Who were the Samaritans?

The Samaritans were a mixed people. After Israel was carried captive, the king of Assyria sent people to live in the land who did not fear the Lord; and the Lord sent lions and killed some of them. So one of the priests was sent back to teach them the manner of the God of the land, and then when Nehemiah came back, Sanballat and these people wanted to join him, and he would not let them. Mount Gerizim was the place where Joshua pronounced the blessings, and so they said that would be the proper place for worship, and a temple was built at Gerizim by them.

Living in the land of the LORD, and yet not fearing the LORD, they were troubled by the LORD. In attempting to meet this trouble, the Assyrian king sent a priest of the LORD to teach them the ways of the LORD. The result was that they became a corrupt people who "feared the LORD, and served their own gods". So they had some dim knowledge of the Lord, and of the fact that the Messiah was coming.

They were only half Jews, though they boasted of their relation to Jacob. They received the five books of Moses as sacred, but undervalued the rest of the Bible. They were circumcised, kept the law after a fashion, and were expecting a Messiah to come… The well at which He rested, it is said, "lay in a valley between the two famous mountains, Ebal and Gerizim, on which the law was read. On the latter height stood the rival temple of the Samaritans, which had so long distressed the more zealous Jews by its bold opposition to the one chosen sanctuary on Mount Moriah."

They said, "Let us build with you, for we seek your God, as you do, and we do sacrifice to Him since the days of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, who brought us up here." They revealed in this way their true origin; they were, by their own admission, not the children of Abraham, but Assyrians, and so had no claim to be of the children of Israel. These were, in fact, the fathers of the Samaritans (see 2 Kings 17:24-41), who kept on trying, right to the very end of the Jewish system, to push themselves into the place of privilege and blessing. It was for this reason, and because of the conflict it stirred up, that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.

When the captives of Judah were restored to their land so that they might receive Christ, they deeply despised the Samaritans and had no relationship with them (John 4:9). But they went further than that, and said to their Messiah, "You are a Samaritan!" (John 8:48). This is how the religious man judges other men, when he himself is under the same judgment — and so he judges God too! The rejected Jesus accepted this name, so that He might show in a parable that despite this dishonoured position given to Him, He alone was the giver of grace.

In verse 22 the Lord leaves it impossible for the Samaritan to draw the conclusion that, if Christian worship was about to be the only worship acceptable to God, independent of place or race, then Samaritan worship had been just as good as Jewish. Not so. The Samaritans worshipped what they did not know, the Jews knew what they worshipped; "for salvation," as He added, "is from the Jews."… The Samaritans were mere imitators, Gentiles jealous of Israel and hostile to them, without fear of God, or else they would have submitted to His ways and His Word.

The lowest object of grace is very often the one who enters most into the fullness of grace in God. He may be the neediest among men; but the very depth of his need shows what God is; and so grace is often seen and enjoyed far more simply than by others who might boast of much better privileges.

Notice, too, that the Samaritans call Jesus "the Saviour." Deep down they knew very well that their Gerizim was nothing, but under the influence of grace their hearts were opened to a wider view of the Saviour's work. No Jew would have said, "the Saviour of the world."