The Woman at the Well Was No Ho'

 

I want to right a century's old wrong done to a holy woman.  Yes, I said holy, meaning set apart. She was set apart, chosen to hear the very first declaration of Jesus admitting to being the Messiah.  We've always referred to her as an immoral woman who was shacking up after having five husbands.  Women of ill-repute back then usually were working women.  Working women did not have husbands, yet she had five previous husbands.  Who taught us that she was a whore. It  was man who turned this holy  woman into a whore for centuries. So-called Bible scholars trashed this woman’s reputation just due to the mere fact she was gathering water in the middle of the day, as opposed to the early morning when most women gathered their water. She was indeed a holy woman, set apart to gather her water at the same time the Jesus would be needing her assistance.

First, let’s define holy.  Most people attribute holy as pure, perfect, and good, but the true definition is “set apart.”  Most people understand unholy as evil or bad, but that is not the case or the truth.  Unholy means ordinary, the same as everyone else, one among many.  That’s it!  GOD is not only Holy, set apart as GOD above all other gods, (which are false), He is also pure and Good all the time.  Likewise, Jesus was pure, good and sinless along with being Holy.  You and I cannot be good and pure and sinless, but we can be Holy, set apart.   Now, that we have that established, let’s look at that poor woman at the well.  She was alone there in the middle of the day, when most outcasts would be subject to gather water for the day.   So, either she couldn’t make it early that morning, or she needed more than she got earlier and went back for a refill.  Maybe she was set apart by the town because for some other shameful reason, like being rejected by her husbands, tossed out on her fanny, or even a sadder reason, she was barren.  The life span of a man was very short then, she could have been widowed five times, which is more likely than being divorced five times.   There is no reference to her age, she could have been an old woman who was a servant to another man, a concubine, a woman who was living with a relative because she was widowed five times.    She was a broken woman in need of healing, so regardless of why she was there, it was planned by GOD to have her there, as Sovereign over all, she was chosen, she was set apart.

She was ordained to hear the first Holy declaration from the lips of Jesus identifying himself to be the Messiah.  Not only that, but she was also entrusted with that message to bring it back to her town.  Back in those days, a woman of ill-repute would not dare speak openly in the public square, but this one did.  She could have been an outcast, but the evidence in Scripture in no way refers to her as a prostitute or a whore.  The first Bible commentators and scholars of earlier centuries were men. Most pastors are  men, and let's face it, most men tend to label woman in an undesirable manner.    Her being a Samaritan woman was outcast enough for the Jews then, and yet, Jesus came out as Messiah to her. I'm sure GOD is making a point here about who we consider as rejects or outcasts being worthy of hearing the Gospel.  Here is a thought one may consider, how many women were adept in theological studies back then?  How did she know that a Messiah would come, what he would look like, and what to expect of him? It was because she knew Scripture. She was familiar with Hebrew prophecies. Not too many prostitutes were theologically sound back then.

I am going to give you another example of where contemporary Bible teachers have gotten it wrong and have taught us wrong.  The familiar verse in Revelation 3:15  “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.   This one shocked me when I learned the true meaning of this Scripture.  Back then hot and cold were very useful. Hot was used to cleanse or sanitize and cook with, whereas cold was used to preserve.  Both are useful and good.  Lukewarm was never useful, as it did not sanitize/clean or preserve.  Food kept at a lukewarm temperature would rot faster. Food kept cold will preserve and be able to still be nourishment for the body. Knowing this truth and understanding it how John would have understood those words  completely changes everything for you doesn’t it, because you thought cold meant apathetic to the things of GOD?  Think of how many more Scriptures and meanings we have gotten completely twisted and wrong because of a thing called eisegesis, which is taking Scripture completely out of context to agree with our own agenda.   

We do a great disservice when we look at anything in the Bible with 21^st Century glasses and then impose our views and opinions and own personal history into the Bible and refer to it as truth.  What is truth to man may not be absolute Holy truth to GOD.  Every translation of the Bible was done with and agenda of the translators.  For example, we believe that Jesus spoke Aramaic back then, but with a Hebrew mindset with meanings and understandings that we are not taught.  The writers of the New Testament Scribes wrote the Gospel in Koinonia Greek, as it was a language widely  used and understood in written form by the masses and the uneducated.  Their agenda was to make the Gospel understood and accessible.  The Roman Catholic theologian, Jerome,  translated what GOD meant to be easy to read into the difficult language of Latin. That way only the learned or educated Roman Catholic Clergy could understand the Scriptures and teach them how they wanted them understood.  After that, English translators took the Latin in many cases and translated the Scriptures into old English, which was contemporary to them, but they had an agenda, also.   So, Jesus’s  teachings when from Hebrew to Greek to Latin then to English.  We should assume that some of the true meanings got lost in the translations.  From there you have thousands of denominations and hundreds of “scholars” who went and translated the Scriptures to imply what each denomination believed and taught. Scripture is always translated or taught with the agenda of the person teaching it.  It’s not so corrupt as it is how humans are.  They may not believe they have an agenda, but they were taught a certain way, thus they teach what they were taught.  The woman at the well and the hot and cold church are perfect examples of just how wrong we are learning the Bible.   Flawed and sinful man has decided that A really means B, and C really means D.  Maybe GOD wants us to read, A B C D, in chronological order as written and give the credit as the letter that they truly are, and not assumed that they are other letters in disguise.  I spent twenty-six years as a Roman Catholic, then twenty-six years as a devout Protestant, and in those years, I learned the Bible as taught to me by the flawed men who taught it wrong.  I learned it wrong.  The hardest thing to convince any Christian is what they have learned and believe as absolute truth may not be absolute truth, because they were taught it was.  I know this is circular reasoning and hard to really wrap our head around, but these last 8 years, GOD has been teaching me the Scriptures as they were meant to be understood.  GOD has brought back the flavor of the Hebrew roots of our faith and my eyes have been opened to a Bible I never knew in three decades.  I’m going to put a link here to a Bible teacher I have been studying under for over two years now, however, whoever wants to know absolute truth will have to search it out on their own. 

GOD knows who wants truth and who is happy living the lie.  GOD knows who has a heart after him, and who is just wanting salvation by grace and keeping the works out of it.  Yes, I just said that.  Take it how you want, but Romans 2:13 completely contradicts all we have been taught about faith alone without works.  So does Matthew 7:21, 12:50, James 2:14-26.  I’ll let you search those Scriptures out and let the Holy Spirit guide you on those.  I’m not a Bible scholar or teacher, but when I find out the truth about a lie I’ve learned, well, I just can’t go back to the lie.

This is the Gospel of Matthew as you have never learned it before.   Torah Class - Matthew