John’s Wayward Women
The following is not an exhaustive or all-inclusive examination of the prophetic types and shadows of the relationship between God and His people in Scripture, but just one of many. There are many more pictures and passages of this relationship and to attempt to list and discuss them all would take volumes. This is only a tidbit of what is in the Word.
It is not coincidence or happenstance that Yeshua has interaction with two wayward women in the Gospel of John – one in the territory of Ephraim and one in the territory of Judah. In John 4, with the woman at the well, we have Messiah beginning the process of fulfilling the prophecy that was spoken – “in the place where it was said you are not my people you shall be called the children of God” (Hosea 1:10, Rom 9:26) and four chapters later he is dealing with an adulterous woman in the very Temple area in Jerusalem, the seat of Judah, the other ‘wayward woman’.
The wayward woman He meets in John 4 at Jacob’s Well in Samaria, (the capital of the Northern Kingdom) is significant in many more ways than we can cover here. The Samaritan woman represents the prophecy of judgment and restoration concerning Ephraim in Hosea, the judgment being carried out in 2 Kings 17 and the restoration process beginning with the meeting at the well. Just as The Samaritan Woman had five husbands, so did the five nations of 2 Kings being brought into the northern kingdom had their Baals or lords/husbands.
Yeshua said the man she was with at that time was not her husband – she was not married. According to verse 25 of John 4 she knew Messiah was coming but did not know Him yet. In other words, she was not ‘truly married’, if you will, for her true Husband had not yet arrived, although she was looking for Him, Him/the Husband being Messiah. In verse 26 Messiah reveals Himself to her. Yeshua stayed with them in Samaria two days and departed on the third and many believed on Him, coinciding with the statement in Hosea 6:2 “After two days He will revive us and on the third day He will raise us up, That we may live in His sight.” Yeshua said in John 4:4 ‘He had to go through Samaria’, enabling Him to meet the Woman at Jacob’s Well and begin this prophetic fulfillment.
The other wayward woman – the one caught in adultery – was presumed married but was with another man. This is a picture of Judah, the treacherous sister of Jeremiah 3. Ephraim was divorced by her Husband, El Shaddai, as punishment for her adultery and the divorcement was to be an example to Judah, her sister, but to no avail. The woman in John 8 is brought to Yeshua and accused of the crime of adultery. HE bends down and writes in the dust. We must remember Yeshua embodies not only the Groom but also the High Priest. We have a very similar picture in Numbers 5 when the potentially guilty woman is presented to the Priest who proceeds to take dust from the floor of the temple (the same place where the woman is brought to Yeshua) and writes a curse. By this act she will either be declared guilty or innocent. Yeshua arises from His writing, her accusers are gone, and ‘neither does HE condemn her’ but admonishes her to ‘sin no more’. It is also interesting to note Yeshua is ‘presented to both Ephraim and Judah’ at the sixth hour (John 4:6, John 19:14).
It is no coincidence, John, being the most ‘hebraic’ of the gospel accounts, includes both these women. They are, in fact, prophetic pictures of the spiritually adulterous nature of both houses of Israel, spoken of in Jeremiah 3, the one of which was divorced and will be restored, and the other which was estranged but will be reinstated. And all this comes about by the ‘death of the Testator’ (Hebrews 9:16) ; and not just His death only, but His burial, resurrection and triumphant return in these the last days to reclaim his reunited, spotless Bride – the Whole House of Israel. 11 “Therefore remember that you, formerly gentiles in the flesh . . . 12 at that time were without Messiah, being aliens from the citizenship of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now, in Messiah Yeshua, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Messiah.” Ephesians 2 Coincidence ? . . . or Prophetic . . . Shalom –
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