Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 9:52

"and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him." — Luke 9:52 (ASV)

And sent messengers before his face.—It is remarkable that the words “Samaria” and “Samaritan” do not occur at all in Saint Mark, and in Saint Matthew in one passage only (Matthew 10:5), and then in the command given to the Twelve that they were not to enter into any city of the Samaritans.

Saint Luke, on the other hand, seems to have carried his inquiries into that country, and to have treasured up whatever he could find of our Lord’s acts and words in relation to it.

This seems, accordingly, the right place for a short account of the region and the people, and of their relations in our Lord’s time to their neighbors of Judea and Galilee. The city of Samaria (the modern Sebastieh) first comes into notice as built by Omri to be the capital of the kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 16:23–24). It continued to occupy that position until its capture by Shalmaneser, B.C. 721.

After the deportation of the ten tribes, Esarhaddon (Ezra 4:2; Ezra 4:10), in the manner of the great monarchs of the East, brought a mixed race from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim (2 Kings 17:24) to occupy the district thus left depopulated. From these, the Samaritans of later history were descended. They were, accordingly, of alien races, and their neighbors of Judea kept up the memory of their foreign origin by speaking of them as Cuthæans.

Under the influence of a priest of Israel sent by the king of Assyria, they became worshippers of Jehovah (2 Kings 17:41). On the return of Judah and Benjamin from the Captivity, they sought to be admitted as co-religionists, to share with them in the work of rebuilding the Temple, and therefore to obtain similar privileges as worshippers in its courts. That claim was, however, refused. In return, in B.C. 409, guided by Manasseh, a priest who had been expelled from Jerusalem by Nehemiah for an unlawful marriage with the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite (Nehemiah 13:28), they obtained permission from the Persian king, Darius Nothus, to erect a temple on Mount Gerizim. Josephus, it should be added (Antiquities 11.7), places the whole story much later, in the time of Darius Nothus and Alexander the Great.

The new worship thus started placed them at once in the position of a rival and schismatic sect, and their subsequent history presented the usual features of such antagonism. They refused all hospitality to pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, or would waylay and mistreat them on their journey. They mocked the more distant Jews by false signals of the rising of the Paschal moon at Jerusalem. (See note on Luke 6:1.) They found their way into the Temple and profaned it by scattering dead men’s bones on the sacred pavement (Josephus, Antiquities 18.2.2; 20.6.1).

Outrages of this kind rankled in the memory of the Jews. In their turn, they looked on the Samaritans as worse than heathens, “had no dealings with them” (John 4:9), cursed them in their synagogues, and even the wise of heart among them, like the son of Sirach, named them as a people that they abhorred . Probably in consequence of this bitter hostility, the Samaritans became more and more zealous in their observance of the Law. They boasted that they possessed the authentic copy of it, substituted Gerizim for Ebal in Deuteronomy 27:4 to support its claim to sanctity, and maintained that Mount Gerizim, and not the Temple at Jerusalem, was the chosen sanctuary of Jehovah. They too were looking for the Messiah, who would come as a prophet and tell them all things (John 4:25).

Such was the relative position of the two races in the time of our Lord’s ministry. We cannot wonder that He should have shrunk (if we may so speak) from bringing His disciples at the outset of their work into contact with a people who hated all Jews, and whom all Jews had learned to hate in return. He Himself, however, had not shrunk from that contact; and at least some of the disciples had, at an early period of His work, learned that He saw in them those whom He owned as the sheep of His flock, though not of that fold. In the narrative now before us, we find Him apparently endeavoring to continue the work that had then begun so successfully. (See note on John 4:39.)