samaritan woman.  She has been misrepresented for hundreds of years.  Calling her a whore is a fallacy; it is not in the scripture.  I’ve been divorced three times and the erroneous judgement I receive from people misunderstanding my situation brings this woman close to my heart. I'm not even sure she has been divorced. But, I’m getting ahead of myself…

I could spend this blog focused on why a patriarchal society would benefit by the “whore” translation, but, instead, I would like to focus on who she factually might have been.

1.         Not divorced.   I do not see the word “whore”, “prostitute”, or “divorce” in the scripture.  It isn’t in any translation.  It simply says she had “five husbands”.

John 4:16-18 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

The presentation of our Samaritan woman as a whore or divorcee is the misrepresentation of truth. It is an outright misinterpretation of scripture.  Here are two perspectives concerning the issue of her being divorced. 

o   Perspective 1:  Why did she have five husbands? I asked the all-knowing “AI” to help me discern what percentage of men lived past age 40 in Christ's time.  And the answer was 16%.  If I concur with 16% of men surviving past age 30 (even if I bring that number to 50%, just because I want to) there is a HIGH probability her previous husbands died, and she might instead be a widow- five times. Scripture addresses widows (Ex. 22:22, Deut 10:18) and the need to treat them with kindness and respect, which is exactly how Christ treated her. What if the woman at the well was a widow, and not a divorced whore? 

o   Perspective 2: Assume the Bible left out the “D” word, and she was divorced five times. Typically, divorce in Bible times was a choice a man made. Men divorced women for a variety of reasons; the wife rarely had an option to choose to divorce. If wives had no voice in divorce process and husbands initiated divorce, the insinuation is that husbands caused divorce to transpire, not her. She was completely at their mercy, or even whim, which was also common in Christ’s time.

Here is a little background to the Biblical history of divorce: there were two accepted beliefs posed by powerful rabbis in relation to divorce. Shammai believed it was allowed only for sexual immorality, while Hillel thought men could divorce for any reason. Jesus discusses this in Matthew 19:8.

-If I identify with Shammai, and her husbands divorced her due to sexual immorality, I’m wondering, why would four other guys line up to marry her if she demonstrated loose morals?  It isn’t logical. 

-If I identify with Hillel, and her husbands were randomly divorcing her, what truth does that tell us about the men in her community?

In summary, I’m proposing her first husbands may have died, or at least a few of them, which led her to have to make survival decisions, common in those days, causing remarriage.

2.        Not living in shame.  Again, let’s suppose she was divorced five times.

Perspective 1: Jesus points out she’s living with a man who isn’t her husband. Surprisingly, he never tells her to “go and sin no more.” Throughout scripture, Jesus displays unrestrained honesty in calling out sin. Most notably, in John 8:11, He addresses the woman caught in adultery and tells her to “go and sin no more.” Also, He clearly offers verbal forgiveness to those who have sinned (Matthew 9:2, Luke 7:48). Why wouldn't He address the Samaritan woman's sin?  Would it make sense that perhaps she needed a place to live, but wasn’t copulating with her current fella? Could it be, she wasn’t living in sin?

Perspective 2: Historically, when women married, their husband received a dowry.  Wouldn’t it make sense that if she was married five times, she would have a valuable dowry to encourage men to marry her and make it worth their while? Given this presumption, I doubt she was a destitute hooker looking for a man to share her bed.  I suspect she was a high commodity, and again, not living in shame.

I hope you can be open to exploring new ideas.

“Life is a progress, and not a station.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stay tuned for the grand finale in Part 2.

For more information about me, please visit www.notacasserolewidow.com or www.coachinghope4u.com.