Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. [Luke 10:33 (NLT)]
The hatred between Jews and Samaritans began in 930 BC when Solomon’s son Rehoboam was king and the united kingdom of Israel divided. Ten tribes rebelled and made Jeroboam king of the northern kingdom of Israel whose capital was Samaria. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin along with the Levitical priesthood remained in the southern kingdom of Judah. Fearing a change of alliance if people returned to Jerusalem to worship, Jeroboam set up his own worship centers in the north.
After Israel was conquered by Assyria in 772 BC, some of the northern kingdom’s Jews were taken into captivity but many of the poor and uneducated Jews remained. Assyria repopulated the land with Gentiles who brought their pagan gods and beliefs with them. Wanting to appease the god of the land after a series of lion attacks on the new settlers, Assyria’s king sent back an exiled priest to teach them about Israel’s Jehovah. As a result, Samaritan Judaism became an odd mix of paganism and Judaism. Only the five books of Moses were recognized as Scripture, many Jewish traditions were rejected, and idols were worshipped along with the God of Israel.
When the southern kingdom’s Jews began returning after their Babylonian exile, the Samaritans interfered with the rebuilding of Jerusalem and tried to undermine Judah’s relationship with their Persian rulers. Since the Samaritans were not welcome to worship in the Jerusalem Temple, they erected their own temple on Mt. Gerizim. Adding more fuel to the fire, they aligned themselves with the Seleucids during the Maccabean wars. Around 113 BC, Judah’s Jews destroyed the Samaritan temple and around 9 AD, some Samaritans snuck into Jerusalem on Passover and defiled the Temple with human remains.
Samaritans were a continual source of difficulty for the Jews of the south. Controlling the land between Galilee and Jerusalem, they regularly harassed pilgrims on their way to worship in Jerusalem. Because of the intermarriage between the Jews and Gentiles of Samaria, Samaritans were considered “half-breeds” by Jews. Considering them racially and theologically contaminated, Judeans had a proverb: “A piece of bread given by a Samaritan is more unclean than swine’s flesh.”
Bitter, intolerant, and hostile toward one another, the relationship between Samaritans and Judeans was like that between Protestants and Catholics during the troubles in Northern Ireland or Israelis and Palestinians today. This is the world in which we find Jesus telling the parable of the Good Samaritan with the unlikely hero being a Samaritan (the very people known to harass travelers).
We know this parable was in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” but let’s back up one chapter to see what preceded it. Jesus and the disciples were on their way to Jerusalem. Rather than taking the longer walk around Samaria, they were walking right through it. When Jesus sent messengers into a Samaritan village to make sleeping and eating arrangements, they were not welcomed. Although Jesus previously told the disciples to simply shake the dust from their feet if a town refused to welcome them, John and James suggested calling down fire from heaven to destroy the village. Luke says Jesus rebuked them but we don’t know what He said.
Part of their rebuke may be found in the story of the Good Samaritan. The parable could have been as much for His disciples (especially James and John) as it was for the legal expert who asked the identity of his neighbor. Jesus easily could have made his point with a Roman soldier as the story’s unlikely hero, but He didn’t. Although the Samaritans had been unneighborly in snubbing Him, Jesus deliberately chose a Samaritan to teach a lesson about neighbors! That parable told the disciples that, even when our neighbor is inhospitable and slights us, he still is our neighbor. Whether or not someone helps us, we are to help them and, when someone offends us, we’re not to take offense. We do unto others as we would like them to do to us and not as they’ve done to us!
Although there are about 800 Samaritans still living in Israel, the word “Samaritan” for most of us refers to someone who helps other people, especially strangers, when they have trouble. How ironic that the despised “pagan half-Jews of the Old Testament” (as one writer called them) took a place of honor in the New!
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” [Martin Luther King, Jr.]
Along with sins of the heart like greed, pride, coveting, anger, and envy, we have jealousy. It’s hard to make a clear distinction between jealousy and envy and, in most cases, the words can be used interchangeably. The difference seems to be that the discontent and resentment of envy is focused outward toward something we desire and the person who has it while the discontent and resentment of jealousy is focused inward toward something we have and want to keep for ourselves. For example, Rachel was envious of Leah because she had given birth to Jacob’s children but both sisters were jealous of one another whenever Jacob slept with the other one. Most often used in the context of romantic relationships and often coming from insecurity, jealousy is a mix of overwhelming possessiveness with a little paranoia on the side.
While the Hebrew word translated as covet, chamad, can mean “take pleasure in,” it also means “ungoverned selfish desire.” Chamad ranges from wholesome delight to illicit craving. It’s not a stretch to see how taking pleasure in something that isn’t yours can lead to desiring it and wanting to acquire it. When David saw Bathsheba on the rooftop, he delighted in her beauty but that delight grew into such desire that he took what belonged to his neighbor. When Achan saw the riches that were to be set aside for God, he coveted the wealth for himself and stole it. When Elisha’s servant Gehazi saw the wealth Namaan brought to his master, he was filled with desire for what wasn’t his to take. Coveting the wealth that Elisha refused to accept, Gehazi chased after Namaan, concocted a lie, and took some of that wealth for himself.
Just as we must not become stumbling blocks to others on their faith journey, we must be cautious of the stumbling blocks we encounter on ours. The Greek word usually translated as “stumbling block” was skandalon. It originally referred to the stick that served as the trigger for a snare trap but, eventually, scandalon developed two meanings. It was both a snare or trap that catches unsuspecting prey as well as something that trips a person and causes them to stumble and fall—in other words, a stumbling block. In both cases, the purpose of the scandalon is to catch its victim unaware!
Aside from Adam and Eve’s fig leaves, Scripture doesn’t tell us much about people’s attire. Both Matthew and Mark, however, specifically mention the unconventional attire of John the Baptizer—a camel’s hair garment and a leather belt around his waist. Rather than the luxurious fabric of woven camel’s hair we know today, it probably was a dressed camel’s hide. Moreover, since Scripture rarely refers to people’s diets, the mention of John eating locusts and honey is equally unusual. When the Bible’s writers veer from the norm, we should take notice and ask ourselves, “Why?”
