Samaria

Samaria (Hebrew Shomron, "watch-mountain") was both the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel and the central highland region surrounding it, and in the New Testament the home of the Samaritans — a people of mixed origin and rival worship through whom the gospel made its first crossing beyond Judaism. The name thus carries a double history: the proud capital of a kingdom that fell for its idolatry, and the field where Christ and the early church broke down an ancient wall of hostility.

The city was founded by Omri, king of Israel (about 880 BC), who bought the hill of Shemer for two talents of silver, built on it, and named it Samaria after its former owner (1 Kings 16:24). Strategically set on a commanding, isolated hill, it served as Israel's capital for some 160 years. Under Omri's son Ahab and his wife Jezebel it became a center of Baal worship (1 Kings 16:32), the target of Elijah's and Elisha's ministries, and the object of repeated prophetic denunciation — Amos and Hosea condemned its luxury and injustice, and Micah foretold its ruin (Micah 1:6). After a long siege the city fell to Assyria in 722 BC; Sargon II deported the Israelite population and resettled the region with peoples from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim (2 Kings 17:24). The mingling of these settlers with the remaining Israelites produced the Samaritans, who held to a syncretistic Yahwism centered on Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem.

By the New Testament era the region of Samaria lay between Judea to the south and Galilee to the north, and the mutual contempt between Jews and Samaritans was deep — "Jews have no dealings with Samaritans" (John 4:9). Against this backdrop Jesus deliberately "had to pass through Samaria" (John 4:4), where His long conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well led many of her townspeople to believe (John 4:39–42). He made a Samaritan the hero of His parable of neighbor-love (Luke 10:33) and singled out the one grateful leper as a Samaritan (Luke 17:16).

Samaria holds a pivotal place in the spread of the gospel. The risen Lord named it as the second sphere of witness: "in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). When persecution scattered the Jerusalem church, Philip went down to a city of Samaria and proclaimed Christ with great joy and many signs (Acts 8:5–8); the apostles Peter and John then came and prayed that the Samaritan believers might receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14–17), sealing the union of Jew and Samaritan in the one church. Thus the region that symbolized division became an early sign of the gospel's power to gather long-estranged peoples into Christ.